Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (29 page)

Makino's initially strong affinities with the future intellectual leaders of Japanese-style “fascism from above,” such as Kita Ikki and Ōkawa Shumei, and his long-term ties with the moderate rightist Yasuoka Masahiro, clearly mark him as a transitional figure.
³³
In March 1925 Makino became lord keeper of the privy seal—Hirohito's most important political assistant—a post he held until his resignation in 1935, at the age of seventy-five.
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During most of that time he interacted with Hirohito mainly through his secretary, but actually saw Hirohito in audience only about once or twice a month.
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Although British and American officials considered Makino to be the leader of the pro-Anglo-American faction at court and one of the most prominent court “moderates” and “liberals,” his entire career belies such easy labeling.

Chinda Sutemi, a Christian educated in the United States, also entered the circle of high court officials in late 1920. He had served as ambassador to Austria, Germany, the United States, and England before joining Makino at the Versailles Peace Conference. His appointment as grand chamberlain to the crown prince and to Empress Sadako was part of the shake-up in the Imperial Household Ministry, which brought veteran diplomats and military men with firsthand experience of Western countries into the court.

The months of February and March 1921 marked a watershed in Hirohito's own existence. The phase dominated throughout by his earliest defining communities—court-centered society and fig
ures from the Peers' School—ended with the formal dissolution of the Ogakumonjo on March 1, 1921. His basic spiritual and physical preparation for life was completed. A new group of palace officials, recently moved into high positions, was about to establish the court's independence from control by the government. In the process they would restructure his life and shape the monarchy as an independent political force between the government and the nation. Two days later Hirohito departed for Europe on a tour designed to further his education, push him into adulthood, and counter popular perception of the imperial house's decline.

IV

Crown Prince Hirohito graduated from the Ogakumonjo two months short of his twentieth birthday, just when the domestic political struggle outside the palace compound had entered a progressive phase. The government at the time was searching for ways to stave off the threat to the monarchy posed by the new thought that had entered Japan—ideas such as parliamentary democracy, antimilitarism, Marxism, and communism—since the end of World War I. For Prime Minister Hara the best way to proceed in the circumstances was to send the prince on an “inspection” tour of Western Europe, while seeing to it that he continued his formal education surrounded and influenced, as always, by men old enough to be his father or grandfather.

The professed reason for the prince's foreign trip was to pay his respects to the duke of Connaught (the uncle of King George V) who had visited the Japanese court in June 1918, at the end of the Terauchi cabinet. But for Hara and the
genr
—the tour's chief advocates—the real reasons were political and psychological and had everything to do with recovering the declining authority of the monarchy.
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The imperial family, fearing for Hirohito's safety, ini
tially opposed the idea of the tour, as did some Diet members, such as Ōtake Kanichi of the Kokumint
and Oshikawa Masayoshi of the Kenseikai, and leading civilian rightists such as Uchida Ry
hei and T
yama Mitsuru. The right-wing patriots protested vehemently for weeks before Hirohito's departure, claiming that, in view of his father's illness, the trip would be seen as an unfilial action and have a harmful impact on the
kokutai
.

The ruling group—Saionji, Matsukata, Yamagata, and Hara—felt it a matter of “grave importance for the state” that the crown prince go on a “Western tour” before his imperial wedding. They had already written off Emperor Yoshihito because of his illness and his inability to speak in public. They wanted Hirohito to meet more people, to become accustomed to participating in political matters, and to begin learning how human affairs were managed.
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In 1920, with the fiction of the Taish
emperor's direct rule increasingly apparent, they became more anxious than ever to bring the crown prince forward as a surrogate for his father. Their main opposition was from Hirohito's mother, Empress Sadako, who didn't want her first son to go abroad because of the physical dangers involved in such a trip. But Hara and the
genr
, concerned about what they perceived as the serious inadequacies of the crown prince's education, felt the risk had to be taken. In late 1920 they finally persuaded her to allow the trip as “a matter of political necessity.”
³⁸
The journey to post-Versailles Europe had to go forward because, as the
genr
Matsukata explained in a letter to her: “There may never be another time like this to inquire into the reasons for the popular movements and intellectual unrest that are occurring right before our eyes. This is a great chance for the crown prince to observe personally, at first hand, the rise and fall of the power of many states.”
³⁹

Once Sadako's resistance was overcome, government and court officials could discuss more candidly among themselves the deeper reasons behind the trip. It was increasingly clear that Hirohito would soon become regent. He needed to investigate conditions in
foreign countries in order to be able to deal with the new sentiments of the Japanese people.
⁴⁰

The great continental monarchies had collapsed and the war had unleashed worldwide movements for peace, democracy, disarmament, and independence. Operating in an antimonarchical world, as regent he would have to deal with the momentum for social reform that was steadily gathering force in Japan. He would also have to cope with the new tendency in Japan to disparage nationalism, militarism, and the state. Above all Hirohito represented the crucial “third generation” of Meiji's dynastic lineage, thus the one who had to be successful if the imperial house itself was to survive and prosper.
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Precisely in relation to these external and internal pressures, coupled with fears for the future of the imperial house and its growing isolation, lay the necessity for Hirohito's Western tour.

Although initially conceived on a small scale, the tour developed into a formal state visit. At home it marked the start of a public relations campaign, centered on the crown prince, to counter popular perception of the imperial house's decline and the Taish
emperor's total physical and political incapacity. The entire campaign turned on building up Hirohito's image as “our” wise and great regent, representing “the nation's imperial house.” Makino and the top officials of the Imperial Household Ministry made unprecedented efforts to tutor Hirohito on how he was to behave abroad and to mobilize the press corps to cover the trip.
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