Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (158 page)

Meanwhile the prestige of the emperor remained under assault. In April the war crimes tribunal adjourned for the preparation of its final verdicts. Intellectuals concerned with the future of the new monarchy once again addressed Hirohito's continued avoidance of all moral and political responsibility for his actions during the war, and for the suffering he had caused the nation. Some even expected he would use the conclusion of the Trial to declare his abdication.

The year 1948 was a time of transition in the shaping of Japanese domestic politics by the U.S.–Soviet confrontation. On October 7 the Ashida cabinet collapsed after seven months in office; a few days later the more conservative Yoshida Shigeru formed his second cabinet. One month later the Tokyo war crimes trials drew to an end. Sentences were pronounced on the afternoon of November 12. On December 23, 1948, the seven condemned to die were hanged in Sugamo Prison.

The next day MacArthur released from prison or house arrest nineteen Class A war crimes suspects, none yet indicted and tried. Included were former ministers of state such as Kishi Nobusuke, who had signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941; Abe Genki, the police bureaucrat in charge of repressing political dissent under the T
j
and Suzuki cabinets; and right-wing gang bosses Kodama Yoshio and Sasagawa Ry
ichi.
³¹

Over the next few years Japanese politicians and the emperor himself would call for the release of all convicted A, B, and C class criminals, and in most instances MacArthur and his successor, Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, would comply. By the time the San Francisco
Peace Treaty with Japan went into effect in April 1952, SCAP had freed, with Washington's approval, a total of 892 war criminals, including B and C class detainees who had never been brought to trial.
³²
The release of these men, followed by the swift rise of a few of them to the very highest positions of power in the postwar state, had a profoundly polarizing influence on Japanese politics throughout the 1950s.

On December 1, 1948, National Security Council document 13/2 was transmitted to MacArthur. It formally approved the shift in U.S. occupation policy from political democratization to economic reconstruction and remilitarization. Henceforth the United States would be concerned to strengthen Japan not only economically and politically but militarily—a violation of the peace constitution. Some two weeks after receiving the document and a follow-up directive from Truman, on December 18, MacArthur ordered the second Yoshida cabinet to carry out “nine principles” designed to ensure wage and price control and maximize production for export. Early the next year Detroit banker Joseph M. Dodge arrived in Japan to implement a drastic deflationary fiscal policy projected to revive Japanese capitalism by generating massive unemployment.
³³
With these policy shifts mandated from Washington, MacArthur suffered a loss of power and the “reverse course” in Japanese politics suddenly accelerated.

III

Hirohito's imperial tours resumed under new stage management in 1949 and continued until the end of 1951. At the start of that period, GHQ relaxed its tight restrictions on public discussion of the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby stimulating the peace movement; by its end the occupation had a new military leader and was rapidly moving to a close.

During these years the international situation in East Asia
changed drastically. In 1949 the Russians developed and tested atomic weapons, and Chinese Communist armies under Mao Tse-tung defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on the mainland of China. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan. In late February 1950, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Omar Bradley, flew to Tokyo to confer with MacArthur on defense plans in the event of an emergency in the Far East. The Truman administration at that point permitted MacArthur to expand his sphere of authority in an emergency, and gave him control of a vast oceanic area surrounding Japan, including the Ryukyu Islands. Concurrently Truman adopted a provocative risk-taking strategy, as seen first in National Security Council document 48/2 of December 1949 and later NSC–68 of March 1950. Three months later, on June 25, the Korean War broke out. Largely in response to these developments, Japan rearmed, strengthened its police forces, and began to receive large infusions of economic assistance from the United States. Soon Japan experienced not only its first postwar economic boom, but also its first renewal of nationalism. Largely as a reaction to these developments, the Japanese peace movement was born, a branch of the international movement for peace.

On May 17, 1949, in response to calls for imperial visits from prefectural assemblies, Hirohito departed for a twenty-four-day tour of Kyushu.
³⁴
Two years had passed since the promulgation of the constitution that converted the monarch from ruler to symbol, and the mood of the country had altered. Yoshida Shigeru had returned to power in October 1948. In February 1949 he formed his third cabinet, the first based on a solid conservative majority. Occupied Japan, on its way to becoming the “workshop” for Asia, no longer paid token reparations to the victims of its aggression. The American occupiers no longer made efforts to democratize its economy. GHQ still dictated policies, however, and still maintained post-publication censorship of the Japanese media. But more administrative authority was gradually passing to the Japanese gov
ernment, which, in May 1949, assumed full responsibility for guarding the imperial palace and the emperor. In June the Imperial Household Office became an agency (
kunaich
) under the Prime Minister's Office.
³⁵

Hirohito's Kyushu tours were less lavish in scale than his earlier travels. They were welcomed, however. Renewed media appeals for support of the monarchy, and continuous efforts by government at all levels insured that the tours elicited the greatest possible degree of very uniform, yet “spontaneous” enthusiasm from the people. Wearing worker's clothing, the emperor inspected a Mitsui coal mine. He held meetings with journalists, academics, and famous literary figures. At Nagasaki he momentarily put the focus on the A-bomb survivors by having himself photographed at the Nagasaki Hospital standing by the bedside of dying Professor Nagai Takashi, a medical professor and victim of radiation poisoning. In early 1949 Nagai's testimonial,
The Bells of Nagasaki
[
Nagasaki no kane
], had captured the imagination of the nation, arguing that Nagasaki had been chosen by God as a pure sacrificial offering in order to end the war. The “Nagai boom,” into which the emperor skillfully tapped, was part of a belated national discovery of Japan's suppressed nuclear experience.

Under conditions of deepening Cold War, the citizens of the new Japan had begun learning, belatedly, about the experience of the A-bomb victims. Works such as
ta Y
ko's
City of Corpses
[
Shikabane no machi
], Hara Tamiki's
Summer Flowers
[
Natsu no hana
], and Imamura Tokuyuki and
mori Minoru's
The Green Buds of Hiroshima
[
Hiroshima no midori no me
] became 1949–50 national bestsellers.
³⁶
The conjunction of increasing nuclear consciousness and deepening cold war brought a more relevant appreciation of the peace principle in the new constitution. But the gap between the conception of the state held by conservative politicians who were ruling under the new constitution, and that held by the great majority of Japanese, remained wide. As if reflecting this discrepancy
between constitutional ideal and reality, the public, despite all the careful planning and organization by court officials, continued to disagree over the appropriate behavior for the emperor. Some wanted him to deepen his humanization. Others felt that if he became too “human,” the monarchy itself would be discredited.