Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (157 page)
Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
On December 7, 1947âsix years after the Pearl Harbor attack and twenty-six months after the end of the warâHirohito and his
party arrived at atom-bombed Hiroshima. The streets had been specially cleaned and dusted for the occasion. Wearing a dark gray Homburg and clothes that in the opinion of an Australian observer might “have been deliberately chosen so as not to be too much on the smart side,” he seemed to “symbolize the down at the heels but determined look characteristic of present-day Japan.” Thousands of adults and children lined the long, meticulously planned route of his motorcade into the city. At the first stop, war orphans in black robes were on their knees waiting for him:
and standing beside them were a few mothers, their faces scarred with keloids, who held children in more or less serious stages of disfigurement. While the cameras clicked and turned and the crowd pushed in more and more excitedly, the emperor listened, hat in hand, to a short explanation of what had happened to this group. He murmured a few “Is that so's” and made as though to speak into a microphone that was being held out toward him. Then his lip trembled and with a short bow, he turned back to his car. At this point, the crowd went berserk. Shouting banzais at the top of their voices, the people rushed forward, their eyes shining and all their mask of unemotionalism wiped off their faces. [Imperial] Household officials and police were jostled and trampled on before he got back to his car. None of the crowd touched the emperor, but many of them seemed happy just to touch the body of his car.
Our party went ahead at the next stop, on to the improvised plaza where the mayor, the city officials and a crowd of 50,000âa quarter of the city's present population, were waiting to welcome himâ¦. Here again you could see people weeping with emotionâ¦. The Emperor mounted a rostrumâ¦and once again was photographed from every angle. [Pulling a slip of paper from his pocket] he read a short simple speechâ¦. At the city hall he climbed up to the roof where the mayor was waiting with a map showing the city as it was, as it is, and as it is planned that it will beâ¦. A pair of field glasses rested on a purple
handkerchief for the Emperor's use, but he did not touch them. For the first time that day he was obviously overcome with nervousness and seemed anxious to get away.
22
By this time GHQ had begun to reevaluate the imperial tours in response to growing foreign and domestic criticism as well as criticism within headquarters itself. Paul J. Kent of the Political Affairs Division was assigned to accompany the emperor to the Ch
goku region. Kent's initial report, dated December 16, 1947, noted the huge size of the imperial party: almost a hundred officials and attendants, plus countless Japanese newspaper and magazine reporters and photographers who “followed the Imperial Party at every stage of the journeyâ¦[and] were provided with space on the train, and with buses, or automobiles, for local travel.” Kent blamed “this multitude of votaries, satellites, dog robbers, and seneschals” for “the monstrous expenditure of funds by Local governments and private corporations.” He went on to note that:
virtually every street over which the Imperial party travelled had been newly repairedâ¦[and] spots of ground on which he stood to see rice fields and farms were covered with floorings and canopies. Pillars, columns, and arches, usually covered with flowers and branches, were erected at the entrances to squares and street corners and on the approaches to bridges. Railings upon which he laid his hand were covered with cloth, paths upon which he walked were not infrequently covered with matting. If one considers the total effortâ¦one is forced to conclude that a staggering sum was devoted to enterprises which serve no useful purpose and which areâ¦completely unjustified in a nation standing upon the verge of financial collapse.
The emperor, he insisted, “does not see actual conditions” and his inspection tours, which were more like “campaign tours,” served mainly to keep him in the public eye for days and weeks in advance
of each visit. Worst of all, rather than democratizing the monarchy, the tours were increasing “the power and influence of the Imperial tradition.”
Kent did not dare criticize Hirohito himself for this sorry state of affairs, but instead described him as:
nervous to the point of looking physically handicapped; his gestures and movements are jerky and uncoordinated. He hesitates before speaking or acting. If not thoroughly self-conscious, he is certainly ill-at-easeâ¦. On almost all occasions his face was devoid of any expression. He did smile a few times, when speaking to children, and when the
Banzai
's assumed great proportions. He is even poorly dressed.
Ultimately Kent attributed the emperor's uneasiness to the attitude of the imperial house officials, whom he also blamed for two incidents he found particularly disturbing. One was the emperor's tour of Hiroshima, on the sixth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
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The other incident that aroused Kent's anger was the “organized widespread display of the [sun] flag” that occurred on December 11, the last day of the Chgoku tour.
