Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Read Online Free PDF

shared by all Japanese Buddhist sects but preached with especial vehemence by the Nichiren sect, that the Japanese state, because of its unique monarchy, was a tremendous power for teaching morality and unifying the entire world. References to the sacred principle of the “imperial way,” the “eight corners of the world” under the emperor’s rule, and the “emperor’s benevolent heart” became commonplace, and were linked to a willingness to use force against those who rejected his fatherly benevolence.
    In this setting—a nation that interpreted itself as emperor centered and racially superior, with officials who recognized no morality higher than the state itself—Hirohito and his key advisers participated, directly and decisively, as an independent force in policy making. Acting energetically behind the scenes, Hirohito influenced the conduct of his first three prime ministers, hastened thecollapse of political party cabinets, and sanctioned opposition to strengthening the peace machinery of the League of Nations. When resistance to his interventions provoked open defiance from the army, he and his advisers drew back and connived at military aggression.
    From the very outset Hirohito was a dynamic emperor, but paradoxically also one who projected the defensive image of a passive monarch. While the rest of the world dissociated him from any meaningful personal role in the decision-making process and insisted on seeing him as an impotent figurehead lacking notable intellectual endowments, he was actually smarter and shrewder than most people gave him credit for, and more energetic too. In Hirohito’s case there is as much to be learned from what he does not say and do as what he does. During the first twenty-two years of his reign, he exerted a high degree of influence and was seldom powerless to act whenever he chose to. When Hirohito did not exercise his discretion to influence policy or to alter some planned course of action, his decision had consequences.
    From late 1937 onward Hirohito gradually became a real war leader, influencing the planning, strategy, and conduct of operations in China and participating in the appointment and promotion of the highest generals and admirals. From late 1940, when more efficient decision-making machinery was in place, he made important contributions during each stage of policy review, culminating in the opening of hostilities against the United States and Great Britain in December 1941. Concurrently he and his advisers acted as a weathervane of the moods and frustrations of Japan’s ruling elites. To stay on top of the decision-making process and to respond to new international developments, he consciously broke with precedents set by his grandfather, Emperor Meiji, and changed direction in foreign policy. Slowly but surely he became caught up in the fever of territorial expansion and war.
    After defeat in World War II, Hirohito’s life entered a newphase. His immediate priorities shifted to preserving his throne and avoiding indictment as a war criminal. In this he proved as adept at the give-and-take of politics with Americans as he had been in his dealings with his own generals and admirals. American-imposed reforms destroyed the triangular relationship between the relatively independent monarchy, the government (as represented by the cabinet), and the Japanese people. Deprived of sovereign status, Hirohito was forced to become a “symbol” of national unity. Even as an American-created “symbol monarch” under a new constitution, however, he continued to act as a restraint on democratic trends, and to lobby secretly for Japan’s return to a balance of power system operating against the Soviet Union under strong American leadership.
    By the time the occupation ended, in 1952, the monarchy had reverted to its premodern, relatively powerless, private form, stripped of all masculine military and law-giving roles