Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
13.
Igari Shizan, “Tei
rinri shink
no Sugiura J
g
sensei,” in
Kingu
(Dec. 1928), pp. 124â25.
14.
Sugiura Shigetake,
Rinri goshink
s
an,
ed. Igari Mataz
(Tokyo, privately printed, 1936), p. 1103.
15.
Ibid., p. 1105.
16.
Ibid., p. 1106.
17.
Nezu,
Tenn
to Sh
washi, j
, p. 15. Nezu did not allow for the possibility that Sugiura's single lecture on the Meiji constitution may also have indicated that other tutors had more responsibility for lecturing on the constitution. The Boshin Edict, issued after the Russo-Japanese War, called on the Japanese people to be frugal, upright, and attentive to duty, while the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors taught them to offer their lives for the emperor and blindly obey the orders of superior officers as though they were the orders of the emperor.
18.
Nezu,
Tenn
to Sh
washi, j
, p. 16.
19.
A speech by Professor Miura Sh
k
, published in the Osaka
Mainichi shinbun
on July 31, 1912, is believed to contain the earliest expression of the term “Meiji the Great.” Miura cited Meiji's abolition of military house politics, his establishment of direct imperial rule, and his transformation of a small island nation into a great empire as his main achievements. A key text that helped spread the myth of “Meiji the great” was the special, book-length supplement to the popular magazine
Kingu
, which appeared in late 1927. The “foreword,” by Education Minister Mizuno Rentar
, boasted that “no other country in the worldâ¦has a national polity in which the imperial line has been unbroken for ages eternal and the emperor becomes one with the gods at the time of his enthronement.” Inumaru, “Kindai tenn
sei, j
,”
Bunka hy
ron
385 (Feb. 1993), p. 129.