Hirohito

• 1. Introduction

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  Hirohito reigned over Japan for 63 years, from 1926 until his death in 1989, the longest reign of any emperor in Japanese history. He sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne as the 124th emperor in the traditional order of succession. During those decades his country rose into militarism, fought the Second Sino-Japanese War, attacked Pearl Harbor, surrendered after two atomic bombs, and then built a postwar economic miracle. Yet for all that happened in his name, one question never settled. How much did the man himself decide?

  He was never tried for war crimes, even though the war had been waged in his name. He spoke to his people on the radio for the first time only to announce defeat, in formal archaic Japanese that many commoners could barely understand. He was forced to renounce his own divinity, then redefined by a new constitution as "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People". This is the story of a sovereign whose power was real, whose responsibility is still argued over, and who described one of history's most catastrophic decisions with three quiet words: it cannot be helped.

• 2. A Prince Raised By Strangers

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  Ten weeks after he was born at Togu Palace in Aoyama, Tokyo, the infant prince was removed from the court. He was placed in the care of Count Kawamura Sumiyoshi, who raised him as his own grandchild. When Kawamura died, the three-year-old and his brother Yasuhito were returned to court, first to the imperial mansion in Numazu, Shizuoka, then back to the Aoyama Palace.

  His childhood title was Prince Michi, and his education was entrusted to military men of the highest rank. In 1908 he began elementary studies at the Gakushuin, the Peers School, where Emperor Meiji appointed General Nogi Maresuke as its tenth president to oversee his grandson. After Nogi's death, his schooling passed to Fleet Admiral Togo Heihachiro and Naval Captain Ogasawara Naganari, men who would later become his opponents on national defense policy.

  Shiratori Kurakichi, one of his middle-school instructors, shaped his mind most deeply. Kurakichi was a historian trained in Germany who absorbed the positivist methods of Leopold von Ranke. He taught the young Hirohito to link the divine origin of the imperial line to ideas of Japanese racial superiority and homogeneity. He also taught that the Empire of Japan was meant to be governed through diplomacy that weighed the interests of other nations justly. At the age of 11, in 1912, Hirohito was already commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the army and an Ensign in the navy.

• 3. The Crown Prince Abroad

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  From the 3rd of March to the 3rd of September 1921, the crown prince made official visits to the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Vatican City and Malta. No Japanese crown prince had ever traveled to Europe before. The journey was realized despite strong opposition at home, through the efforts of elder statesmen, the Genro, such as Yamagata Aritomo and Saionji Kinmochi.

  The Japanese battleship Katori carried him from Yokohama, sailing by way of Naha, Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo, Suez, Cairo and Gibraltar. After two months at sea it arrived at Portsmouth on the 9th of May, reaching London the same day. King George V welcomed Hirohito as a partner of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and at a Buckingham Palace banquet the king said he treated the nervous young visitor as he would his own father, which eased his tension.

  In Britain he toured the British Museum, the Tower of London, the Bank of England, Oxford University and the Naval War College. At the University of Cambridge he heard Professor Joseph Robson Tanner lecture on the relationship between the British royal family and its people, and received an honorary doctorate. He stayed three days with John Stewart-Murray, the 8th Duke of Atholl, and was quoted as saying, "The rise of Bolsheviks won't happen if you live a simple life like Duke Athol." In Italy he met King Vittorio Emanuele III and visited the battlefields of the First World War.

• 4. Regent And A Banquet In Taiwan

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  On the 25th of November 1921, after returning home, Hirohito became Regent of Japan in place of his ailing father, who was affected by mental illness. Over twelve days in April 1923 he visited Taiwan, a Japanese colony since 1895, completing a voyage his father had planned in 1911 but never made.

  Taiwanese newspapers reported that high-end restaurants served him luxury dishes such as swallow's nest and shark fin as Taiwanese cuisine. This was the first time an emperor or crown prince had eaten the local cuisine of a colony. The preparations were extraordinary. Eight chefs and their staff were purified for a week through fasting and ritual bathing before the feast could be cooked. The tasting served as part of a ceremony incorporating the colony into the empire.

  A student of science, Hirohito had heard that Beitou Creek was one of only two hot springs in the world containing a rare radioactive mineral. He decided to walk into the creek to investigate it himself. His worried entourage scrambled to find flat rocks for stepping stones, and those stones were later mounted with a stele and named "His Imperial Highness Crown Prince of Japan's Stepping Stones for River Crossing." He handed his Imperial Notice to Governor-General Den Kenjiro and departed from Keelung on the 26th of April 1923.

• 5. The Emperor And The Rebels

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  On the 25th of December 1926, Yoshihito died and Hirohito became emperor, opening the Showa era. Following custom, he was never referred to by his given name, but simply as "His Majesty the Emperor." His accession was confirmed in enthronement ceremonies in November 1928, staged during a recession after the 55th Imperial Diet unanimously passed 7,360,000 dollars for the festivities.

