Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (238 page)

11.
Tanaka, “Kyoz
no gunshin T
g
Heihachir
,” pp. 225, 236, 239.

12.
Answer to Japan, Southwest Pacific Area, July 1, 1944, p. 9. From the Bonner F. Fellers collection at the Hoover Institution.

13.
Kiyozawa Retsu,
Gendai Nihon bunmeishi, dai sankan, gaik
shi
(T
y
Keizai Shinp
sha, 1941), p. 437; Stephen Pelz,
Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II
(Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 2–3.

14.
MNN
, p. 417.

15.
NH
, pp. 59–60, cited with the permission of the author.

16.
Masuda Tomoko, “Tenn
, kindai,” in
Nihonshi, yonkan
(Heibonsha, 1994), p. 1243–44.

17.
On the first floor of Hirohito's redesigned palace were waiting rooms and a large (twenty-mat-size), chastely furnished audience chamber, partitioned into two sections. A telephone manned by a chamberlain was mounted on a wall in the carpeted corridor leading from the reception rooms to the outer audience chamber. When Hirohito was ready to receive someone, he or an aide would phone, signaling the guest to advance into the “outer room.” The guest would bow slightly on entering, bow again after stepping into the “inner room,” and execute a very deep bow before the imperial table. Exiting in the emperor's presence required doing the “crab walk,” making sure, that is, to retreat by walking sideways to the door so as never to turn one's back to him.
Hirohito's audience chamber, which doubled as his lecture room, contained a mantelpiece screening a recessed electric heater. In front of the mantelpiece were his chair and desk. A long oval table abutted the desk. Display shelves lined one wall, painted in a traditional pattern of royal purple waves with golden plovers and mist above. The same design adorned the wall behind his seat.
Above this audience room on the second floor were his study, library, and office, where the imperial seals were stored and only high court officials and chamberlain were allowed. There he would read and counter-sign documents that required his sanction. See Nihon Gendaishi Shiry
Kenky
kai, “Okabe Nagaakira shi danwa kiroku,” n.d., pp. 11–12. I am indebted to historian Okabe Makio for a copy of this record.

18.
NH
, pp. 5–6.

19.
KYN, dai ikkan
, p. 81.

20.
Suzuki,
K
shitsu seido: Meiji kara sengo made
, p. 168. According to Makino (p. 317) Prime Minister Tanaka had asked Chinda to ask the emperor to say a kind word to Mizuno.