Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (137 page)

Also in October, the problem of abdication resurfaced in the Japanese press. On October 12 Prince Konoe informed a reporter that the emperor was aware of the problem; on the twenty-first, Konoe told Russell Brines of the Associated Press that the Imperial
Household Law did not provide for abdication; four days later the
Mainichi shinbun
reported that the emperor could not possibly abdicate because he had accepted the Potsdam Declaration and had a duty to carry it out. The abdication rumors of October aroused the trepidations of Hirohito's court defenders and kept alive the problem of his moral, political, and legal responsibility for the war. Court officials responded by making minor reforms, while signaling to the nation the emperor's intention to remain on the throne.
³⁹
In addition, from this time onward arguments for the emperor's abdication began to intersect with the search by conservative intellectuals for an “indigenous” democratization based on the reconstruction of the national morality—something that could not occur while Hirohito was monarch.
⁴⁰

Meanwhile military agencies were steadily being lopped off. On September 13 the Imperial Headquarters that had existed for seven years and ten months was abolished. On October 10 the Combined Fleet and the Navy General Headquarters were formally dissolved. Five days later the general headquarters of both the army and navy closed, and on December 1, the two service ministries themselves were abolished.
⁴¹
By the end of 1945 the armed forces Hirohito had commanded no longer existed. Still, despite the demystifying effect of the emperor-MacArthur photograph, the image of him as uniformed supreme commander of the nation persisted.

IV

The emperor's advisers now focused on extinguishing his military image. Availing themselves of MacArthur's personal generosity, they sought, and were quickly granted, permission for him to worship “privately” at Ise Shrine in Mie prefecture.

Accompanied by high court officials, as well as curious Allied journalists, Hirohito departed Tokyo on November 12 for a three-day trip to the national Shinto shrines of his imperial ancestors.
Outwardly the trip seemed a simple undertaking for purely religious purposes. He visited the inner and outer shrines of Ise and the mausoleum of the legendary first emperor, Jimmu (in Nara), and the Meiji emperor (in Kyoto), staying overnight at the Kyoto Palace on both occasions. The hidden purpose of the trip was to affirm, in the new context of defeat, the viability of imperial history, based on religion and myth. Hirohito used the occasion to test public opinion and shed his military image. The trip was his first opportunity to display a new, postwar royal uniform. It closely resembled the duty garb of a railroad conductor, the collar closed and stiffly stand-up. Understandably he never wore this outfit again, but went completely civilian in a plain, poorly fitting business suit. The manufacture of the imperial railwaymanlike uniform may have signaled an intention to impress the public, at home and abroad, with his determination to remain on the throne rather than to abdicate.
⁴²

The signal Hirohito received from his subjects, however, was clear. When the imperial train stopped for six minutes at Numazu Station on October 12, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Kido was anxious, wondering whether people living in the burnt-out area around the station “might throw stones or something.”
⁴³
Wherever the emperor appeared in Ise and Kyoto, however, he was warmly welcomed, thus putting to rest Kido's fear. Even though the mystique of the throne had been punctured by defeat, his subjects remained loyal, and many still regarded him as “sacred and inviolable.” The Ise-Kyoto tour thus contributed to the emperor's later decision to go out among the people, something he disliked doing and had always kept to a necessary minimum. A month after returning to Tokyo, Hirohito visited the tomb of his father, the Taish
emperor. His October train trip and this visit were his first announced postwar tours.

On November 29, 1945, the emperor told Vice Grand Chamberlain Kinoshita Michio that seven of the imperial princes were going to visit the imperial mausoleums on his behalf, and that he
intended to tell them that “his last tour to the Kansai region [that is, his Ise-Kyoto trip] had a great effect in promoting intimacy between the high and the low. The imperial family, which is a presence between him and the people, should make great efforts [to nurture that intimacy].”
⁴⁴

Concurrently, following Hirohito's return from Kyoto, the Japanese people learned that the imperial portrait would be removed from display in all schools, government offices, and overseas embassies and consulates. The Imperial Household Ministry planned a new portrait as replacement, which the emperor would eventually “bestow” on the nation, as he had before. Unlike his military uniform, however, the imperial likeness could not be carelessly discarded. If it were, the emperor's bond with his people might be weakened.
⁴⁵

Three weeks after the emperor's train trip for ostensibly private religious purposes, GHQ's Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) launched a carefully prepared campaign to remold Japanese opinion on the lost war and the evils of militarism. Bradley Smith, chief of CIE's Planning Division, wrote a series of ten articles that were translated into Japanese by the official news agency, Ky
d
Ts
shinsha. “A History of the Pacific War: The Destruction of Deceit and Militarism in Japan,” was described as having been “Contributed by Allied General Headquarters.” The prologue for the first installment started in all national newspapers on December 8, 1945, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. It listed Japan's main war crimes and declared that “the concealment of the truth” by successive wartime governments had produced the “gravest consequences.”

The “History of the Pacific War” emphasized “the crimes resulting from Japanese militarism,” including the rapes and other outrages in Nanking, but also highlighted the efforts for peace of the “moderate faction,” centering on Emperor Hirohito. Reaching back, the initial article described Prime Minister Shidehara (the main defender of the Kwantung Army during its 1931 Manchurian aggression) as a man who had respected “the principles of peace and international cooperation” during his tenure as foreign minister. But by placing the most blame on a handful of “military cliques,” thus depicting the people one-sidedly as deceived victims—as even the emperor had been deceived—this GHQ effort to reshape historical consciousness ultimately confused the Japanese acceptance of war responsibility.

CIE reinforced its press campaign with a radio news program designed to remold Japanese opinion. From December 9 to February 10, 1946, NHK radio broadcast a thirty-minute, thrice-weekly evening program called “Shins
wa k
da” [Now it can be told]. Based on the “History of the Pacific War” and produced by Americans, it was designed as the Japanese version of America's best-known news program of the 1930s: “The March of Time.”
⁴⁷
The opening scene began with an announcer's authoritative voice declaring melodramatically,