Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (168 page)

 

When Nakasone stepped down, in late October 1987, Hirohito's life was drawing to its end. The Cold War, which had long been winding down, was almost over. Soon Japanese politicians would find it harder to practice their political double standard about the lost war. On September 18, 1987, the eighty-six-year-old emperor was reported to have an undisclosed intestinal disease. He was soon hospitalized for surgery, the first emperor to undergo such a procedure. The operation was successful but a year later, on September 19, 1988, he was gravely ill. Crown Prince Akihito was informed that his father had cancer; the press was left to speculate. The nation plunged into a mood of prolonged grieving. For one hundred and eleven days Japan raptly followed an old and dying emperor's temperature, blood pressure, and other vital signs. Long lines of Japanese citizens queued to pray for him and to sign official “get well” registers provided by government agencies. The condolence-wishers represented a small minority, and many signed because their company superiors did first. Yet it seemed as if the entire nation was in vigil.

While Hirohito lay dying in the inner recesses of the Fukiage Palace, the Japanese media censored itself on discussion of his and
the monarchy's role in Japanese military aggression. Elsewhere, in Asia and Europe, media coverage concentrated almost exclusively on his war role, and the way Japanese officials avoided confronting that past. The stance of the Japanese toward Hirohito in his dying days, and the feelings of the rest of the world toward him could not have been more different.
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In early December 1988 a mood of calmness and detachment returned, moderating the excessive “self-restraint” that had descended on the entire nation when the news of Hirohito's illness was first disclosed. On the seventh, Nagasaki's Catholic mayor and LDP member, Motoshima Hitoshi, addressing the Nagasaki City Assembly, spoke matter-of-factly about the “war responsibility” of the dying emperor. His words, reported in the media, touched off a fury of rightist reaction. His own LDP turned against him. A year later a right-wing thug shot Motoshima, but the mayor survived.

Death came to Hirohito at 6:33 in the morning on January 7, 1989, with family members around him. The attending physicians, astonished at his tenacious will to live, attributed his stamina to the chaste, disciplined life he had led since youth. In the view of chief physician Takagi Akira, the emperor was sustained by his belief in the power of spirit. At the end he simply refused to surrender.

Prime Minister Takeshita delivered the official eulogy. He reiterated two of the unrealities on which Japanese politics during the second half of the twentieth century had been based. “The great emperor,” declared Takeshita, had always been a pacifist and constitutional monarch. For sixty-two turbulent years he “had prayed for world peace and the happiness of the Japanese nation,” and every day he practiced what he preached. “Regarding the great war, which had broken out contrary to his wishes, when he could no longer bear to watch the nation suffering its evils, he made the heroic decision and, disregarding his own welfare, ended it.”

Fifty-six-year-old Crown Prince Akihito took on his imperial duties the next day. A father with three grown children, Princes
Hiro and Aya and Princess Nori, he faced no such succession problem as Hirohito had. During a brief ceremony he declared his loyalty to the Constitution of Japan.

The new era of “Heisei” (achieved peace) began as East and West Germany finally united, the Cold War ended, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the world's largest empire—started to break up. Politics everywhere became more fluid. In Japan, a minor political crisis, triggered by the usual recurring corruption scandal, once again shook the political establishment. This time, for the first time in an upper house election (July 1989), the LDP went down to temporary defeat. In the course of a single year, three prime ministers came and three prime ministers went. Hirohito's funeral and the accession ceremonies for Akihito were held up by serious disputes among the ruling elites. Many months passed beyond the customary one year of national mourning before Emperor Akihito could begin his various enthronement ceremonies. Like that of the Sh
wa emperor before him, the pageantry was all government-financed, but less elaborate this time and less hyped. The public looked on with pleasure, but few seemed moved by it.

The enthronement culminated in a ceremony staged in the palace on November 12, 1990. Some 2,500 dignitaries attended, fifteen hundred of them from 158 countries around the world. This was followed two weeks later by a “Great Food-Offering Ceremony” in the imperial palace garden, November 23, with 733 guests in attendance. Neither event was a gain or a favorable portent for Japanese democracy. At the enthronement the symbolism was medieval—sacred regalia, emperor seated on high, and servile prime minister standing below and looking humbly up. Even the thought of popular sovereignty was mocked.
⁵⁹
The six-hour-long food offering was based on an imperial ordinance of 1909 that had nothing at all to do with the constitution of 1947. Nevertheless, Akihito's oath was to uphold that constitution.

The
daij
sai
religious ceremony revived state Shinto rituals based on the political culture of Meiji-era absolutism. In that sense it flouted the constitutional separation of politics and religion.
⁶⁰
When criticism arose, spokesmen for the cabinet pointed out that the first religious act of the new reign did not require constitutional justfication. Akihito's installation ceremony had merely given him an opportunity to pray on behalf of his people; it had in no way transformed him into a living deity.
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And in fact, the enthronement had been an incomplete Shinto ritual as compared with that of Sh
wa. Nor had officials and journalists used this occasion to enhance his popularity.

In December 1990, when the imperial transition was over, and quickly forgotten, Emperor Akihito granted a press interview. Responding to questions about the lost war, he replied: “My generation has lived for a long time without war, and so I have had no occasion to reflect on the war.”
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His reply could have been voiced by Sh
wa. Thereafter, although an annual birthday press conference became traditional, no more serious war questions would be asked.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko soon resumed visits abroad. In October 1992, their visit to China, at the insistence of the Peking government, divided opinion at home about the value of “imperial house diplomacy.” In August 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the surrender, they embarked on a less controversial “journey of condolence” to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the island of Okinawa. Thus apologizing only for the suffering caused by Japan's wartime past, Akihito avoided any acknowledgment of his father's war guilt.

 

As the twentieth century ended, although developments in Japan hinted that constitutional change might take place, it seemed unlikely that Akihito would ever be brought forward to lead the nation as dramatically as Meiji or as disastrously as Sh
wa. His per
sonality, abilities, education, and interests all seemed to rule out such a role. So too did the many problems still unresolved from World War II—problems inherent in the institution of the Japanese monarchy itself rather than in the particular occupant of the throne. Nonetheless, like It
and the
genr
with Meiji; and Kido, the militarists, and MacArthur with Sh
wa, some future national leadership may rise and find effective ways to make use of the new monarch or his successors. Whether they will move the institution as their predecessors did—to prevent the deepening of democracy and growth in the popular sense of political empowerment—is a crucial issue for Japan in the new millennium.