Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
13.
Watanabe Osamu, “Sengo kaikaku to h
,” pp. 245â246.
14.
Ashida Hitoshi nikki, dai nikan
, pp. 13â14.
15.
Arasaki Moriteru,
Okinawa d
jidaishi, dai gokan
, pp. 219â20, 230;
Nippon Times
, June 29, 1947;
Pacific Stars & Stripes
, June 29, 1947.
16.
Shind
Eiichi, “Bunkatsu sareta ry
do.”
17.
Aketagawa T
ru, “Gy
sei ky
tei no teiketsu âsenry
no ronri,'” in Toyoshita Narahiko, ed.,
Ampo j
yaku no ronri: sono seisei to tenkai
(Kashiwa Shob
, 1999), p. 68, emphasizes Hirohito's fear of revolution.
18.
Suzuki Shizuko, p. 65; on the Niigata tour in general, see Suzuki Masao, pp. 166â69.
19.
New York Times
, June 18, 1946. At his Washington news conference, Keenan declared that the emperor was not a war criminal so much as “a figurehead and a fraud perpetrated on the Japanese people.” The idea of the imperial institution itself as a “fraud” designed to control an unenlightend people dates back to Basil Hall Chamberlain's essay of 1912,
The Invention of a New Religion
.
20.
A year earlier, on April 13, 1946, MacArthur had released from prison Gok
Kiyoshi, chairman of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, imperial Japan's main arms-maker, and also Prince Nashimoto. Shortly afterwards, he released four other top business leaders, including Ikeda Seihin, managing director of the Mitsui zaibatsu. See Awaya, “Tokyo saiban ni miru sengo shori,” in Awaya, et al.,
Sens
sekinin, sengo sekinin: Nihon to Doitsu wa d
chigau ka
, p. 98.