Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (57 page)

Thanks to these numerous literary conjurings of concrete memories, the long blackout on the wars of the late Meiji era ended. Children and young adults whose parents had fought in 1904–5 became better informed about the war that had won Japan a continental empire. Thus the decade that had begun as antimilitary ended with quite a different spirit: a massive reaffirmation of empire, the placing of hope in the myth of “war gods” like Admiral T
g
and General Nogi, and the “virtues” of the young emperor.

Concurrently, in the foreground of national happenings, the Navy General Staff, the Seiy
kai Party leaders, and members of the privy council fomented public passion against the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which Japan signed with Britain and the United States on April 22. The treaty restricted the number of capital ships of each signatory and set limits for the first time on the number of cruisers and other auxiliary ships that each could build. The Japanese delegation had initially declared that it would maintain a 70 percent ratio vis-à-vis the United States on all auxiliary ships. In the end it compromised its differences with the Americans, accepted a 69 percent ratio plus parity in submarine tonnage, and agreed to renegotiate the treaty after six years.
¹³

Two months after the ratification of the treaty in Tokyo, on November 14, while Hirohito was commanding special army maneuvers in Okayama prefecture, Sagoya Tomeo, a right-wing thug who belonged to the Aikokusha, an organization supported by the Seiy
kai politician Ogawa Heikichi, shot and mortally wounded Prime Minister Hamaguchi at Tokyo Station. On being informed of
the shooting and of Hamaguchi's condition by Imperial Household Minister Ichiki, Hirohito's first concern was that “constitutional politics” not be interrupted.
¹⁴
His feelings about the vicious propaganda campaign that the naval lobby had stirred up against the treaty, and that apparently had led directly to the shooting, are unknown, as are the conclusions, if any, that he drew from Hamaguchi's death, which occurred in August of the following year, right on the eve of the Manchurian Incident.

The brief period of amity between the imperial court and a party cabinet was over, ended by the first political assassination of the 1930s. The stage was set for the last party cabinet in imperial Japan.
¹⁵
With the military honing a new entitlement—its “right of supreme command”—and the public lining up in its support, a new era was about to begin. The army and navy ministers continued to be sharply at odds with their general staffs over the issue of arms reduction. Discipline within the officer corps continued to loosen; the army as an institutional entity showed signs of spiraling out of control. The stoking up of emperor worship had lowered the whole level of national political debate, not to mention public morality.

Thus, by the imprudent and highly untraditional way in which Hirohito and his staff exercised power—firing Tanaka in 1929 and then throwing domestic consensus among the elites to the winds rather than risk a diplomatic setback in the London naval talks—they helped to ignite the anger of all who were dissatisfied with social conditions and with the economy of early Sh
wa Japan. From their exalted position at the top of the polity, the court group never imagined they were contributing to the destruction of party government. Yet in pursuit of their own political agenda (sometimes ignored by Tanaka but executed forcefully by Hamaguchi) they introduced elements of instability that had not existed during the regency.
¹⁶
The more Hirohito made use of his authority, the more he widened rifts among the ruling elites.

I

While the grand enthronement ceremonies unfolded for the mass audiences at home and abroad, Hirohito, as part of his change of persona, prepared to move his private residence and office to the Meiji Palace, then being remodeled to suit his and his family's needs.
¹⁷
At the same time politics in Tokyo moved along—more and more a process of intrigue hidden by secrecy.

The Fifty-fifth Imperial Diet, meeting from April 23 to May 7, 1928, provided the occasion for the next clash between the court group and Tanaka. This time the issues were several: Tanaka's reorganization of his cabinet to bring in Kuhara Fusanosuke, a businessman and first-year member of the Diet, regarded by many as a dangerous right-wing extremist; his management of the Diet; and what the emperor regarded as his erroneous reporting of the proceedings inside the Diet. Hirohito had his own intelligence network. He knew that Tanaka's cabinet was deadlocked in its conflict with the opposition parties; its management of the Diet was certainly not proceeding smoothly. Hirohito complained several times to Makino that Tanaka's reports to him were inadequate and that his “imperial will” was being abused. In the end Kawai had to talk to Tanaka about the emperor's wishes.
¹⁸

For Hirohito's aspirations to coexist with the constitutional order, the prime minister was expected to maintain absolute secrecy regarding the emperor's will. Tanaka refused to accept that. He kept trying to associate the emperor, the court entourage, and the
genr
with his own Seiy
kai policies, until, finally, on May 14, 1928, one week after the Fifty-fifth Diet had ended and more than a year after Tanaka had become prime minister, Makino's chief secretary, Kawai, gave up on him and noted in his diary that the imperial court had become totally dissatisfied with Tanaka's performance:

Soon after Kawai wrote these words, Seiy
kai politician and Education Minister Mizuno Rentar
, leader of the campaign to keep Kuhara out of the Tanaka cabinet, submitted his letter of resignation to the emperor. The next day, to prevent the collapse of Tanaka's newly reorganized cabinet, Hirohito indirectly told Mizuno to remain in office. On May 23 Mizuno retracted his resignation, saying he would stay because of “the emperor's kind words.” Mizuno's statement immediately precipitated a political uproar, for it was interpreted to mean that the emperor had taken sides, benefiting the Seiy
kai while undermining the Minseito. The Minseito reacted first by denouncing the Seiy
kai for exploiting the emperor's wishes in order to remain in power, then by establishing a Committee on the Problem of the Emperor's Message.
²⁰
The committee resolved to wage a great national campaign to protect constitutional government and the
kokutai
. The Minseito formulated its resolution in clear doublespeak: “We firmly aspire to overthrow the Tanaka cabinet in order to protect the
kokutai
, which has its core foundation in the imperial house.”
²¹