Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (140 page)

VI

Shortly after the Declaration of Humanity, a directive from Washington on the drafting of a Japanese constitution had requested that MacArthur encourage that “the Emperor institution” be abolished or reformed “along more democratic lines.” MacArthur was now forced to clarify Hirohito's responsibility for ordering the attack on Pearl Harbor and, at the same time, end his ambiguous new status. On January 25, 1946, he sent a “Secret” telegram to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then U.S. Army Chief of Staff, stating his belief in the emperor's total innocence. The MacArthur telegram, based on a memorandum sent to him three months earlier by his Japan “expert” General Fellers, asserted that:

No official U.S. document unearthed so far has indicated that MacArthur or his staff investigated the emperor for war crimes. What they investigated were ways to protect Hirohito from the war crimes trial. As early as October 1945, in a brief memorandum intended for MacArthur, Maj. John E. Anderton had laid out the key elements of a defense: “in the interest of peaceful occupation and rehabilitation of Japan, prevention of revolution and communism, all facts surrounding the execution of the declaration of war and subsequent position of the Emperor which tend to show fraud, menace or duress be marshalled.” And “if such facts are sufficient to establish an affirmative defense beyond a reasonable doubt, positive
action [should] be taken to prevent indictment and prosecution of the Emperor as a war criminal.”
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Seeking to shock the Truman administration, MacArthur concluded his telegram to Eisenhower by predicting dire consequences should the emperor face trial as a war criminal:

On January 29 MacArthur met with part of the newly established Far Eastern Commission in his Tokyo office to answer questions concerning the position of the emperor. Then on February 1, the
Mainichi shinbun
published the Japanese government's draft constitution, produced, under pressure from GHQ, by Minister of State Matsumoto J
ji and his committee.
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An English translation of the Matsumoto draft reached MacArthur that same day. Noting that it left the status of the emperor unchanged, he concluded, correctly, that the Shidehara cabinet was incapable of writing a democratic constitution. Unless he himself acted quickly, before the first formal meeting of the Far Eastern Commission (scheduled for February 26), the initiative in constitutional revision could pass from his hands, and the preservation of the monarchy might be endangered by nations hostile to the Japanese throne.

The general met his dilemma by giving the Government Section of GHQ, headed by Gen. Courtney Whitney, one full week, February 3–10, to write a new draft of a model Japanese constitution. The drafters set to work, intent on realizing the goal of preventing Japan from ever again becoming a military threat to the United States. They concentrated first on reforming the monarchy.
The emperor, severed from real political power, became (and was defined as) only a “symbol” of unity. He was made so “symbolic” that neither the man nor the institution could ever again become an instrument for a revival of militarism. But the draft did permit the emperor to perform a few specified imperial “acts in matters of state” “on the advice and approval of the cabinet.”

Next, the imperial armed forces were eliminated by inserting into the constitution an article—the famous Article 9—renouncing war:

Thanks to the American drafters, guarantees of civil liberties went right into the text of the constitution; women were enfranchised. The modus operandi of the Japanese state was partially reshaped. The draft weakened in theory the power of bureaucrats, strengthened that of the Diet, and enhanced the power of the judiciary. The final product permitted Japan its monarchy, and shifted political power to the Diet and the cabinet, should such a need arise.
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The model constitution was drafted and deliberated by both houses of the Diet at a very strange moment of crisis in postwar history. The power of ordinary people to act from below to realize their aspirations was still weak. There had been no domestic antiwar movement during all of 1945, let alone a viable Communist movement.
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Yet the mystique of the monarchy had been deflated. Many people no longer held the emperor in exaltation. The antiemperor sentiment of the left was no longer being restrained. Even the com
munists defined the Americans as an “army of liberation.” Most important, public opinion was shifting rapidly, with former diehard militarists switching overnight into fervent “democrats.”
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Most Japanese
politicians
, with the notable exception of the Communists and a few iconoclasts, however, still held the monarchy in reverential awe. Their old guard attitude was in fundamental conflict with the democratic spirit of the American draft constitution. The primary concern of nearly all politicians, conservative, socialist, and liberal, was to preserve the
kokutai
. In their view that required a politically empowered monarch available for use in an
internal
crisis. Minor revision might be necessary to prevent public opinion from swinging in favor of abolition of the monarchy. Some of the emperor's powers might be taken away, but not all; least of all should he be turned into a “mere decoration.”

