Hirohito

Hirohito (1901–1989), emperor of Japan from December 1926 until his death in January 1989.A timid man, preferring marine biology to affairs of state, Hirohito reigned over but did not directly rule Japan; from early in his reign, the military increasingly held sway and committed Japan to war in his name. Hirohito unwittingly contributed to this outcome: as a constitutional monarch he always felt obliged formally to sanction the government's aggressive policies, however much he disagreed with them.

Hirohito privately but unsuccessfully opposed Japan's undeclared war with China, beginning in July 1937, and Japan's entry into the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940, fearing that this would lead Japan into an unwanted war with the United States and Great Britain. However, he was a nationalist, not the pacifist some accounts imply, and when the United States ended oil exports to Japan on 1 August 1941 in retaliation for Japan's military occupation of French Indochina, Hirohito eventually accepted that war was inevitable. That Japan formally declared war on the United States only after it attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 had not been his intention.

During the Pacific War, even as he publicly exhorted his countrymen to sacrifice their lives for victory, Hirohito instructed Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki to work for peace. Ironically, Hirohito may have prolonged the war, first by protecting the die‐hard Tōjō, upon whom he relied politically, from critics until Tōjō finally resigned in July 1944 following the fall of Saipan; and second, by advocating the last “decisive” Battle of Okinawa, which he hoped would strengthen Japan's position in any forthcoming peace negotiations.

Ultimately, when the war was clearly lost, but with the government deadlocked over whether to accept the Allies' Potsdam Proclamation (26 July 1945) calling for Japan's “unconditional surrender,” Hirohito personally intervened and Japan capitulated 15 August 1945. In September, when he first met Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander in Japan, Hirohito offered to take responsibility for the war. However, he was exempted from standing trial as a war criminal and retained on the throne so that the occupation could use his authority in the demilitarization and democratization of Japan. The new 1947 Constitution stripped him of all prerogatives, leaving a purely ceremonial role.

Despite Hirohito's formal apology for the war, made years later (1975) during a state visit to the United States, many Americans regard him as a controversial figure. However, there is no evidence that Hirohito knew in advance of, or sanctioned, the great many atrocities committed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.
[See also Japan, Peace Treaty with; Pearl Harbor, Attack on; Potsdam Conference; World War II, U.S. Air Operations in: The Air War Against Japan; World War II, U.S. Naval Operations in: The Pacific.]

Bibliography

Toshiaki Kawahara , Hirohito and His Times: A Japanese Perspective, 1990.
Stephen S. Large , Emperor Hirohito and Shōwa Japan: A Political Biography, 1992.

Stephen S. Large