  The early years of his reign unfolded amid financial crisis and rising military power. Between 1921 and 1944 there were 64 separate incidents of political violence. On the 9th of January 1932, a Korean independence activist named Lee Bong-chang threw a hand grenade at Hirohito in Tokyo, in the Sakuradamon Incident, and narrowly missed. That same year the assassination of moderate Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi marked the end of civilian control of the military.

  In February 1936 junior army officers of the Kodoha faction attempted a coup, the February 26 incident, murdering several high officials. Hirohito reacted with fury. When Chief Aide-de-camp Shigeru Honjo informed him, he immediately branded the officers "rebels" and ordered the rebellion suppressed within the hour, demanding reports every 30 minutes. Told the high command had made little progress, he declared, "I Myself, will lead the Konoe Division and subdue them." He refused the rebels' petitions, viewing concessions as legitimizing treason, and the revolt was crushed on the 29th of February.

• 6. War In China

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  From the Mukden Incident of 1931, when Japan staged a false flag operation as a pretext to invade Manchuria, the empire seized Chinese territory and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. Hirohito's chiefs of staff and Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe recommended the aggression, and he voiced no objection to the invasion of China.

  Chamberlain Kuraji Ogura recorded that Hirohito was reluctant to fight China in 1937, fearing Japan had underestimated Chinese military strength. Ogura quotes the emperor saying, "once you start (a war), it cannot easily be stopped in the middle," and that one should be cautious in starting a war but, once begun, carry it out thoroughly. According to Herbert Bix, his deeper worry was a possible Soviet attack, and he pressed his chief of staff, Prince Kan'in Kotohito, and army minister Hajime Sugiyama on how quickly Chinese resistance could be crushed.

  Akira Fujiwara writes that Hirohito endorsed calling the invasion an "incident" rather than a "war," so no notice was issued to observe international law. On the 5th of August the Deputy Minister of the army instructed that Chinese captives not be called "prisoners of war," removing legal constraints on their treatment. The works of Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno show Hirohito authorized chemical weapons against the Chinese by specific orders. During the invasion of Wuhan, from August to October 1938, he authorized their use on 375 separate occasions, despite a League of Nations resolution of the 14th of May condemning such weapons.

• 7. The Road To Pearl Harbor

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  On the 27th of September 1940, ostensibly under Hirohito's leadership, Japan joined the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. In early 1940 the United States began targeted embargoes on iron, steel and aviation gasoline, tightening them into a near-total oil embargo by July 1941. The stakes were clear: a free hand in China and Southeast Asia, and Western cooperation in supplying goods the empire needed.

  In September 1941 Hirohito questioned army chief of staff Sugiyama about the chances of open war with the West. When Sugiyama answered positively, the emperor scolded him, recalling that the army had once promised peace in China after dealing one blow with three divisions, yet still could not beat Chiang Kai-shek. He pressed further: "isn't the Pacific Ocean even bigger than China?" Admiral Osami Nagano later said he had never seen the emperor reprimand them so, his face turning red and his voice rising.

  Prime Minister Konoe resigned on the 16th of October, telling his cabinet secretary that the emperor had gradually leaned toward war and had absorbed the views of the army and navy high commands. Hirohito chose the hard-line General Hideki Tojo to replace him. On the 5th of November he approved the operations plan in imperial conference, and on the 1st of December an Imperial Conference sanctioned war against the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. An aide reported that he openly showed joy upon learning of the success of the surprise attacks.

• 8. Surrender, Survival, And The Verdict Of History

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  On the 15th of August 1945, a recording of Hirohito's surrender speech was broadcast over the radio, the first time the Japanese people heard his voice. He spoke of "a new and most cruel bomb" whose power to do damage was incalculable, and warned that continued fighting could lead to the total extinction of human civilization. A hardline army faction had tried to seize the Imperial Palace the night before, in the Kyujo incident, but the pre-taped recording was hidden and preserved while Hirohito stayed in an underground bomb shelter.

  After the surrender, Australia, Britain and 70 percent of the American public wanted Hirohito tried as a Class-A war criminal. General Douglas MacArthur disagreed, believing a cooperative emperor would secure a peaceful occupation, and he excluded evidence that could incriminate Hirohito from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. John W. Dower wrote that the campaign to absolve Hirohito turned him into an almost saintly figure who bore not even moral responsibility for the war. In 1946 he was pressed to reject the claim that he was arahitogami, an incarnate divinity, yet he privately insisted the emperor remained a descendant of the gods.

  The debate over his culpability never closed. Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta found the Three Alls policy, a scorched-earth strategy sanctioned by Hirohito, was responsible for more than 2.7 million Chinese civilian deaths. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi argued he was no despot, yet retained ultimate authority to sanction or block a policy, and when he really wanted to put his foot down, he did, even to the army. Away from politics, Hirohito pursued marine biology in a palace laboratory, describing several dozen species of Hydrozoa new to science under his own name. He kept an official boycott of the Yasukuni Shrine from 1978 after Class-A war criminals were enshrined there, a stance his successors Akihito and Naruhito continued. He died at 6:33 in the morning on the 7th of January 1989, at the age of 87, of duodenal cancer, and was buried in the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Hachioji, Tokyo.