At this crucial moment Hirohito was unable to fathom the aspirations of his subjects for fundamental reform of society. On February 12, he told Kinoshita, “Matsumoto seems to want to conclude the constitutional revision while he is still in office. I think I shall mention this to Shidehara. There is no need to hurry. Simply to indicate willingness to revise is enough.”
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When Foreign Minister Yoshida and State Minister Matsumoto received the American model constitution at the Foreign Ministry on February 13, they were shocked. Committed to preserving the
kokutai
under the Meiji constitution, they believed that they would be unable to use an emperor unless he was allowed to reign and rule, combining power with authority. Over the next few weeks most members of the Shidehara cabinet changed on this crucial point. The progressive American draft at least retained the hereditary principle and guaranteed the continuance of the throne. In this moment of crisis for the monarchy, only Hirohito himself procrastinated.

The diary of Ashida Hitoshi, a moderate conservative who served as Shidehara's welfare minister and chaired an important
lower-house subcommittee on constitutional revision, discloses that on the second day of the cabinet's deliberations on the American draft, February 22, Shidehara reported on his visit to GHQ the previous day: “MacArthur, as usual, started on an oration. ‘I am working from the bottom of my heart for the good of Japan. Ever since my audience with the emperor, I have been telling myself I must insure his safety at all costs.'” The supreme commander went on, however, to warn of “unpleasant” discussions for Japan at the Far Eastern Commission in Washington and the uncertainty of his own tenure. As the American draft kept the emperor on the throne, he saw “no unbridgeable gap” between the Japanese and GHQ drafts. Under the latter, he felt the emperor was protected and his authority enhanced because it derived from his people's trust in him rather than from his ancestry.
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Shidehara's cabinet members were unhappy with the “symbol monarchy” and the renunciation of war as a sovereign right of the state. Ashida, however, pointed out that, “the idea that international disputes should be resolved by mediation and conciliation without recourse to armed force was a policy already accepted by our government in the Kellogg[-Briand] Pact and the Covenant [of the League of Nations]. It's certainly not something new.”
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Clearly Ashida did not think the renunciation of war would prejudice Japan's inherent right of self-defense, nor did he envision that its codification in Article 9 of the constitution would become a tremendous point of controversy in the postoccupation period. What Ashida and other members of the cabinet worried about was the emperor's loss of political power.

Wanting to avoid a hopeless dispute with MacArthur, Shidehara and his cabinet probably would have accepted the American model more quickly had the emperor permitted it. The evidence suggests that Hirohito did not assent. While he delayed, pressure for his abdication increased. On February 27 Hirohito's youngest brother, thirty-one-year-old Prince Mikasa, stood up in the privy council
and indirectly urged him to step down and accept responsibility for Japan's defeat. Ashida attended that meeting together with the emperor and members of the imperial family, and recorded Mikasa as saying:

Moreover, that same day, the
Yomiuri-H
chi
ran a front-page story on the emperor's “abdication,” based on AP correspondent Russell Brines's interview with Prince Higashikuni. The article claimed that many members of the imperial family approved of the emperor's stepping down in order to be free to acknowledge his moral responsibility for the war. It suggested that the emperor was isolated. Only the imperial household minister and prime minister opposed abdication.
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A similar article, based on another interview with former prime minister Prince Higashikuni, appeared in the
New York Times
on March 4, and indicated that Prince Takamatsu, the second in line to the throne, would probably serve as regent until Crown Prince Akihito came of age.
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The fact that pressure to abdicate came not only from Prince Higashikuni, but from his own younger brothers must have helped Hirohito overcome his reluctance to accept the MacArthur draft. Sibling rivalry in the imperial family, exploited by the militarists during the 1930s, now benefited MacArthur's constitutional reform.

On March 5 Shidehara came to the emperor bearing the MacArthur draft text and a draft of an imperial message declaring the emperor desired that the constitution be drastically revised. If Hirohito wished to maintain the unequal partnership with MacArthur that
guaranteed him protection, it was time to move decisively. As reported by Kinoshita in his diary, “the reason for the big rush” on constitutional revision “was the article in the recent [February 27]
Yomiuri
in which Prince Higashikuni discussed the problem of the emperor's abdication with a foreign journalist…. Initially, M[MacArthur] agreed that the Matsumoto draft could be presented to him by [March] 11. [Now] they cannot wait [that long].”
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