Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (31 page)
Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
Long after Hirohito's return, the press continued to show him in military uniform more often than in civilian dress, and to print assessments by Japanese journalists who had accompanied him to Europe.
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In 1922 Nagura Bunichi, a writer for the
Asahi shinbun
, noted how Hirohito seldom spoke during the tour, never smoked, and drank only carbonated water (unlike his grandfather, who tippled heavily and often). Rather than dwell on the prince's reticence and sobriety, however, Nagura went on to express his pique at the failure of the English to overcome their outmoded stereotypes of Japanese:
The interesting thing is that a paper like
The Times
showed understanding and printed an article welcoming the crown prince. Of course, the Japanese Embassy put up the money to propagandize [the visit], and so on the last day
The Times
printed a special Japan issue. Generally speaking the articles contained few errors, but even today they still think that all Japanese wear the topknot and dress in kimonosâ¦. Worst of all was an article in
The Herald
, organ of the Labour Party, reprinted from the
Church Times
. I assumed that because it was the Labour Party they must have disliked Japanese militarism. The article said that the emperor of Japan is ill and the crown prince, being too busy with political affairs, was utterly unable to travel abroad. Therefore the visiting crown prince is a proxy for the real one, and the authorities, in order to prevent people from finding out, have confiscated all pictures of the crown prince that were displayed in stores in the city. When they go so far as to say things like that, we can no longer laughâ¦. On May 12 [he] visited the House of
Commonsâ¦. but had to sit in the commoners' gallery. At that moment Lady Astor was interpolating concerning the problem of housing improvementâ¦. At the House of Lords he saw how the Lords passed a bill from the Commons. Here he sat next to the head of the Lords. No welcome was read out for him, and no one stood to greet him. I wonder what the Japanese Diet will do when the English crown prince visits Japan.
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Mitearai Tatsuo, a reporter for the
H
chi shinbun,
produced an account of the tour that was more reflective of the Taishdemocracy spirit. He began by contrasting his own ideal image of an intimate relationship between the emperor and the people with the actual relationship of constraint and rigidity that had developed since the death of the Meiji emperor. “The imperial family must feel the same way,” he opined. “Judging from the style of living of Prince Higashikuni, studying in Paris, and Prince Kita Shirakawa, studying in Greece, the Imperial Household Ministry's way of thinking is just too rigid.”
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For Mitearai the tour marked the crossing of the threshold of invisibility for the imperial house.
[I]ts biggest achievement was to have removed the veil between him and the people and to have swept aside the rigid thinking of the Imperial Household Ministry authorities. Everywhere our crown prince went, he had an opportunity to receive the stimulation for change, especially from the welcomes given him by high and low in England, and, I suppose above all, from witnessing the sophisticated social interaction of the crown prince of England [the future duke of Windsor] and the duke of York [the future King George VI].
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Hirohito's Western tour helped popularize the new image of a young, enthusiastic crown prince in touch with the times, keenly interested in British-style colonial management, and open to
change. To those who looked at what was going on in the country as a call to reform, the message was clear: A vigorous successor to the throne was meeting Europe's leaders and immersing himself in world affairs. Someday he would use his will to move the country forward. In this way too the tour strengthened preconceptions of the monarchy's indispensability for political renewal.
Prime Minister Hara had expressed joy at the good press Hirohito had received in Europe, noting in his diary, on July 6, 1921: “This trip seems a really great success. There can be nothing more beneficial for the state and the imperial house.”
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When Hirohito returned home, Hara was anxious to learn from the entourage everything he could about the prince's progress.
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Hirohito's teacher of French, navy captain Yamamoto Shinjir, immediately reported to Hara all the grooming the prince had received while en route to Europe:
You know the prince is extremely unaccustomed to foreign countries and to social intercourse with other people. Therefore we instructed him in his table manners and in his every movement and action. Concerning general principles, Prince Kan'in spoke with him on three occasions while the chief attendant informed him on other matters. The young attendants like Saionji [Hachir] and Sawada [Renz] spoke with him with particular frankness.
