Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (24 page)

Paradoxically the mask of silence called attention to his inner self and was seen as praiseworthy. On the other hand, when he wore silence in the performance of his political and military duties, his mask sometimes caused problems. Those who reported to him directly then had to understand not only his words, which were often fewer than the situation called for, but his countenance, or how he seemed to be “moved.” Expecting him to say little even when the matter was of the gravest personal importance to him, they learned to watch his facial expressions for the slightest indications of his inner thought and future behavior.
⁸
In a society that historically valued the wearing of masks and had turned them into the highest form of symbolic expression, the emperor's mask of silence resonated with meaning.

The same was true of his voice, in which many Japanese also came to “hear” their sense of national identity. Before Hirohito's accession to the regency in November 1921, the few among the elite who heard his voice regarded it as a cause of concern. Only as his tutors worked on it, as he became more experienced in government, and as the country plunged ever deeper into war, did people come to imagine it as suprahuman. Discussion of his voice would arise again at the time of Japan's surrender in August 1945, and later when he toured the nation during the occupation period.
⁹

Apart from the matter of young Hirohito's inarticulateness, and the widely divergent ways in which Japanese apprehended his voice, the ruling elites after World War I had to wrestle with the problem of how to deal with his mentally disabled and physically sick father, and with the societal changes that were causing the monarchy's authority to diminish in a time of democratic ferment. In this additional context the question of the heir apparent's physical presence may have seemed exceedingly important. Naturally the
genr
and
their successors began to worry about Emperor Yoshihito's quiet, frail-looking son, who failed to convey with words any personality to a public accustomed to Meiji's impressive demeanor. It is also hardly surprising that with his glasses correcting his near sightedness, his slight frame, stooped shoulders, twitchy nervousness, and far-from-booming voice, the press eventually reflected the concerns of the top political leaders about his “sturdy martial spirit.”
¹⁰
But Hirohito was intelligent and often strong willed. He practiced frugality and set a high value on military accomplishments and military preparedness in a modern, professional sense. The reality of his character, in other words, belied in many ways his unassuming physical appearance.

Hirohito also had behind him a childhood of training in self-control as well as a military education that had accustomed him to rigid routine. His grandfather had personally commanded the army and navy during occasional maneuvers staged against hypothetical foreign invaders and, quite unlike his own father, had been diligent in attending the graduation ceremonies of the army and navy schools.
¹¹
But Meiji had not received a military education and knew virtually nothing about strategy and tactics. His training in military matters was designed to get him into the open air and reform his unhealthy lifestyle. Seeking to follow in the idealized footsteps of a fabricated Meiji, whom he had installed as his life's model, was one of Hirohito's dominant desires, though it never prevented him from freely altering Meiji's example whenever circumstances required. Hirohito, unlike his grandfather, was constantly accompanied by military aides-de-camp, who encouraged him to act in a military manner, and particularly after becoming emperor in December 1926, he was nearly always in uniform except during religious festivals (when he donned the ancient attire of a Shinto priest). This daily conditioning had a profound effect on his evolving personality.
¹²

Equally important, Hirohito accepted, and felt no compulsion to question, the duly constituted order of authority into which he
had been born. From an early age he acquired a sense of himself as a person who decided—and was destined to be required to decide—matters in the spheres of political power and military command. As he entered manhood and assumed the duties of emperor, however, his intellectual interests began to flow toward history, politics, and particularly natural science. These other values and aspirations did not prevent military matters from occupying the largest portion of his time.

The young man on the way to becoming Japan's “absolute” monarch and supreme military commander pursued a scientific hobby, but spent most of his time, and may even have had the most satisfactory personal relations, with military men who were not scientists. During his last two years at the Ogakumonjo, he seems to have befriended the vastly self-confident General Ugaki. Later, while participating with his ministers in ruling the state, he would add the mask of supreme commander in chief (
daigensui
) and begin to express himself more often. His words, uttered in a spirited manner, carried tremendous political influence. Hirohito usually gave wholehearted trust to bureaucratic types whom he appointed to high position. But he had little natural predilection for dogmatic saber rattlers and political reactionaries like the principal of his middle school, Captain (later retired Admiral) Ogasawara, the Imperial Navy's first public relations expert, and the school's principal, the renowned Fleet Admiral T
g
.
¹³

