Hirohito (1901–89)was Emperor of Japan from 1926 until his death. His role in relation to the Second World War is still highly controversial. In Allied wartime perceptions, as the supreme ruler of Japan he was the paramount symbol of Japanese nationalism, and the personification of Japan's participation with Germany and Italy in a ‘fascist conspiracy’ to dominate the world. The belief that Hirohito had led Japan into the war prompted demands after it ended that he be tried as a war criminal (see also Far East war crimes trials).

A quite different, and more accurate view, based mainly on research in the primary Japanese sources of the period, is that Hirohito personally opposed armed conflict with the Allies, that he was peripheral to his government's decisions in 1941, and that he was instrumental in bringing about Japan's surrender in 1945.

1. Japan's decision for war, 1941

As head of state Hirohito was technically responsible for Japan's final decision to start hostilities at the Imperial Conference on 1 December 1941, six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor which began the Pacific war. It is also the case that during hostilities Hirohito, in military uniform and astride a white horse, frequently exhorted his troops and the nation to prevail in battle. For most Japanese, he was a living god, as propounded in the myths of State Shintō, and the conflict was a holy war fought in his name.

However, in reality, Hirohito reigned but did not rule. The sweeping civil and military prerogatives ascribed to the emperor by the Meiji Constitution of 1889—itself a confused amalgam of absolute and limited or constitutional monarchy—had long since been delegated to his ministers of state and the army and navy chiefs of staff. Like the British monarch, at most he had ‘the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn’, but not, in practice, the right to govern. In keeping with the traditional role of past emperors, Hirohito's main function was to legitimize the policies of his government by formally declaring them as the ‘Imperial Will’. This he did simply through his silent attendance at the strictly ceremonial Imperial Conferences (gozen kaigi) which routinely followed the Liaison Conference (renraku kaigi) where, without the emperor present, leading civilian and military officials decided national policy. That the emperor would ever veto a decision arising from the Liaison Conference, or the cabinet, was unthinkable in pre-war Japan.

His actual powerlessness was all the greater by virtue of the fact that by 1940 the military had achieved political hegemony as a consequence of Japan's evolution into a ‘national defence state’ (kokubō kokka) since the Manchurian Incident of 1931 (see Manchukuo). This enabled the military not only to dominate the Liaison Conferences but also to manipulate the symbolic authority of the emperor so that imperial sanction of military policies would be automatic, through the ritual bestowal of the Imperial Will. There was, then, much irony in the remark of the prime minister, General Tōjō Hideki, at the end of the fateful Imperial Conference of 1 December 1941 that ‘Once His Majesty reaches a decision to commence hostilities, we will all strive to repay our obligations to him’ (by winning the war). Everyone present knew that the government, not the emperor, had decided upon war at the previous Liaison Conference of 27 November. The Imperial Will for war did not reflect the emperor's personal will in 1941.

Possessing considerable influence, as distinct from effective power, Hirohito had, in 1940 and 1941, privately endeavoured to avoid war with the Anglo-American powers by working behind the scenes at court, just as he had tried, without success, to avoid war with China in the Manchurian Incident and, again, in the China incident which commenced in July 1937. From the time of his visit to the UK as crown prince in 1921, he had always believed that peaceful co-operation with the UK and the USA should be the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy. It was on this account that he had opposed, to no avail, the Tripartite Pact, signed on 27 September 1940, and the stationing of Japanese troops in French Indo-China, which also began that month. Whereas the government had held that these initiatives would help deter the USA from opposing Japan's New Order in Asia (see Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere), Hirohito feared they would provoke greater American hostility towards Japan, resulting ultimately in war.

The application of American sanctions, in particular the embargo on oil exports to Japan on 1 August 1941, justified this apprehension. Accepting the military's argument that the Japanese–American negotiations in Washington (see USA, 1) could not be prolonged indefinitely lest Japan lose the capacity to defend the empire, the Liaison Conference of 3 September determined that Japan should commence war in October if the USA remained unshakeably opposed to the New Order in Asia. This deadline on diplomacy impelled Hirohito to warn the government of the folly of war at an Imperial Conference on 6 September. Breaking the convention of imperial silence on such occasions, he read aloud a poem written by his grandfather, Emperor Meiji, which he said expressed his personal wish for peace. The gesture, at best an indirect warning, did not dissuade the government ministers from their chosen course, however. It took the political crisis attending the resignation of the prime minister, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, and his cabinet, on 16 October, to erase the deadline, with Hirohito's blessing.

