Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (46 page)

Finally three other special guardians of the throne and members of the court milieu by reason of aristocratic birth were Baron Harada Kumao, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, and Marquis Kido K
ichi, who enters the picture in 1930 and immediately begins playing an active role. They shared in common the belief, eschewed by Saionji, that the authority of the emperor should be used to solve political problems.

Harada spent two years as a special official of the Imperial Household Ministry before becoming, in 1924, the private secretary of Prime Minister Kat
K
mei. Upon resigning his government position in the summer of 1926, Harada joined the staff of the Sumitomo Company but immediately took leave to become Saionji's personal secretary, a position he held until Saionji's death in November 1940.
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As Saionji's information collector, messenger, and “brain,” Harada was the go-between and adjuster of views of
Saionji in Kyoto and Makino in Kamakura. He was, at the same time, a highly respected information gatherer and analyst of political trends for the three chief secretaries—Kawai, Sekiya, and Okabe—as well as for his close personal friends, Prince Konoe and Marquis Kido.

Konoe, born in 1891, was a true aristocrat as opposed to Harada and Kido, whose hereditary statuses were products of the Meiji restoration. In early Sh
wa, Konoe was
the
rising star among young conservative and radical-right members of the House of Peers, a body he was soon to lead, first as vice president in 1931, then as president in 1933. His ideological vision of an Asian and Chinese economy dominated by Japan, and his view that Japan's mission was to save Asia from European encroachment, had wide appeal. Konoe was on the closest personal terms with the key members of every court group from the moment he made his debut on the political stage in 1921 until his death by suicide in December 1945.
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Konoe had been a member of the Japanese delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference. What he saw there and in travels through early postwar Europe and the United States confirmed his belief that Japan should support the spirit of the League of Nations and develop Asia in cooperation with the other Great Powers. But Versailles had also led him to reject what he called “the Anglo-American standard of pacifism.” Complicating his thought, and making his belief in the international order crafted at Washington highly unstable, were very strong elements of racism and pan-Asianism. Basically Konoe believed that, by reasons of race, history, and geography, Japan was perfectly entitled to aggrandize Chinese territory to meet the needs of its own exploding surplus population.

At the start of Hirohito's reign, Konoe was a member of the leading faction in the House of Peers and president of the East Asia Common Culture Society (T
a D
bunkai), founded by his father. He chafed at the Washington treaty order that allowed the United States and Britain to shut out Japanese immigrants from their terri
tories yet distrusted Japan's intentions on the Chinese continent. This particular feature of his thought separated him from Hirohito, who still accepted the limitations of the Washington system. Yet, in other respects, Konoe stood on common political ground with the palace “moderates.” The latter may not have shared Konoe's dream of joining with China against the white races, but they were all virulently anticommunist in outlook and shared with Konoe the thought that it was only natural for China to sacrifice itself for the sake of Japan's social and industrial needs.
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Last, Konoe (and the court group as a whole) worried about how to protect the essentially unstable monarchy in a postmonarchic world. The
kokutai
had to survive; his task was to help the emperor preserve it while using his authority to effect needed reform.

Kido K
ichi, born in 1889 and thus, like Konoe, a member of the third and least secure generation of the hereditary aristocracy, was impelled by fear that the impact of the Russian revolution and the tide of Taish
democracy would sweep away his privileged class. To counter such trends he had studied the writings of Russian socialists and nobles who had groped for ways to survive the Bolshevik challenge. He had also joined with fellow aristocrats Okabe Nagakage and Arima Yoriyasu to establish and manage a night school for educating workers; and he had pushed for reform of the Peers' School.
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In the course of these activities Kido and other reform-minded peers formed the J
ichikai, a discussion group whose members aspired to take the lead in promoting political and social change. By the late 1920s, however, Kido's fears of left-wing revolution had ebbed, and his attention had turned to governmental reform.

Kido had state reform on his mind when he moved from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to become Makino's chief secretary in late 1930. He quickly proved an indispensable adviser and information collector (through the J
ichikai) during the last two years of party cabinets, 1930–32. Working closely with Harada
Kumao, Kido rather than Makino took the initiative in restructuring the court's modus operandi after the rise of the military. Like Konoe he was essentially a 1930s-style “renovationist,” never a traditionalist. In 1937, when Konoe formed his first cabinet, Kido left the court to serve as Konoe's education minister and adviser. In the last stage of Kido's political career, 1940–45, he returned to the palace and became Hirohito's most important political adviser, charged with the duty of helping to select the next prime minister. Kido worked tirelessly to forge a consensus between the court and the military, and was instrumental in effecting the court-military alliance that made possible Japan's declaration of war against the United States and Britain.
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