Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (47 page)

From the beginning of the Sh
wa era, Hirohito's small, highly cosmopolitan court group advised and assisted him entirely outside the constitution. It was an enclave of privilege and the nucleus of the Japanese power elite, composed of men from both the traditional ruling stratum and newly privileged and enriched groups from Meiji. Situated at the apex of the pyramid of class, power, and wealth in Japanese society, the court group represented the interests of all the ruling elites of imperial Japan, including the military. The court group cannot be understood, however, if it is set only in stark contrast to the military—as seen by Western observers at the time, and conventional academic historians since. Nor can it be understood if discussed apart from the imperial family, particularly Hirohito's younger brothers, who often interacted closely with those in the court milieu.

The different members of the court group collected, processed, and conveyed to Hirohito political data they had gathered from many quarters, including the British and American Embassies. The emperor had sole possession of their information plus vast amounts of political and military intelligence furnished by government and military officials who reported directly to him, orally or in writing. As head of the imperial family (
k
zoku
), Hirohito also received
secret reports on the political activities of his brother, Prince Chichibu, from Chichibu's steward. Like a silent spider positioned at the center of a wide, multisided web, Hirohito spread his filaments into every organ of state and the army and navy, absorbing—and remembering—information provided by others.

His staff could spin the web and feed him their information precisely because the advisory organs of the imperial state—the cabinet, the Diet, the privy council, the Army and Navy General Staffs, and the bureaucracy—connected directly to the emperor yet were separate and independent of one another. In their own eyes ministers of state and chiefs of staff believed themselves to be directly subordinate to the emperor; in Hirohito's eyes, as Shimizu T
ru never tired of reminding him, they were all on the same level as far as their authority was concerned, regardless of their different constitutional status.

The membership of the court group changed over time, as did their political ideas, special characteristics, and operating strategy vis-à-vis the other forces in the Japanese political structure. Yet on political issues in all periods they were careful not to get ahead of the emperor. Usually, without cueing from his privy seal, Hirohito took the initiative in spurring his entourage to diffuse his intentions (the “imperial will”) into the political process and, when necessary, to focus his will on any advisory organ or its representative. In short Hirohito “commanded” his court group, which had no power to act except because it was his conduit; and at his direction it acted by disseminating counsel and advice, which, as it was known to be on his behalf, exerted powerful influence on ministers and ministries.

From 1927 onward the court group struggled to place the monarchy within a new ideological framework and, at the same time, find a way to break through the constraints on the emperor's powers that had developed over the nearly fifteen years of the Taish
emperor's debility. To that end they perpetuated the convenient fiction of the emperor as a “constitutional monarch.” In their
own eyes, of course, “constitutional monarchy” was never a device for restricting the emperor's formidable powers, as it is in the West. It merely provided a protective facade behind which his powers could be freely exercised and even expanded as the situation required, while he remained nonaccountable.
¹⁵
The main objectives of the court group at the start of the new Sh
wa era were to help Hirohito exercise real supervision; to act as an electoral college, helping him to choose a prime minister; and to ensure that his purposes were incorporated into decisions of the cabinets. In their reasoning the idea of “the normal course of constitutional politics” required that the will of the cabinet reflect the young emperor's will.

This convergence of wills was to be achieved through a process of constant informal reporting (
nais
) by the prime minister, by other cabinet ministers, and by the military, coupled with questioning by the emperor (
gokamon
) before any cabinet decision could ever be formally presented to him. This process of maneuvering behind the scenes to obtain the emperor's consent was how Hirohito effected his purposes in policy making, and in the appointment and promotion of high-level military personnel. It was also how the court group always understood the meaning of the
kokutai
: For them the
kokutai
was a political system that allowed the emperor to use his power to rule, never merely to reign.
¹⁶

However, in providing direct imperial rule in the age of mass suffrage, with the prime minister as the emperor's most important adviser, the court group had to be vigilant lest the throne be pulled down into partisan controversy. In the words of Privy Seal Makino, the cardinal rule whenever a political problem arose was that “the matter should never implicate or cause harm to the emperor” (
heika ni rui o oyobosazaru koto o daiichini
).
¹⁷
Thus the chief task of the court group from the beginning of Sh
wa was to ensure that the party cabinets accepted both Hirohito's supervisory role and the need to shield him from either credit or blame for his actions in that role.

Essentially the court group reasoned that with a real ruler in the
Meiji mold now on the throne, the proper way to govern was for the prime minister to inform himself of the emperor's intention, through prior and full consultation with him on an informal basis (that is,
nais
), and then to act to realize the emperor's wishes. In practice this meant that the court group had to develop situations and networks by which the emperor could influence, and implicitly give his sanction to, a solution, a problem, a policy, or a bill in the Diet before any of his constitutional advisers (his ministers) ever got around to presenting the matter to him in a formal report. That required keeping politics out of the public view. The more the emperor involved himself in civil and military decision making, the more deeply involved he and his closest aides became in deception, and the greater their stake in not ever admitting the truth.