Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (12 page)

his eternal public burden, determined the course to which his life was dedicated: preserving the throne so long as he was its occupant.

The rhetoric of “the imperial founders of our house and our other imperial ancestors” and “our imperial ancestors through a line of succession unbroken for ages eternal” [
bansei ikkei no k
s
] had great historical depth. It can be traced back to such early politico-historical tracts of the imperial house as the
Shoku Nihongi
[Chronicle of Japan] of the early eighth century. It reappeared in Meiji's numerous imperial edicts, including his Rescript of 1889, establishing the Constitution of the Empire of Great Japan, the preamble to that constitution, the Imperial House Law of 1889, and the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890. Hirohito's many imperial rescripts also contain the term
k
so k
s
, as does the rescript in which he staked his family fortune in a declaration of war on Britain and the United States. Above all
k
so k
s
expressed Hirohito's sense of himself as a ruler who had inherited the spiritual authority of his dead ancestors, and was more morally accountable to them than he was to his subjects, who after all were not the
source
of his authority but rather its objects.
⁵²
Acknowledging responsibility to his imperial ancestors rather than to his “subjects” would always be a significant feature of Hirohito's character.

When Hirohito turned eleven in 1912, he became crown prince and was given the ranks of second lieutenant in the army and ensign in the navy.
⁵³
That year the long reign of his illustrious grandfather finally ended, and the circumstances of his own life changed as well. Ever since Emperor Meiji had come of age politically, in the 1880s, he had been a power wielder, centralizing the organs of the state, protecting the oligarchs from their critics, and mediating disputes among them as they aged and became known as the
genr
. His crowning achievement had been the glorification and sanctification of the empire that the hated oligarchs had actually created. In so
doing, Meiji became the living symbol of Japan's nationalism and its empire, as well as the symbol of the legitimacy of imperial rule itself. His death at the age of sixty-one, on July 30, 1912, marked the loss of that dual symbol and precipitated questioning of the modus operandi of the throne.
⁵⁴

Hirohito's father, Crown Prince Yoshihito, made emperor at thirty-three, was unable to continue Meiji's legacy. Physically weak, indolent, and incapable of making political decisions, he was utterly lacking in knowledge of military matters, even though he was now the commander in chief. Less than one month after Yoshihito's accession to the throne, at the start of the new Taish
era (1912–26), the press reported the appointment of extra doctors to the court. In December 1912 Adm. Yamamoto Gonbei told
genr
Matsukata Masayoshi that when it came to recommending a successor prime minister, Emperor Yoshihito “is not [of the same caliber] as the previous emperor. In my view it is loyal not to obey the [Taish
] emperor's word if we deem it to be disadvantageous to the state.”
⁵⁵