Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (202 page)

17.
Nearly 20 percent of all lèse majesté incidents in the early 1920s involve loose talk and symbolic desecrations of the imperial photograph. Common offenses included the cutting up of newspaper pictures of the emperor; the use, for unspecified, improper purposes, of the special sections on the imperial house; destruction of material objects, artifacts, and facilities that symbolized the emperor. Regardless of the motivation behind criticism of the throne, the government treated all acts of disrespect as crimes of lèse-majesté. See Watanabe Osamu, “Tenn
sei kokka chitsujo no rekishiteki kenky
josetsu,” pp. 252, 258–61.

18.
Ibid., p. 253.

19.
Yasuda, “Kindai tenn
sei ni okeru kenryoku to ken'i—Taish
demokurashii-ki no k
satsu,” p. 183.

20.
Hara Kei,
Hara Kei nikki, dai hakkan
(Kangensha, 1950), pp. 46–47; cited in Suzuki Masayuki, “Taish
demokurashii to kokutai mondai,” in
Nihonshi kenky
281 (Jan. 1986), p. 56, from a different edition of the same diary (
dai gokan
).

21.
Kuroda Hisata,
Tenn
ke no zaisan
(San Ichi Shob
, 1966), p. 133.

22.
Got
Yasushi, “Tenn
sei kenky
to teishitsu t
keisho,” in
Teishitsu t
keisho 1, Meiji 32 nendohan
(Kashiwa Shob
, 1993), p. 3.