Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (282 page)

33.
The constituent members of the imperial conferences were the prime minister, privy council president, ministers of the army, navy, finance, and foreign affairs, the president of the cabinet Planning Board, the two chiefs of the general staffs, and the two chiefs of the army and navy Military Affairs Sections. Participants stated their views; the president of the privy council raised questions, often on the emperor's behalf; and the emperor usually (though not always) sat silently through the proceedings. Decisions were invariably reached by consensus.

34.
Yasuda Hiroshi,
Tenn
no seijishi: Mutsuhito, Yoshihito, and Hirohito no jidai
, pp. 272–73. The notion of the monarchy itself as a “system of irresponsibility” was first enunciated by the political scientist Maruyama Masao.

35.
Hirohito's Imperial Headquarters departed from Meiji's practice in excluding civil officials on the ground that they had no right to know military secrets. His Imperial Headquarters also allowed the military to participate in shaping national policy and global strategy from a more privileged position than in the past. Conversely, it strengthened the emperor's (and thus his advisers') voice in military and political decision making. Power that Hirohito had lost to the military earlier in the decade was recovered as the war expanded and the defective nature of Japan's total war machine became increasingly apparent.

36.
Sejima Ry
z
, “Taiken kara mita Dai T
'A sens
,” in Gunjishi Gakkai, ed.,
Dai niji sekai taisen (3): sh
sen
(Kinseisha, Sept. 1995), pp. 398–99. Final decisions of the Imperial Headquarters on matters of grave strategic import, like important decisions of the liaison conference, required meetings in the emperor's presence. However, as Yamada Akira pointed out, sometimes the two chiefs of staff made decisions of the Imperial Headquarters without ever convening a formal conference. When such a decision was formally submitted to the emperor, and approved by him, it went into effect automatically. Yamada,
Dai gensui Sh
wa tenn
, p. 70.

37.
Minoru Genda, a staff officer at Imperial Headquarters from November 1942 until January 1945, would later state that only the emperor could make the system work because “[t]he whole organization was split into three—that is, the Navy, the Army, and what is known as the government—and the only one [who] could coordinate the three was the emperor.” Leon V. Sigal,
Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945
(Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 74.

38.
Mori, “Kokusaku kettei katei no heny
,” pp. 37–38.

39.
Yamada Akira, “Sh
wa tenn
no sens
shid
: j
h
sh
ka to sakusen kanyo,” in
Kikan sens
sekinin kenky
8 (Summer 1995), p. 18. He goes on to note (p. 19) that the first Imperial Headquarters Army Order was issued on November 27, 1937, and the last, bearing the number 1,392, on August 28, 1945. The navy, following a similar procedure, issued a total of 304 Imperial Headquarters Navy Orders between July 28, 1937, and
September 6, 1941. After Hirohito sanctioned the Pearl Harbor attack, the navy restarted the series, issuing Imperial Headquarters Naval Number 1 on November 5, 1941, and Number 57, its last, on September 1, 1945.