Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (66 page)

In the ensuing political confusion, the emperor and his advisers decided to abandon the experiment in party cabinets that had begun in the Taish
era. Guided by Kido and Makino, Hirohito placed his
support behind a fully bureaucratic system of policy making, and cabinet politics that no longer depended on the two main conservative parties in the Diet. Diet party activities continued, but the court group's fling with constitutional government by means of party cabinets working in tandem with elected representatives was abandoned. Moreover, navy and army leaders now abjured coups to seize political power, turning their attention to restoring discipline in their respective services. Precisely this interruption in the high command's effort to extend its political power gave the court group a chance to rally and settle on a leader of a countercoup cabinet.
⁴⁹

The day after Inukai was assassinated, the rump Inukai cabinet resigned, and the court group began deliberations to choose the next prime minister. As before, they called Saionji in from the periphery of events so that he could be seen as the emperor's proxy in presenting the imperial decision. Formerly the decision itself would have been made by the
genr
, but no longer. On May 19 Grand Chamberlain Suzuki gave Saionji a paper (drawn up by the emperor, Makino, and Kido) containing Hirohito's “wishes” regarding choice of the next prime minister.
⁵⁰

Hirohito's first “wish,” that the “prime minister should be a man of strong personality and character,” reflected the thought of Makino and his intellectual adviser, Confucian scholar Yasuoka Masahiro [Masaatsu]. Yasuoka had recently formed the State Restoration Society (Kokuikai) to develop an ideological rationalization for moving “new bureaucrats” to positions of political power.
⁵¹
Loyal officials who believed in emperor ideology were, in his view, more important than institutions in carrying out the interests of the Imperial House. Only loyalists could prevent the
kokutai
from being overturned by internal movements and factions. The way to protect the throne was to nurture powerful personalities who were totally dedicated to the emperor. On this score Hirohito was at one with the “new bureaucrats” of the 1930s.

Hirohito's second point—that “Reform of the evils of present-
day politics and the restoration of military discipline depend mainly on the prime minister's character”—expressed his concern that
public
responsibility for this most important task rest on the chosen prime minister. His other wishes reflected his displeasure with the revolving-door between the two main conservative parties in power, and the policy changes that invariably resulted. Hirohito blamed party-based cabinets rather than insubordinate officers for the erosion of his own authority as commander in chief. More distrustful of representative parties than of military insurgents, he would strengthen the power of the throne by weakening the power—indeed the very principle—of party government.

Presumably the aged Admiral Sait
at the head of a cabinet of “national unity,” rather than Seiy
kai president Suzuki Kisabur
, would bring in trustworthy officials of stern character. These would be the “new bureaucrats” who, freed from loyalties to partisan political groups, and sharing the emperor's values and goals, would serve the nation by serving Hirohito. So emperor and bureaucracy had meshed in the time of Meiji. That cooperation must now be returned, and new autocratic officials appointed to join Hirohito in containing the forces agitating for radical reform.
⁵²

Naturally enough, therefore, Hirohito ruled out the choice of “any person holding fascistic ideas,” a prohibition directed implicitly (as Masuda Tomoko has suggested) at the newly appointed vice president of the privy council, Hiranuma. Head of the Kokuhonsha, an antidemocratic, right-wing pressure group that nevertheless was within the political mainstream, Hiranuma advocated that the constitution be changed. He wanted to form his own cabinet, and was backed in this by Mori.
⁵³
Civilian right-wingers had earlier campaigned for Hiranuma to be taken into the court bureaucracy, and he had many supporters in the privy council, the military, and civilian right-wing organizations. Hirohito and his entourage, not to mention old
genr
Saionji, had ample reason to oppose Hiranuma.
⁵⁴

Yet to most Japanese in 1932 the term “fascism” was vague and
mysterious, and referred mainly to Italy. Hirohito's disavowal of “fascism,” therefore, may have sprung (as Masuda also conjectured) from his belief that anyone who criticized his entourage and wanted to change the Meiji constitution was politically unfit.
⁵⁵
Hirohito needed to feel at ease with his prime minister. If that person was absolutely loyal and obedient, it did not matter if he held fascist ideas, for so long as an exponent of fascism opposed change by coup d'état, the emperor could regard him complacently. Two years later, for example, Hirohito registered no objection to the army's key concept of a “national defense state,” even though the term was of Nazi German provenance and implied a state organized along lines entirely different from that of Meiji.
⁵⁶

“Protecting the Meiji constitution,” another imperial wish, probably implied that Hirohito understood the extraordinary usefulness of the 1889 constitution—a document that neither guided the exercise of power nor protected the limited freedoms and rights of Japanese subjects. Why should he allow the constitution to be changed? It already could legally produce, “constitutionally,” virtually any type of political rule that he and the power elites desired.
⁵⁷

Hirohito's final desire, to have diplomacy based “on international peace,” was not an affirmation of the Washington treaty system, but referred to the new, post-Manchukuo status quo that had arisen from aggression. Although the “empire” had just gobbled up new territory, Japan remained economically dependent on its main critics and rivals, the Anglo-American powers. In this circumstance Hirohito naturally wanted to avoid new frictions with Britain and the United States. Therefore the consolidation of Manchukuo should be energetically “peaceful.”

Ten days following Inukai's assassination, Hirohito bestowed the premiership on elderly Admiral Sait
. The cabinet of “national unity” that Sait
now formed included Uchida as foreign minister; Takahashi as finance minister; the leader of the new reform bureaucrats, Got
Fumio, as minister of agriculture; General Araki as army
minister, and Admiral Okada Keisuke as navy minister. This cabinet would weather four Diet sessions and numerous changes in cabinet posts over a period of more than two years, before finally falling in July 1934 in a corruption scandal involving the Teijin Rayon Company. During that time Sait
would preside over the construction of Manchukuo, Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, and a partial reorganization of the machinery of government.