The problem therefore is: How should one understand the coexistence and specific content of the different, potentially conflicting, identities that Hirohito assumed as his life unfolded through so many distinct phases? How did he manage to control his emotional life so as to be able to survive the many different roles he took on and the demands made upon him, and at what cost to himself? Certainly his most deeply embedded, never effaced identity was that of an emperor by divine right. His education is the story of how he came to think of himself as a giver of orders, a par
ticipant, along with others, in the policy-making process, and the leader of a nation that was bringing modernity to Asia.

II

Inevitably Hirohito had acquired attitudes about political life that delighted his teachers.
¹⁴
One can gain a rough idea of his view of human affairs at this time from a recitation for Sugiura passed on to Imperial Household Minister Makino Nobuaki, who reproduced it in his diary. In “My Impressions Upon Reading the Imperial Rescript on the Establishment of Peace”—his short (two-page) composition written in January 1920, after the peace treaty between the Allied Powers and Germany had finally gone into effect, nineteen-year-old Hirohito looked ahead to the day when he would “bear the great responsibility of guiding political affairs” and cited the words of “my father, the emperor.”
¹⁵
This essay reveals a young man concerned about “extremist thought” who wishes to uphold the virtues of military preparedness, yet also wants to realize “eternal peace.” His first point is that:

“Extremist thought” may be read here as a metaphor for ideas of democracy, antimilitarism, socialism, and communist revolution that had swept over Japan and the world following World War I. Having declared his concern about this phenomenon and referred
to the “labor problem” as troublemaking, Hirohito continues his reading, sticking very close to the letter of the rescript:

The enthusiasm with which Hirohito affirms the new world assembly should not be mistaken for an endorsement of either the Anglo-American worldview or the principles of the “new diplomacy” on which it was constructed. Rather his affirmation of the spirit of the League merely reflects his youthful idealism and optimism. At this stage, however, his idealism stands in stark contrast to the skepticism of the Hara government, which had wanted to delay acceptance of the League and had instructed the Japanese delegation at Versailles to keep quiet on European issues and concentrate on securing Japan's “rights and interests” in China.

Continuing with his resolutions, he declares in the very next line: “I must fulfill this important duty to establish permanent peace in the world. What should I do to carry out this duty?” His answer is that Japan, as a great colonial empire, must act in concert with other countries, on the basis of “universal principles,” while eschewing luxury and extravagance at home. Then, linking “military preparations” and industrial-infrastructural development to “profitable diplomatic negotiations” and “keep[ing] up with the Great Powers,” he hints at a premise of future action: “Without military preparedness profitable diplomatic negotiations will be difficult. Also, we cannot become a rich country unless we make industry and transportation flourish and increase the efficiency of work
ers. If we do not do this, we will be unable to keep up with the Great Powers.”

Hirohito concluded his essay by stressing the ideal of total national unity in the face of foreign competition in order to fulfill “the nation's destiny.”

“Confused realm of ideas,” “extremist thought,” “extravagance,” “luxury,” “military preparedness,” “eternal peace,” going along with the trend of the time, and achieving total unity as a prerequisite to realizing the national destiny—these were words and concepts that Japan's conservative ruling elites and military leaders used when describing the siutation at the end of World War I; so did young Hirohito. More broadly these terms belonged to an ideology conservatives paraded in order to deny growing social tensions in Japan. These tensions, the result of the widening gaps in wealth and power between different groups and classes, called for more than rhetorical surgery, however.

III

Japan's World War I prime ministers—Ōkuma Shigenobu (1914–16) and Terauchi Masatake (1916–18)—had tried to govern within the fiction that the Taish
emperor both reigned and ruled. Postwar prime minister Hara Kei (1918–21) could not even pretend seriously that Yoshihito was more than a figurehead—a necessary formality but at most no more than that.
¹⁶
Hara and the aging
genr
were deeply disturbed by the emerging trends: nationwide food riots in 1918, the deteriorating health of the emperor, and repeated lèse-majesté incidents involving criticism of the imperial house.