Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (34 page)

Little is known of the lectures on economics given by Yamazaki and others, including Inoue Junnosuke, president of the Bank of
Japan. In fact, it is doubtful that they or any other economists had a great impact on Hirohito. Court officials were generally both ignorant of economic policy and untrained to understand principles of finance. The trivial cost-saving measures Hirohito instituted in 1929 in response to the Sh
wa financial panic left the impression that neither he nor his court team understood basic economics. It might well be that Hirohito's main interest in the economy derived from his concern for law and order, domestic tranquillity, and international stability.

Law professor Shimizu's influence on Hirohito is also difficult to assess but seems to have been much more important than Yamazaki's. Every Tuesday he would lecture on the Meiji constitution and on “administrative law,” a topic that included discussion of contemporary political events. On Fridays he would expound on the Imperial Household Law (
k
shitsu tenpan
), which governed such matters as the ordinances (
k
shitsurei
) based on it, establishment of the regency, and the formal ceremonies of accession to the throne.
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Shimizu always aimed to present proper conservative attitudes on questions of constitutional and civil law, though exactly what themes he emphasized and what positions he staked out in his lectures of the regency years is unclear.

More is known about Hirohito's history professor Mikami Sanji, who lectured before the regent on the political history of the Meiji period and was a prime creator of the stereotype of Meiji, “the Great.” On January 14, 1924, for example, Mikami spoke of a famous incident from the prehistory of modern Japanese imperialism: the argument over whether to “conquer Korea,” which had split the Meiji government in 1873. Meiji had listened dutifully to the instruction of the president of the Grand Council of State, Sanj
Sanetomi; afterward Meiji advised the self-designated leader of the proposed expedition to Korea, Saig
Takamori, not to proceed before a diplomatic mission to the Western nations, headed by Iwakura Tomomi, returned. In that way a costly foreign project was
deferred until the country was better prepared to undertake it. Makino felt Mikami's lecture was a good reference for the young crown prince. “The…[Meiji] emperor,” wrote Makino in his diary, “made a wise decision, and it resulted in good fortune for the nation in a difficult period when the Restoration reforms were being established. For the prince to hear such stories will have a great effect in nurturing his virtue.”
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Given Hirohito's reticence, however, neither Makino nor anyone else could be certain how he had reacted to what a lecturer said (or did not say) about a particular subject.

Mikami's lectures to Hirohito focused on Meiji's inexhaustible virtue and benevolence. He hammered home this theme over and over again as the Taish
emperor lay dying and the court prepared for Hirohito's accession. Vice Grand Chamberlain Kawai mentions that on November 19, 1926, Mikami spoke on how the Restoration leaders had encouraged Meiji always to do good and eschew evil. Makino's diary entry of that day notes that Hirohito seemed deeply moved, continuing:

Meiji's virtues continued to furnish lecture material throughout 1926 on his frugality, learning, and pedagogical intentions concerning his son. The painstaking efforts of Meiji's advisers to nurture his benevolence was never overlooked.
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Mikami's last talk in 1926, delivered on December 3, stressed that: “The emperor should be generous and think of the people as his treasure; he should preserve his health…; he should labor to heighten his
augustness and high virtues, yet also try to be gentle; he should care well for his subjects.”
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Mikami's lectures also affected the entourage and contributed to its plan to establish in 1927 a national holiday to commemorate Meiji and celebrate his “great virtue.”
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The impact of Mikami's ideas on Hirohito was more complex. The weekly lectures on the almost-mythical Meiji probably strengthened Hirohito's resolve to live up to the ideal of an activist, dynamic monarch, manifesting the qualities of benevolence Meiji was supposed to have possessed. On the other hand, his “nervousness” and tension may have been exacerbated by the hyping of Meiji. An overelevated, unrealistic standard of behavior was set before him to emulate and attain. And almost certainly this pressure caused him a great deal of anxiety. Moreover, at the same time as he was being asked to be a gentle and benevolent monarch, he was also being instructed in military science, economics, and international law and diplomacy, which required a completely different, more disciplined, vigorous type of behavior.

During these years Hirohito was taught about the morally dubious activities in which rulers, of necessity, normally engage. His instructors imparted to him the doctrine that in making international policy decisions, states must eschew ethics and sometimes use force to optimize their interests. The only question that really mattered, he learned, was: Is it in the national interest?

To focus Hirohito's attention on the pursuit of national advantage was the task of Professor Tachi, Japan's preeminent international lawyer. Tachi offered his answers to the question of what constituted the national interest in lectures on the history of diplomacy and the precepts and prohibitions of international law. Before joining the faculty of Tokyo Imperial University, Tachi had studied in Germany, France, and Britain between 1900 and 1904.
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He was a member of the Japanese delegations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Washington Conference of 1921–22.
¹³
His nation
alist positions on questions of international law made him well regarded in both the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the army high command. It was hardly surprising that a private scholar who took his orders from the Foreign Ministry should have been chosen to teach international law at court.

Tachi came to lecture Hirohito after Japan (though not the United States) had signed on to the new Versailles-Washington framework of institutions based on principles of formal equality among sovereign nations, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and outlawing of aggressive war. Unlike Mikami, Tachi did not talk about virtue and benevolence. He avoided moral criteria in understanding international law, and shied away from restricting the rule of force by the rule of law. Tachi taught that war in general was always legal, never illegal; “established international law” existed to subserve the interests of states; the right of self-defense included war that expanded territory or protected the lives and the private property of nationals living in other states. This nineteenth-century view of international law had been generally accepted before Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations had declared new basic principles and established new (American-inspired) organizations to govern and resolve disputes among nations. Those new principles, however, failed to impress Tachi or the Japanese Foreign Ministry under any of its ministers, including the liberal Shidehara.

Tachi's nationalistic view of international law was the official Japanese view, in which Hirohito was instructed from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. As historian Shinohara Hatsue pointed out, those were precisely the years when U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson and many leading international law experts in the United States—such as Quincy Wright at the University of Chicago, James T. Shotwell at Columbia University, and Clyde Eagleton at New York University—were developing an opposing theory to criminalize aggressive war and abolish the principle that belligerents should be treated impartially.

As Hirohito built up his knowledge and gained experience of political and diplomatic affairs, he increasingly took the initiative in ordering “special lectures” on matters that he felt required the advice of outside experts.
¹⁴
Lectures on the political situation in Weimar Germany, Soviet Russia, China, Korea, and the League of Nations were intended to keep him abreast of main developments in foreign affairs and in the Japanese colonies. Senior military officers, the army and navy ministers, and various aides-de-camp delivered military science lectures to him, usually on a weekly basis, then augmented their instruction by having him participate in annual military field exercises and “grand maneuvers.” These provided opportunities for him to meet and question the rising stars of his professional officer corps, and to signal to army and navy leaders how he might respond to their formal submission of requests.
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