Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (136 page)

 

In the absence of a verbatim record, conflicting accounts of this private meeting were later put forward by MacArthur, by American journalists who based their reports on interviews with both the emperor and MacArthur, and by Japanese officials and historians.
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Probably the most that can be said of their first meeting is that the two men encountered each other at a moment of uncertainty and realignment in their respective positions, and each came away feeling the meeting had been a success. Hirohito was pleased that
MacArthur was going to make use of him, and that he had not pursued the issue of war responsibility. MacArthur, in turn, was moved by the emperor's high evaluation of his conduct of the occupation and by his promise to cooperate. Presumably neither man said anything about the efforts already begun by their subordinates to save Hirohito from indictment as a war criminal.

Henceforth the Allied supreme commander would use the emperor, and the emperor would cooperate in being used. Their relationship became one of expediency and mutual protection, of more political benefit to Hirohito than to MacArthur because Hirohito had more to lose—the entire panoply of symbolic, legitimizing properties of the imperial throne.
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But for the American and Japanese leaders to interact amicably and cooperatively, the emperor would have to sever himself completely from militarism and militarists such as T
j
, which he was very reluctant to do; MacArthur would have to ensure that the emperor was not held accountable for any of his actions during the war, especially the Pearl Harbor attack; and both GHQ and successive Japanese governments would have to carry out a struggle to reshape the historical consciousness of the Japanese people concerning the nature of the war and the role that the emperor had played in it.

For most Japanese living in the ruin of defeat, the importance of the first emperor-MacArthur meeting was not the spirit of mutual respect and cooperation the two leaders established. Nor was it the official announcements of what they had allegedly said to one another. The one good photograph taken by the American cameraman and run by all the leading Japanese newspapers on September 29, however, created a sensation. Shot from close in, it shows the bespectacled emperor, in formal morning coat and striped trousers, standing as if at attention, necktie straight and hands by his sides, while beside and towering over him is relaxed and casual MacArthur
in an open-necked uniform, bereft of necktie or medals. The general's hands are on his hips and hidden from view. Both men are looking straight ahead at the camera.

What many Japanese saw in this picture led to renewed rumors that the emperor would soon abdicate. On August 15 his capitulation broadcast had forced his people to acknowledge the loss of the war. Now a single photograph forced them to confront the painful political implications of that loss.
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The emperor they saw there was not a living god but a mortal human beside a much older human to whom he now was subservient. Hirohito perfectly exemplified the defeated nation; MacArthur stood completely relaxed and projected the confidence that comes from victory.

With that one photograph a small first step was taken in displacing the emperor from the center of Japanese collective identity and freeing the nation from the restrictions of the past.

No Japanese could possibly have taken such a photograph. Only photographers certified by the Imperial Household Ministry were permitted to record the emperor's image. And they had to use a telephoto lens from a distance of at least twenty meters, and usually (though not always) show only the upper half of the emperor's body, and never his back because it was slightly rounded.
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He could not be shown smiling, for living gods were not supposed to smile. He could only be photographed standing motionless or at attention. Such photographers could be relied on not to use their photographic skills to undermine popular loyalty to the throne. Above all, they were expected to show their own personal feelings of reverence for their subject. But reverence for the emperor was an emotion few Americans at that time felt.

The Japanese government immediately banned reproduction of the picture. The reality of Hirohito's subordination to MacArthur was too disturbing. When no photograph accompanied the newspaper articles the day
after
the leaders' meeting, GHQ protested to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The
next
day, September 29, the
Asahi,
Mainichi
, and
Yomiuri-H
chi
newspapers did publish the censored photograph together with a “corrected” account of the emperor's reply to Kluckhohn's questions and Baillie's “interview.” Home Minister Yamazaki Iwao immediately intervened, and all copies of those papers were seized on the grounds that the emperor never criticized his subjects and that the picture was sacrilegious to the imperial house and would thus have a detrimental effect on the nation.

Conflict between the Higashikuni government and GHQ now ensued, and ended when General Headquarters not only ordered the printing of the photograph but also the repeal of all restrictions on publishing.
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On October 4 MacArthur issued the “Civil Liberties” directive that abolished some of the major obstacles to democratization: the Peace Preservation Law, the National Defense Security Law, and the “special higher police.” Overnight thought control loosened, the legal taboo on criticism of the emperor broke, and the whole apparatus of laws and ordinances established in order to “protect the
kokutai
” came crashing down. The personnel of the “special higher police” remained at their work, however, still thinking of themselves as “the emperor's police.”

The Higashikuni cabinet resigned immediately. Four days later (October 8), MacArthur tightened SCAP censorship of the Tokyo newspapers, while endorsing the emperor's choice of Shidehara Kij
r
, a seventy-four-year-old former diplomat and prewar moderate, to replace Higashikuni. Shidehara, the leading candidate of the “moderates” ever since the wartime cabinets of Koiso Kuniaki and Suzuki Kantar
, would follow the same policy of protecting the
kokutai
but rely on a less confrontational, more flexible approach.

Over the next few weeks GHQ began to attack “feudal remnants” and the emperor system. On October 10, it banned the display of the sun flag (
hinomaru
), a symbol that antedated the Meiji restoration, but left undisturbed the more important singing in unison of the official national anthem (“Kimigayo”), a paean to the glo
ries of the monarchy that had been made part of daily school education in 1931.
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On October 10 and 11 GHQ freed nearly five hundred Communist political prisoners and announced “five great reforms”: emancipation of women; promotion of labor unions; and democratization of the educational, legal, and economic systems. With the announcement of these goals, the occupation passed to a new phase. The people gained freedom to criticize their government, their emperor, and the institution of the throne. Political parties soon restarted. Communists began to criticize the emperor publicly and to pursue the issue of his legal and moral responsibility for more than a decade of futile warfare.

On October 22 GHQ issued a directive ordering education reform and the dismissal of all teachers who had advocated militarism or were hostile to occupation policies. Henceforth wartime leaders in all fields were at risk. On October 30, 1945, GHQ made public the total assets of the imperial house, based on grossly understated figures provided by the Imperial Household Ministry. Emperor Hirohito's subjects learned that he owned assets of more than 16 billion yen. Drawing income from enormous holdings of productive forests; livestock farms; corporate stocks; and national, prefectural, and municipal bonds, and with large holdings of bullion specie and currency, Hirohito was far and away the nation's biggest landowner and wealthiest individual.
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With the public seizing on the issue of the emperor's vast wealth, and with criticism of the most prominent war leaders appearing daily in print, and the Communists calling for abolition of the “emperor system,” both the Shidehara cabinet and politicians in the Diet soon became uncertain about preserving not only the
kokutai
but their own jobs.
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