Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (22 page)

Western history was also introduced to Hirohito by Professor Mizukuri Genpachi, whose
Seiy
shi k
wa
(Lectures on Western history) became one of his favorite textbooks.
⁴⁵
Hirohito devoured all of Mizukuri's major works:
Napoleon jidaishi
(History of the age of Napoleon),
Furansu daikakumei shi
(History of the great French revolution) (1919, 1920) in two volumes, and
Sekai taisenshi
[History of the great world war) (1919), which appeared right after the Bolshevik Revolution and the collapse of monarchies all across Europe. These books presented revolution and war as the greatest threats to monarchy, and underscored the importance of a strong middle class as a bulwark against revolution.

Mizukuri's writings provided Hirohito with rational explanations for the fall of the Romanov dyanasty in Russia and the Hohenzollern dynasty of Prussia. They deepened his interest in history and European politics, and may have helped him to think in broader terms and to look for elements of general relevance in particular events. Shiratori's writings on the other hand, left him with a rich store of historical narratives to draw on when confronting policy decisions. Yet they were also intellectually constraining insofar as they followed the official line, transmitted the Japanese obsession with racial origins, and indoctrinated Hirohito to think in terms of emperors as developers of national power, prestige, and empire.

IV

Shimizu T
ru, a professor of law at Peers' School, unlike Sugiura and Shiratori, was definitely not recognized in academic circles as an outstanding scholar. The choice of Shimizu as Hirohito's teacher of constitutional law may simply have reflected the opinion of Ogasawara and the
genr
that the leading scholars of the constitution at that time—Hozumi Yatsuka, Uesugi Shinkichi, and Minobe Tatsukichi—were entirely too controversial to be instructing the crown prince. Shimizu belonged to no school and had spelled out his constitutional doctrine in a massive tome, published in 1904. In 1915 Shimizu became an Imperial Household Ministry official and took up his duties at the Ogakumonjo. There, and later at court, he instructed Hirohito on the two dominant accounts of the Meiji constitution that defined the parameters of constitutional government.
⁴⁶
One, the direct imperial rule theory of Hozumi Yatsuka and Uesugi Shinkichi, affirmed imperial absolutism and taught that the emperor had responsibility for arranging the various organs of state and directly exercising his power to appoint and dismiss his officials. This was the view favored by many army officers (with the notable exception of General Ugaki), and by navy officers such as Fleet Admiral T
g
and Captain Ogasawara. The other interpretation was the liberal “emperor organ theory” of Minobe, who sought to rein in the emperor's autocratic powers by making the cabinet his single highest advisory organ and curbing the power of extraconstitutional bodies to advise the emperor.

Shimizu, an eclectic, contradictory thinker outwardly eschewed both of these positions, though his writings were, overall, much closer to Hozumi's than Minobe's. Shimizu considered the main point at issue in constitutional interpretation to be the locus of sovereignty [
t
chiken
], which he situated in both the emperor and the state. For him the state represented “an indissoluble combination of the land, the people and sovereignty,” while in a legal sense it “is a person and the subject of sovereignty.”
⁴⁷
He continued: “In
our country sovereignty resides at one and the same time in the state and in the emperor. On this point state and emperor are assimilated to one another. They have become not two but one. In other words the emperor is the subject of sovereignty.”
⁴⁸

This kind of argument meant that Shimizu was utterly unable to clarify the relationship between the monarch and the state. Constitutional scholar Uesugi, Hozumi's disciple in the law department of Tokyo Imperial University, argued that the emperor
is
the state and anything he does, no matter how arbitrary, is justified. Shimizu regarded the state as an independent moral personality [
jinkaku
] and claimed that the emperor always acts, by definition, in its interests. The two were never in conflict because the emperor was, at all times, thinking and acting in the interests of the state. For Shimizu the question of priority could never arise. On this point, Shimizu reinforced Sugiura's teaching that, historically, emperors have always acted in the interest of the state.

By expounding on the constitution from the perspective of the primacy of the
kokutai
, something Minobe felt it was unnecessary to do, Shimizu came to embrace the standard argument of prewar and early postwar conservative ideologues who wanted to prevent the
kokutai
from being destroyed by civil discord. Such people argued that in times of crisis, promoting to high office only those officials who believed most firmly in emperor ideology mattered far more than developing political institutions. As long as loyal, well-indoctrinated officials were in control, and they had strong personalities, they would always prevent the
kokutai
from being overthrown from within.

Shimizu never directly addressed the problem of the Diet and its powers, or the issue of extraconstitutional bodies like the privy council or the
genr
. Essentially he was hostile to the principle of parliamentarism and against restricting the powers of any legal organ of the state that aided the emperor. Shimizu fostered in Hirohito the attitude that, for the emperor,
all
the organs of state
were on the same level and had the same measure of authority. The emperor decided, on the basis of circumstances, which advisers to respect and gave his assent to them. But he did not always have to listen to their advice, whether it was unanimous or not.

Significantly, Shimizu failed to clarify the issue of the emperor's political nonaccountability for his actions. Although the Meiji constitution failed to make explicit the emperor's nonresponsibility, commentators generally agreed, from the outset of the constitution, that the operative word “inviolable” in Article 3 (“The emperor is sacred and inviolable”) automatically approved that interpretation.
⁴⁹
Thus, even if the emperor acted illegally according to domestic law and committed a crime, he could not be punished. He also could not be held accountable for the actions of the government if it acted illegally, even though he was the head of state. The only guarantee that the emperor would not violate the constitution was Article 55, which stipulated that ministers of state bore advisory responsibility for the advice they offered the monarch.