Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (90 page)

Given the absurdly contradictory mission of improving rela
tions with the United States, strengthening cooperation with Germany, and eliminating Britain's economic and political interests in East Asia, Matsuoka tried to gain the attention of the American public. On July 21, one day before he took office, he gave an impromptu, off-the-record interview to an American correspondent, who immediately filed it with the Sunday
New York Herald Tribune
. In remarks largely ignored by journalists and editors in the United States (but not the State Department), Matsuoka had declared that:

Matsuoka's preaching to Americans of the demise of democracy expressed his penchant for drawing attention to himself; his “love for the emperor” revealed the protean role that emperor ideology played throughout the history of the modern monarchy. Not only did the emperor serve to justify ideologies of militarism and war, he had also become, by this time, the ideology for Japanese fascism. Defenders and opponents of established political authority justified their projects in the emperor's name precisely because there had always coexisted within the official theory both a purely utilitarian view of the monarch as a “jewel” to be manipulated in order to furnish legitimacy, and an idealistic view of him that broke sharply with tradition and nurtured the fantasy of true, direct imperial rule.
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Where T
j
rejected a utilitarian approach to the throne and wanted the emperor to continue playing his highly active role behind the scenes, the emperor-loving Matsuoka straddled both views.

II

Shortly after the second Konoe cabinet started, on July 26, 1940, the ministers met and resolved to conclude the China Incident based on the principle of constructing a “New Order in Greater East Asia,” and to complete war preparations as a “national defense state.” The next day, hoping to impart authority to this consensus over national policies which his new cabinet ministers had just agreed to, Konoe convened a meeting of the liaison conference—the first since its suspension as a war leadership organ in September 1938, two and a half years earlier.
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The July 27 liaison conference adopted a vaguely worded document—” Main Principles for Dealing with the Situation Accompanying Changes in the World Situation”—which formally affirmed the course of advancing to the south and tying up with the Axis powers, but left unclarified whether armed force would be used in the southern advance.

Specifically Japan would incorporate the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya, and other resource-rich areas of Southeast Asia into its “New Order” and, at the same time, strengthen its ties with the Axis states. After having been briefed on these deliberations, the emperor sanctioned the final decision as the policy of Konoe, whom he trusted, rather than of Matsuoka, whom he personally disliked. These moves placed Japan in strategic collision with the United States, at a time when it had become, for the first time in its history, a net importer of raw materials, and American strategists in and outside of government worried about who would control colonial Southeast Asia—a region they were beginning to see as essential for American national security.
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Less than two months later, in accordance with these “national policy” decisions, Japan began its long-prepared-for “Southern advance” in September by sending troops into the northern part of French Indochina and concluding the Tripartite Alliance with Germany and Italy.
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Looking closer at Japan's decision to station troops in northern Indochina, one sees that Hirohito was briefed beforehand by Army
Minister T
j
and the army and navy chiefs of staff, among others, about their plans for securing bases there. He agreed to authorize their plans because he thought that acquiring bases and stationing troops in French Indochina would contribute to toppling the Chungking regime and ending the China war. But he also sanctioned the entry of the army into northern Indochina because he believed in the value of the advance-southward policy, decided at the liaison conference, even though that policy carried the risk of war with Britain and, inevitably, the United States—powers that had their advanced military bases in the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Naturally he wanted to carry it off without provoking the United States to retaliate. Influenced by Foreign Minister Matsuoka, he probably thought that could be done given Roosevelt's preoccupation with the European situation and his relative restraint in dealing with Japan so far.
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On July 29—many weeks after France and the Netherlands had been defeated, the huge German offensive in the West had achieved its mainland objectives, and Britain stood in danger of invasion—Hirohito summoned his chiefs and vice chiefs of staff to the palace. When they arrived he made the unusual gesture of offering seats to the elderly Princes Kan'in and Fushimi before proceeding to question Fushimi about prospects for war with the United States. Fushimi replied that victory would be difficult in a protracted war and therefore, “[u]nless we complete our domestic preparations, particularly the preparation of our material resources, I do not think we should lightly start war even if there is a good opportunity to do so.”
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Also participating in this briefing was the Army Vice Chief of Staff Sawada Shigeru. According to Sawada's account, the emperor's questions spanned a broad range of issues. Hirohito asked if they were “planning to occupy points in India, Australia, and New Zealand.” He wanted assurance as to how the army would handle the Chinese division that had concentrated along the border with
French Indochina and appeared ready to enter the colony if the Japanese did. Mainly Hirohito wanted to know about the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany. Could Japan, he asked, “obtain a victory in a naval battle with the United States as we once did in the Battle of the Japan Sea?…I heard that the United States will ban exports of oil and scrap iron [to Japan]. We can probably obtain oil from other sources, but don't you think we will have a problem with scrap iron?”
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Turning to the Soviet Union and Germany, Hirohito asked:

As his interrogation of his chiefs drew to a close, Hirohito observed:

Hirohito's questions indicated his belief in the likelihood of continued Anglo-American cooperation but also his uncertainty as
to what, at that juncture, constituted “a good opportunity.” For Sawada and the army general staff it had to be Britain's defeat and military occupation; for Hirohito the good opportunity was some sort of readjustment of relations with the United States. On the other hand, Hirohito knew how deeply divided his army, navy, and the Konoe cabinet were about fundamental strategy for implementing the decisions of the liaison conference. He was troubled by the disunity, strife, and vying for leadership among the different bureaucratic organs and overseas military units wishing to carry out the advance south. Moreover, Kido claims that the emperor told him the next day, July 30, that:

Kido's account of what the emperor told him errs seriously in claiming that the admirals would not “deploy military force in the south” unless the war in China was resolved. Indeed, the war planners on the Navy General Staff had already begun to develop plans to secure Indochina predicated on fighting a war with the U.S. and Britain should it ever become necessary. The navy worried not about the stalemate in China but only about provoking war with the United States.
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Contrary to the hopes of the emperor and the bureaucratic groups responsible for the decision to advance militarily into Southeast Asia, the Roosevelt administration immediately interpreted Japan's move as a direct challenge. American policy planners, both in and out of government, believed that this area, Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago—unlike China—had to remain
open primarily for its beleaguered European allies, but also, in the longer run and more important, for commercial and financial control by the United States. Japan could not have ventured on a riskier course.
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The Konoe cabinet's professed reason for the entry of the army and navy into northern Indochina was to complete the encirclement of China—if possible through diplomatic agreement with French officials in Hanoi or with the pro-Nazi regime in Vichy France, but if necessary by the use of force. The real reason was to prepare bases and concentrate troops and ships for eventually striking farther south at the surrounding countries rich in oil, rubber, tin, and the resources needed for self-sufficiency in the age of total war. Hirohito's role in this expansion of aggression was to remain above the conflicts among his military elites and the Foreign Ministry, led by Matsuoka, while helping them to achieve consensus so that the policy-making process did not break down.