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When Hara later learned that the crown prince had invited two members of the imperial family to the palace and had gone out of his way to tell them to wear ordinary business suits instead of formal court dress, he expressed his pleasure:
There are envious people who say that in England the relationship between the royal family and the people is such and such. I think this relationship is not a question of reason but arises totally from sentiment. Although the relationship between our imperial house and the
nation cannot be compared with that in England, it is a mistake to hope for intimacy between the two only on the basis of reason. Surely we must rely on feeling. From this point of view one must applaud the success of the recent Western tour in producing harmony between high and low.
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But the climate of opinion at home had not been unanimously supportive of the tour, and when press photographs and a newsreel showed the crown prince acknowledging the saluting of sightseeing crowds, it rekindled the opposition of many extreme nationalists.
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Moreover, Hara's opinion notwithstanding, the ruling elites themselves were by no means satisfied with Hirohito's performance in Europe, or with the new attitudes that that experience had evoked in him. Chinda had been unenthusiastic about sending the crown prince abroad but, at Hara's urging, had accompanied him to England where he looked after him. On September 6, 1921, four days after Hirohito's return to Japan, Chinda described to Makino the crown prince's behavior during his European tour: “It seems as though the shortcomings in [the prince's] qualities of character are insufficient calmness and a lack of intellectual curiosity.”
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“Insufficient calmness” and “nervousness” are defects underscored by many who commented on the young prince in this period, including his own mother, Empress Sadako. In an audience granted to Makino on September 22, 1922, she made the revealing comment that her son was unable to attend the “annual food offering ceremony” (
kannamesai
) because “he cannot sit on his knees.” Worse still, he had stopped taking his religious rituals seriously and had recently become “extremely passionate about physical exercise. She wants him to calm down and use his mind rather than go to excess [in exercise]. His devotion to various physical exercises might harm rather than help the nervousness, which is his weak point.”
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But why Chinda could say that he lacked “intellectual curiosity” is far from clear. On the basis of his school performance, the many
comments about his powers of recollection by those who knew him, and what has been written about his devotion to biological studies, just the opposite would seem to have been true. Chinda's comment, with its intimation that the prince was not overly bright, merely reflected the complications inherent in a tutorial relationship between a conscientious sixty-five-year-old diplomat and a twenty-year-old prince happily enjoying his newfound freedom.
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Or it may just as easily have reflected an honest opinion of a senior official.
This suggests, however, that those closest to young Hirohito were at least uneasy about his ability to perform the enormous tasks about to be placed on his shoulders. They were agreed that he exhibited an average intelligence and an exceptionally good memory, though they never praised him for his boundless imagination or original thought. Mainly they were concerned about his health, and because he exhibited a level of personal insecurity (“nervousness”) and social awkwardness that they found worrisome in a monarch but believed could be corrected with time and the assistance of his retinue.
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V
In England the primary mission of the crown prince had been to learn from King George V, who had skillfully survived the storm of political reform into which Britain and the rest of the world had been thrown as a result of World War I and the collapse of monarchies all across Europe.
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George had “from the outset of his reign [in 1910]â¦sought to identify the monarchy with the needs and the pleasures of ordinary people, paying repeated visits to industrial centres, attending football matches, driving through the poorer districts of London, and visiting miners and workers in their homes.”
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Thereafter he helped check a trend toward pacifism at home and strove to raise morale in the British armed forces. According to George's official biographer, Harold Nicolson, he paid visits to the
Grand Fleet and various naval bases, inspected the armies in France, visited three hundred hospitals, conferred tens of thousands of decorations, and repeatedly toured the industrial areas. George was particularly keen to visit damaged areas “and talk to the injured in the wards. No previous monarch had entered into such close personal relations with so many of his subjects.”
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