Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (60 page)

The Diet debate on the treaty thus highlighted the ruling elites' unanimity in denying any popular agency in the making of foreign policy. At the same time it revealed the profound rhetorical shift then under way in the very process of political deliberation itself: from not dragging the throne into politics to “fighting night and day by implicating the imperial house” in political debate.
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In addition the No-War treaty fared poorly in Japan because Hirohito was personally advised on this issue by his teacher of diplomacy and international law, Tachi Sakutaro. At the time Tachi went on record deprecating the pact's intent and significance.
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Hirohito certainly wanted Diet debate on his sovereign powers ended and the pact ratified, in keeping with the spirit of conciliation with the Western powers. On many occasions from March through early June 1929, he questioned Prime Minister Tanaka on how the treaty was faring in the Diet and in the privy council.
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Yet Hirohito did not see the pact as a commitment to resolving by peaceful means all disputes that might arise with China over Japan's lease
hold rights in Manchuria (due to expire during his reign). For him the Manchurian treaties and rights—contracts originally negotiated with the Ch'ing dynasty, later augmented by agreements secured by military faits accompli—were part of his grandfather's legacy. As such they were sacrosanct and deserving of protection even by the use of armed force.

On this score young Hirohito's view of the world was as unenlightened and rigid as Tachi's. Tachi's advice was that the pact would not inhibit Japan's resort to force to protect its interests in China, and that the moral element in it was of little consequence. Tachi focused, then and later, on defining self-defense broadly, seeking “loopholes” in the No-War pact to permit Japan to protect its interests and extraterritorial rights in Manchuria should a future need arise for armed intervention there. Tachi's position, moreover, was fully in tune with Japanese intellectual opinion at the time, which, unlike American opinion, responded skeptically to the No-War Pact.
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Specifically Tachi, like many other Japanese “realists,” was dissatisfied with the way the liberal democracies—Britain and the United States—required all nations to adhere to the brand-new ethical code forbidding recourse to war as a means of resolving international conflicts. He saw this as an attempt by the Anglo-American powers to freeze the postwar international order to their own advantage.
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Publicly, however, he did not reject either the peace ethic informing the new international law or the institutions that embodied that ethic, but rather sought to undermine both by developing loopholes and defining self-defense so broadly as to justify virtually any act of force as an instrument for resolving disputes.

While legalistic debate over the phraseology of the No-War Treaty raged during late 1928 and early 1929, Hirohito and the court group backed off. Instead of encouraging the new spirit of peace and antimilitarism to which the state (in Hirohito's name) was then committing itself by treaty, they decided to pump up his
enthronement and thereby strengthen the trend toward chauvinistic nationalism. On the tenth anniversary of the signing of the European armistice ending World War I, the court group had a perfect opportunity to make the pacifism of the No-War Treaty the emperor's personal project, and to lead the Japanese nation to an understanding that wars of aggression had been made illegal. Before Hirohito got around to ratifying the treaty formally (June 27,1929), however, his enthronement ceremonies had helped tilt Japan in the direction of a heightened nationalism that would prove difficult to retreat from.
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In Geneva, as the historian Ik
Toshiya has pointed out, Japan's delegates to the Council of the League of Nations did not seek ways to improve the Covenant and promote security. Instead, under Foreign Minister Shidehara's direction, they resisted bringing the Covenant into conformity with the new treaty banning aggressive war. Claiming that the peace machinery of the League could not work in the Far East, they repeatedly opposed mediation by third nations in disputes involving China. On every occasion between 1928 and 1931, the party cabinets sought to leave open the possibility of exercising force in China in the name of self-defense. If Hirohito, his court entourage, and the Foreign Ministry had not been so negative about strengthening the Covenant and preventing League intervention in Sino-Japanese disputes, and if new collective security agreements had been in place when the Manchurian Incident occurred, it might have been harder for the Kwantung Army to justify its arbitrary use of military force.
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IV

Despite having been informed by his chief aide, Nara, of the degeneration of discipline in the army and navy, the emperor continued to overlook problems of factional conflict, service rivalry, and growing fragmentation within both military branches. As the army's senior
leaders grew lax in their exercise of control over the professional officer corps, officers of all ranks began to denounce their superiors and spread rumors to the public that the political parties were harming Japan's defense. Hirohito responded to this situation by avoiding battle. He shifted responsibility for dealing with the recalcitrant Navy General Staff onto the shoulders of Grand Chamberlain Suzuki, and onto General Nara responsibility for quelling insubordination and disobedience in the army. He also had Nara pressure Fleet Admiral T
g
into agreeing to the ratification of the London Naval Treaty.
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In early 1930 Hamaguchi, strongly supported by Hirohito, clashed with the Navy General Staff over the signing of the London Naval Treaty. No sooner had that controversy ended than many navy leaders resigned their posts, and opponents of the treaty carried out a purge of officers who had supported it. The navy's political intervention influenced the army and undermined the position of Army Minister Ugaki, who continued to control the core personnel of the army.
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The Seiy
kai immediately took advantage of the turbulent domestic situation to avenge itself on the Minseito and the court entourage for the latters' previous interventions.

Ultimately the controversy over the London Naval Treaty did most to hurt the young emperor's image. Disaffected right-wing politicians joined military officers in viewing the signing of the treaty in September 1930 as the transgression of a moral boundary. By crossing it, they charged, the Minseit
had violated the honor of the state. Since they could not criticize the emperor, they blamed the court entourage for having monopolized his will and abetted the corruption of the parties. As early as 1929 Hiranuma Kiichir
, a leading ultranationalist in the judicial bureaucracy and an adviser to many right-wing groups, had privately criticized Hirohito for relying too much on Makino, and for repeatedly dispatching emissaries to Saionji, whether to learn the
genr
's wishes or to convey his own will.
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In Hiranuma's extreme right-wing circles, the mis
taken impression grew that the emperor's “will” was entirely in the hands of Saionji and the court entourage who guided his movements.