24
GHQ took quick action. On January 12, 1948, GHQ's Government Section ordered the emperor's “campaign tours” discontinued on the ground that officials of the Imperial Household Office had contravened the spirit of numerous GHQ orders. They had conducted themselves arrogantly and undemocratically, and the Japanese bureaucracy, flagrantly misusing public funds, had levied unjust taxes to finance the emperor's touring.
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GHQ also took note of rumors of plots against the emperor's life, involving alleged Korean Communists who were upset about the newly enacted Alien Registration Law. Unstated was deeper concern that, rather than removing all traces of the emperor's renounced divinity and freeing the Japanese citizenry from their feeling of subjecthood, the tours were actually promoting the old idolatry.
II
On New Year's Day 1948, Hirohito welcomed tens of thousands who gathered on the palace plaza to greet him. In mid-January he staged the popular “Imperial New Year's Poetry Reading” (
utakai hajime
) at the palace. This ceremony had been introduced in the second year of the Meiji restoration, 1869, and with each stirring of democracy had been progressively opened up to more and more Japanese subjects, then to citizens. Contestants submitted
waka
on assigned themes, and the best
waka
were selected for the reading. To court officials and ideologues, such ceremonial readings served to dissolve social and political differences among the Japanese. In reality, the effect was quite contrary. As the emperor deigned to hear the merely ordinary people's poems and the lowly people humbly listened to his, emperor and people became one. Conservative ideological and political values were thereby reproduced by the
utakai hajime
, and the make-believe of the nation as a classless monolith resymbolized.
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Later in 1948 Hirohito made highly publicized charitable donations and experimented with three new, truncated types of imperial visitations: short trips to attend tree-planting ceremonies, appearances at athletic events, and appearances at cultural and social projects sponsored by private organizations that worked closely with the palace.
When the emperor convoked the Diet in January 1948, the continued practice of the “crab walk” by Diet members provoked an incident. Whenever the emperor entered the Diet building through the special door reserved for his use, he would first receive the leaders of the two houses in a special audience room. Traditionally Diet members who entered that room to be received by the emperor walked to a point directly in front of him, bowed deeply, then exited walking sideways or backward to the nearest door, in this manner avoiding the disrespectful exposure of their profiles or the backs of their heads. But in January 1948, when the emperor entered that
special audience room expecting to receive bows from the president and vice president of the upper and lower houses of the Diet, Matsumoto Jiichiro, vice president of the House of Councillors and Socialist Party member, failed to appear. He later explained, addressing his colleagues, “Why must I imitate the sideways walk of a crab?â¦Hasn't he become [only] a human being?”
Matsumoto had revealed how prewar customs inappropriate to the new constitutional order were still being observed. Instead of being honored for his courage, however, he was sanctioned. His behavior and speech (as journalist Matsuura S
znoted) totally alienated Yoshida Shigeru and other staunch conservatives who had been fighting since the “placard incident” of 1946 to restore the crime of lèse-majesté in the new criminal code. Within a short time, Matsumoto was purged by GHQ, with assistance from Yoshida, and his political career temporarily came to an end, while crab-walking in the presence of the emperor continued.
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The “crab walk” incident clearly highlighted the need for additional reform of the rules of behavior pertaining to the new monarchy. Despite the ban on imperial campaigns, and the absence of articles about the tours in the major daily newspapers, the emperor's efforts to court the people continued; so too did the process of circumscribing the monarchy.
On February 10, 1948, the Socialist-led Katayama cabinet resigned en masse as a result of conflict between its left and right factions. Katayama thereupon reported his resignation to the throne, although the new constitution in no way required him to.
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Four weeks later, on March 10, Ashida Hitoshi formed a second unstable coalition cabinet. Hirohito told him in good traditional imperial fashion, “[D]o something about the Communist Party.” Ashida explained that the party was quite legal and the government could not prosecute Communists unless they acted illegally. He went on to warn the emperor that his tours had been generating “mountains of letters” to GHQ and endangering the new monar
chy.
29
In this way, Ashida revealed his intention to continue Katayama's unsuccessful effort to democratize the court. For two months Hirohito resisted, calling on his favorite “pendulum theory” of gradual reform.
30
But, eventually, Ashida persuaded him to dismiss his top advisers. During the summer the principal stage managers of the campaign tours,
gane, Kat, and Matsudaira, exited from the scene.