Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (156 page)

I

The year 1947 constituted a crucial second stage in the development of Hirohito's new image as a “human,” “democratic” emperor who had suffered together with his people. At this time, the Ministry of Education edited and published an immensely influential textbook,
Atarashii kenp
no hanashi
(The Story of the new constitution), that emphasized the ideals of democracy, internationalism, popular sovereignty, and the abandonment of war, while using the highest honorifics in referring to the emperor.
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The Japanese mass media also reached agreement with the government on the rules for use of the highest honorifics in news stories concerning him, while the imperial court renewed the prewar practice of bestowing imperial accolades. The emperor wrote to President Truman, sending the letter via Chief Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan. He inaugurated the practice of receiving New Year's felicitations on January 2 at the Niju Bridge of the imperial palace.

When Hirohito resumed his tours in 1947, they turned overnight into wildly emotional mass events that far surpassed the expectations of their planners. The tours moved from prefecture to prefecture and city to city against a news background of daily reports on the war crimes trial and on steadily worsening relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Truman Doctrine of March 12, 1947, marked the formal start of the Cold War in Europe. As the Cold War intensified, U.S.–Japan policy became increasingly conservative, shifting emphasis from reformation and top down democratization to reconstruction and economic development—and the restoration of management's prerogatives in the work place.
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Signs of a softening appeared in American reparations policy: By March 17, MacArthur told foreign journalists that the United States had no intention of destroying Japan's industrial capability. His letter to Prime Minister Yoshida ordered a comprehensive plan prepared to restart the economy. By the second postwar general
election on April 25, 1947, GHQ had given the Japanese government a new priority: Japan must become economically self-sufficient, able to take its place in a reconstructed world order under United States leadership.

From Hirohito's viewpoint these developments seemed to indicate that GHQ was relaxing its control, and suggested possibilities for him to maneuver independently that had not existed before. On May 6, 1947, three days after the promulgation of the new constitution, Hirohito again met with MacArthur. He was more concerned about security matters than of deepening democracy. According to former diplomat Matsui Akira, the emperor asked the supreme commander, “After the United States leaves, who is going to protect Japan?” With magnanimous disregard for Japan's national independence, MacArthur answered, “Just as we protect California, so shall we protect Japan,” and went on to underscore the ideal of the United Nations.
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Hirohito was hardly reassured. But the next month in a meeting with a group of American journalists, MacArthur declared that “[t]he Japanese will not be opposed to America keeping Okinawa because the Okinawans are not Japanese.”
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Already the general was thinking that a Japan that had constitutionally “forever renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation” could be protected by the transformation of Okinawa into a vast and permanent American military base.

In the summer of 1947 Hirohito resumed touring. The imperial trains and motorcades grew larger; each trip was more elaborate, more costly, and more popular. Conservative Diet members and local politicians, judging that their standing with the public would benefit from close association with the emperor, rushed to get aboard the imperial tour wagon. When the emperor reached Osaka in early June, the tours, which had started as inspections of damaged areas, had become vast victory parades. The banned sun flag flew from rooftops and was waved by thousands of cheering welcomers. A disinterested observer would have had the impression that the
whole nation was celebrating its emperor, who now appeared to be a victor after all.

On June 1, 1947, after the Diet had chosen him under the new constitution, Katayama Tetsu formed a coalition cabinet. Hirohito, displeased that now he was shut out of the process of choosing the next prime minister, could only express his dissatisfaction by saying “Katayama is not strong enough.”
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Afterward he insisted that the new prime minister make a formal report to him at his Kyoto Palace. On July 24 he asked Katayama's foreign minister, Ashida Hitoshi, to continue giving him informal reports on matters of foreign policy.
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Even Ashida, a very loyal subject, felt that the emperor's requests violated the letter as well as the spirit of the new constitution. Reluctantly he complied, and thereafter briefed Hirohito regularly, particularly on preparations for an eventual peace treaty and the problem of Japan's future security.

