Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (74 page)

The following month, after the Diet went into recess, Okada and his cabinet ministers asked Minobe to resign his imperial appointments and initiated administrative measures against his writings. The entire government bureaucracy was instructed not to refer to the emperor as an “organ” of state. Officials of the Education Ministry directed prefectural governors and heads of institutions of higher learning to participate in clarifying the meaning of the august
kokutai
, following up by initiating investigations of books, articles, and lectures by law professors in the nation's universities. Bureaucratic ministries and offices throughout the nation soon began holding seminars on the meaning of the
kokutai
and the national spirit. To deliver the lectures and teach the new courses, they enlisted specialists in Japanese racial thought, academic opponents of liberalism, and advocates of Nazi theories of law.
¹⁸

In effect, in order to counter the unauthorized, radical movement denouncing Minobe's constitutional interpretation, Okada generated a government-sponsored, national
kokutai
clarification campaign, which also declaimed against Minobe's teachings and banned some of his books and articles. It was this official campaign that Hirohito supported. To control the radicals within the armed forces and resist the
kokutai
indoctrination movement from below, which aimed at overthrowing Okada, he lent his authority to a government campaign that fostered unbridled fanaticism.

On April 6, 1935, Superintendent of Military Education General Mazaki, a member of Hiranuma's Kokuhonsha and a dispenser of secret army funds to right-wing newspapers, had issued an instruction to the army on “clarifying the
kokutai
.” In it Mazaki reminded one and all that Japan was a holy land ruled over by sacred emperors who were living deities.
¹⁹
At that point right-wing
civilian groups allied with the army formed a League to Destroy the Emperor-Organ Theory and “accomplish the clarification of the
kokutai
.” Member journalist Ioki Ry
z
and law professor Nakatani Takeo espoused totalitarian ideas of remaking Japan in the image of Germany. The league's immediate goals, however, were to remove Ichiki Kitokur
from the presidency of the emperor's privy council and to eliminate the influence of Makino and Saionji. The opposition Seiy
kai, hoping to overthrow the Okada cabinet, began cooperating with the League.
²⁰

Nationwide antigovernment agitation on the
kokutai
issue continued throughout the spring, summer, and autumn of 1935. Senior officers of the army and navy, the army-dominated Imperial Reservists Association (with branches in all the prefectures), and an alliance of many small and some large right-wing groups, led the agitation, while religious sects that outwardly had subjugated themselves to the state, such as “Imperial Way
motoky
,” also joined the campaign. In August, when public procurators dropped the lèse-majesté charges against Minobe because his intent had not been criminal, the antigovernment movement against his theory rekindled. Thereafter the demand grew that there be no dissent from the truth that Japan was a “peerless nation” led by a divine, precious, august ruler, and also that there be no public criticism of military budgets.

Behind these attacks lay the ideological desire to discredit not a particular interpretation of the Meiji constitution but all constitutional interpretations, whether Minobe's or his opponents', that differentiated the emperor from the state. The leaders of the “League to Destroy the Emperor Organ Theory” were fighting to abolish the advisory powers of ministers of state, and to return to a more flexible process of governance in which the voice of the military could be freely translated into national policy. At their head stood the Imperial Way generals Mazaki and Araki, Vice President of the Privy Council Hiranuma, certain Seiy
kai politicians, and right-
wing agitators outside the goverment, such as Ioki. Their underlying demand was for very radical reform, captured in Ioki's slogan of a “Sh
wa restoration,” and it made the campaign against Minobe a threat to the Okada cabinet and, indirectly, to Hirohito. When the army and navy ministers mounted the rostrum at a convention of the Imperial Reservists, meeting in Tokyo in late August 1935, and publicly expressed solidarity with this radical anti-Minobe movement, the Okada cabinet realized that a crisis was at hand and it had to act.

To control the agitation, Okada was forced to issue a second statement clarifying the
kokutai
.
²¹
Based on a draft prepared by the Army Ministry and revised by civil officials after discussions with the vice ministers of the army and navy, this statement declared: “In our country ninety million subjects believe absolutely that the emperor exercises the sovereign powers of the state. On this point no one in government holds the slightest difference of opinion. Consequently the emperor organ theory, which is incompatible with this belief, must be eliminated.”
²²
In effect Okada twice officially proscribed Minobe's constitutional theory as an alien doctrine. After his second statement was issued, senior army leaders withdrew their support from further attempts to overthrow his cabinet. By this time the Ministry of Education had initiated the development of a new system of ethics based on Confucian social values, Buddhist metaphysics, and Shinto national chauvinism. A united front of the leading right-wing organizations formed, dedicated to saying “Out!” to American and European thought, and “In!” to the reformation of Japan's institutions on the basis of Imperial Way principles.

Doctrinally, one of Minobe's main crimes in the eyes of militarists and political opportunists was his (correct) assertion that the emperor's right of supreme command was not a responsibility of ministers of state. Its “sphere of application,” therefore, had to be carefully circumscribed by the Diet if Japan was not to have “dual
government,” with laws and ordinances deriving from separate sources. In extreme cases, he warned, military power could “control the government and there would be no end to the damage caused by militarism.”
²³

Minobe did not stop with only admonishing the military for interfering in national affairs. He also interpreted Article 3 of the Meiji constitution (“The emperor is sacred and inviolable”) to mean simply that the emperor was not by law required to suffer judgment for his actions in affairs of state. If the emperor could freely conduct politics of his own volition, “then he could not hope to be nonaccountable, and the unavoidable result would be to harm the dignity of the imperial house.” In other words Minobe assumed that in Japan the constitution imposed limits on the power of the monarch even though he alone was personally nonaccountable. Not wanting the emperor to be an “absolute” ruler saddled with political accountability, Minobe took a stand against the notion of direct imperial rule and the dictatorship that the army leaders were then advocating. Minobe further argued that imperial rescripts issued in matters of state were not “sacred and inviolable” but could be criticized by the Diet and the nation. Only those that pertained to moral issues and were unsigned by ministers of state were immune to criticism.
²⁴