Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (162 page)

During the first decade of independence, Hirohito gradually ceased to be an object of frequent media attention. He continued to make public appearances at sports events and tree planting cere
monies, to travel to different parts of the country for very short visits, and to perform the limited duties prescribed for him in the constitution. Soon two antagonistic imperial images began to emerge. One was the postwar “human” emperor, a “scientist,” a “scholar,” and a “family man,” popular with his people and in tune with the democratic and liberal values codified in the constitution and practiced in the emerging consumer society. The other was the remote, hard, awe-inspiring, high-voiced emperor, stiffly bound into Shinto and the old value structure, and supportive of the unreformed imperial system. Many middle-aged and elderly supporters of the LDP embraced the latter image and clung to the traditional political values.

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In February 1957 Kishi Nobusuke, who had served as minister of commerce and industry, and later vice minister of munitions under T
j
, formed a cabinet bent on revising the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, and developing a more independent foreign policy. Kishi's goals included reestablishing close economic ties with the nations of Southeast Asia and securing the release of Class B and C war criminals who still were imprisoned for such crimes as torture, rape, and murder. Some were in Sugamo Prison; others remained in the custody of former Allied nations. Their early parole and pardon, Kishi argued, would make it easier for Japan to forget the past and move closer to the United States. The Eisenhower administration agreed and helped to expedite the release of the remaining war criminals.

Kishi, like Hatoyama before him, hoped to revise Articles 1 and 9 of the constitution (on the emperor and the abandonment of war), and to expand the small Self-Defense Forces. Anticipating public demonstrations protesting renewal of the Security Treaty, Kishi introduced a bill to strengthen the powers of the police. In late October 1958 the mass media and most of the nation's labor unions
turned against the proposed police law and a national coalition soon emerged calling for Kishi's removal.

In early November the four-million-strong S
hy
labor federation went on strike against the police bill. As opposition to Kishi escalated, his government, on November 27, happily announced the engagement of Crown Prince Akihito and Sh
da Michiko, daughter of the president of a large flour-milling company and the product of a Catholic upbringing. Public attention immediately turned from nasty politics to romantic love as palace officials and the media carefully orchestrated all the details. An astonishing “Mitchii” craze swept Japan, and Kishi safely escaped the headlines for awhile.

The engagement and marriage of the crown prince marked an important shift in the evolution of the monarchy. To hear the words “commoner” and “love” joined to the imperial family was distinctively new and very popular. Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako opposed the marriage because they believed Michiko might not be able to handle the intricacies of palace customs.
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What most concerned Hirohito was neither Michiko's Christianity nor even the maintenance of the imperial house's ties to state Shinto, but rather the break with tradition that the marriage connoted. Hirohito was uncomfortable with the very notion of an “open, popular monarchy.” But like everyone, he and Nagako could also appreciate how an alliance with one of the nation's prominent business families could serve to strengthen a legally and politically weakened monarchy.

In February 1959 a Japanese opinion poll showed 87 percent support for Akihito's choice of a commoner.
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But in addition to general approval, there was also public uneasiness about the marriage. Some worried that a perfectly normal woman marrying into the imperial family would suffer from the loss of her accustomed freedom and become unhappy. A small number of critics and writers of fiction, including the well-known novelist Fukazawa Shichir
,
urged that imperial males never marry outside the royal pale so that continued inbreeding would eventually lead to the extinction of the whole imperial lot. Die-hard traditionalists and Shintoists were also opposed.
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To them there was only threat in the new society of mass consumption and hedonistic aspiration: prewar values were fast eroding, and the marriage suggested that if the throne were brought down to earth, it would eventually be debased also—by popular acclaim and approval.

Crown Prince Akihito and Michiko were united on April l0, 1959, before a huge television audience estimated at fifteen million viewers; another half million lined the route of their marriage parade.
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The newlyweds then disappeared on their honeymoon, and from public attention, which now reverted to the great political issues. On January 19, 1960, Kishi signed in Washington, D.C., a renegotiated and more equitable Japan–U.S. Security Treaty. The United States promised to consult before committing its forces in Japan to military action. American bases remained on Japanese soil, however, and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces were obligated to aid U.S. forces should Washington find itself at war with some other Far Eastern nation (such as China), and should that other nation attack American bases in Japan.

Ratification was fiercely resisted by the opposition parties within the Diet and by organized labor and student groups outside the Diet. On May 19 five hundred uniformed policemen were brought into the House of Representatives; the vote on ratification was literally a forced vote. This proceeding triggered a month of the largest demonstrations in Japanese history, culminating on June 15 with the death of a student protester in a clash with police in front of the Diet building, followed by calls for a general strike by a coalition of union federations and groups of private citizens. Kishi immediately canceled the scheduled visit of President Eisenhower to Japan. Four days later the Security Treaty went into effect, and
the next month Kishi and his entire cabinet resigned, having accomplished their primary mission.

For Hirohito the whole ratification experience was an emotional ordeal. He had wanted relations with the United States improved and the alliance strengthened at all costs. Until the very last minute he had hoped to travel to Haneda airport to greet visiting President Eisenhower, and be seen riding back to the Palace with him in a limousine past crowds of cheering well-wishers. Kishi would then have gotten his treaty renewed while Eisenhower's visit would have helped the emperor raise his status as de facto “head of state,” with no need for constitutional revision. The cancellation had denied him that while the struggle over the treaty had temporarily turned the majority of the nation against any tampering with the constitution.
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Thus the results of the whole effort were mixed. Hirohito's and the LDP's wish for an American military alliance that would insure continuation of Japan's diplomatic course for the remainder of his reign had been realized. But the struggle over the Security Treaty, anti-Kishi and prodemocracy in its aims, had been a learning process for the ruling elites. They had weathered the biggest national crisis of the postoccupation period without ever calling on help from the emperor. The rising generation of LDP leaders drew the lesson that the monarchy was not needed as a crisis-control mechanism. Hirohito's dream of someday regaining political relevance was only a dream.

While the treaty struggle was unfolding in Japan, in South Korea student demonstrators were overthrowing American-sponsored dictator Syngman Rhee. In this heated atmosphere of revolutionary hope on the Left and counterrevolutionary fear on the Right, Fukazawa Shichir
wrote a political parody entitled “Furyu mutan” (A Dream of courtly elegance).
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In December 1960, in the immediate wake of the treaty struggle,
Ch
k
ron
(Central
review), a popular journal of opinion and the arts, published the story. It begins when the first-person narrator purchases a strange wristwatch that keeps correct time only while he sleeps. As his dream unfolds he witnesses an uprising in central Tokyo resulting in the takeover of the palace by left-wing revolutionaries. At the plaza in front of the palace, crowds enjoy watching as their “superiors” are laid low. The dreamer sees Crown Prince Akihito (in a tuxedo) and Princess Michiko (in a kimono) lying on the ground bellies-up, awaiting execution. The narrator realizes that it is his own ax being wielded by the executioner. The royal heads come off with a
swoosh
, roll across the plaza, and disappear from sight with a clinking metallic sound of tin cans.
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