Hirohito now made a second return to an activist role in state affairs, in violation of the new constitution. On June 5, 1947, Foreign Minister Ashida remarked to the foreign press corps that the Japanese people wished to have Okinawa returned to Japan. General MacArthur's response came some three weeks later, on the twenty-seventh, when in widely noted remarks to a group of American editors and publishers, he declared that “The Ryukyus are our natural frontier;” there was no Japanese opposition to the United States retaining Okinawa, for “the Okinawans are not Japanese.” And moreover, American air bases on Okinawa were important for Japan's own security. At this point—after both Ashida and MacArthur had spoken publicly on Okinawa, but before the State Department and the Pentagon had come together and firmed up American policy concerning the strategic island—Hirohito intervened with an unconstitutional political statement asserting Japanese sovereignty while endorsing the views of MacArthur, protector of the Japanese monarchy.
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On September 20, 1947, Hirohito conveyed to MacArthur's
political adviser, William J. Sebald, his position on the future of Okinawa. Acting through Terasaki, his interpreter and frequent liaison with high GHQ officials, the emperor requested that, in view of the worsening confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, the American military occupation of Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyu chain continue for ninety-nine years. Hirohito knew MacArthur's latest views on the status of Okinawa when he made this offer. The emperor's thinking on Okinawa was also fully in tune with the colonial mentality of Japan's mainstream conservative political elites, who, like the nation in general, had never undergone decolonization. Back in December 1945, the Eighty-ninth Imperial Diet had abolished the voting rights of the people of Okinawa along with those of the former Japanese colonies of Taiwan and Korea. Thus, when the Ninetieth Imperial Diet had met in 1946 to accept the new “peace” constitution, not a single representative from Okinawa was present.

Hirohito's “Okinawa message” proved that he was continuing to play a secret role in both foreign and domestic policy affairs that had nothing to do with the ceremonial role to which the constitution confined him.
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But it also suggested the great weight he placed on “the growth of [Japanese] rightist and leftist groups” who could provoke an incident which the Soviet Union might exploit.
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Hirohito, like the Foreign Ministry, wanted to retain an American military presence in and around Japan after the signing of a peace treaty. At the same time, he may also have felt the need to draw closer to the United States for protection while the Tokyo Trials continued. But above all, his message shows the connection between the new symbol monarchy, Article 9 of the new postwar constitution, and the American militarization of Okinawa.

On October 10, 1947, while Hirohito was touring Nagaoka City, Niigata prefecture, Chief Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan announced that neither the emperor nor the business community bore responsibility for the war.
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In the United States the previous
year, Keenan had disclosed that “high political circles” had decided against trying the emperor for war crimes.
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Keenan's public reiteration of this decision in Japan was welcome news for Hirohito, who months earlier, in March 1946, had already learned informally that he would not be indicted. For the leaders of the Japanese business world, who would soon become the main financial supporters of the new monarchy, Keenan's announcement was welcome, but partially offset by MacArthur's continued enthusiasm for the dissolution of Japan's great industrial conglomerates and for limited economic democratization.
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Meanwhile, pressure continued for the emperor's abdication and for further court reform. On October 14, 1947, GHQ again reduced the number of royal family members who could possess imperial status. More unwelcome news for Hirohito and his supporters followed. Foreign Minister Ashida recorded in his diary a meeting with former general Tanaka Ry
kichi, a man on “close terms” with Chief Prosecutor Keenan. Tanaka told Ashida that Keenan refused to entrust the cross-examinations of Kido, T
j
, and T
g
to anyone but himself, but feared that his and others' efforts might be wasted if the empress and crown prince acted “too conspicuously” in traveling about the country. Keenan (according to General Tanaka, via Ashida) intended to visit the emperor after the trials to discuss the “problem of abdication and other matters.” Tanaka also said that “MacArthur is convinced that monarchical rule is needed in order to stabilize Japan and suppress the Communist Party.”
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One month later, on November 14, 1947, Hirohito met General MacArthur for the fifth time. Nothing they discussed in their ninety-minute meeting is known, though it is likely that as in previous meetings concrete political matters were aired. On the twenty-sixth he departed for the Ch
goku region of southwestern Honshu on his final trip of the year.