Although hostilities were averted at that time, renewed pressure from the military caused the Tōjō government on 2 November to impose a new deadline: the decision for war would be taken by the end of the month if the Washington negotiations were still deadlocked. Though now becoming resigned to war, Hirohito continued in vain at court to press for Japanese diplomatic concessions, to prevent it. However, once the ‘Hull note’ of 26 November from the US secretary of state, Cordell Hull, which was regarded as an American ultimatum, had completely unified the government, Hirohito had no choice but to give ritual sanction to its decision to commence hostilities with the Imperial Will on 1 December. The government's otherwise belligerent Imperial Rescript of 8 December, informing the Japanese people that war had begun, did at least express Hirohito's genuine personal regret that ‘it has been truly unavoidable and far from Our wishes that Our Empire had now been brought to cross swords with America and Britain’.

Thus, despite his public image of great power and unassailable authority, Hirohito was politically impotent to prevent the Tōjō government from launching a major war. Moreover, he was as peripheral to two other related developments as he had been to the decision for war itself. First, President Roosevelt's last-minute message to the emperor on 8 December, Japan time, was rejected by Tōjō, not by Hirohito. Second, Japan's final note to the USA, in effect a declaration of war, was not delivered by Japan's envoys in Washington until after the Pearl Harbor raid had commenced, despite the emperor's strong wish that it be communicated in advance of the attack, to conform with international norms. Although he had been informed of plans for the attack that autumn, he had not been personally involved in war preparations, as these had always been, and would remain, the exclusive responsibility of the general staffs.

It should be emphasized, however, that while Hirohito had no real political responsibility for the decision to go to war, this does not mean that he was an uncompromising pacifist. Like the men who committed Japan to total war in 1941, he was a nationalist who had accepted the legacy of empire as a legitimate fruit of Japan's historic quest for wealth and power. He wanted peace but not peace at all costs, if the price for peace was the liquidation of the empire. This is perhaps why he seems fatalistically to have accepted the apparent inevitability of war in late 1941, especially after the earlier imposition of American sanctions.

Another important factor in his reluctant compliance with the decision to make war was his long-standing wish to emulate the British model of constitutional monarchy. He was determined to refrain from interfering with the policies decided upon by his government for fear that otherwise Japan would succumb to ‘the bane of imperial despotism’, as he often put it. It was the particular misfortune of Hirohito that this self-imposed political constraint, bred of his constitutional idealism, unintentionally assisted those who upheld the public fiction of the emperor as absolute monarch. The result was that he had perforce to sanction a decision he himself opposed. His closest court advisers, notably Kido Kōichi (1889–1977), the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, contributed to this fiction by keeping Hirohito above the political fray of decision-making in order to preserve the traditional transcendental authority of the emperor.

Nor was Hirohito, for reasons of personality and temperament, the kind of man who would forcefully resist the tide of war. Conditioned by the rigid precedents and protocol of court life to play the symbolic role expected of him, and more at ease as a scientist in his laboratory studying marine biology than in the rough give and take of politics, he was less a leader than a follower of Japan's road to belligerency.

2. Japan's decision to surrender, 1945

In many pre-war discussions with General Sugiyama and Admiral Nagano Osami (1880–1947), the army and navy Chiefs of Staff respectively, Hirohito had repeatedly questioned whether Japan had the material means to carry out their proposed policies. While he was pleased by Japan's early conquests in the war, it is not surprising that as early as 1942 he fervently urged Tōjō to negotiate an end to the conflict, believing that Japan, overextended on land and at sea, was unlikely to endure a prolonged war of attrition.

As the war continued, and as Japan fell on to the defensive, Hirohito's desire to have it ended was well known to civilian and military leaders alike. Yet given the determination of the military to continue fighting, it required a combination of three developments for Hirohito to be able to end the war: the coalescence of a ‘peace party’ strong enough to support imperial intervention; a prime minister who would assist the emperor in this endeavour; and the obvious deterioration of Japan's position in the war to the point where surrender was absolutely necessary to save the nation and the monarchy from obliteration.

This combination did not materialize until the spring of 1945. By then a ‘peace party’, including former prime ministers, diplomats, and members of the imperial family, had been formed. In Admiral Suzuki, formerly a Grand Chamberlain, Japan had a prime minister who could co-operate closely with Hirohito in orchestrating an imperial intervention. By then, also, the Allied blockade and incessant bombing (see strategic air offensives, 3), and the loss of the Philippines and Okinawa, clearly signified the nation's impending defeat.

Whether Hirohito could have intervened sooner than he did and thereby spare Japan the trauma of atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August, not to mention the USSR's declaration of war on 8 August, is doubtful. Hirohito himself favoured acceptance of the Allies' Potsdam Proclamation of 26 July (see TERMINAL) demanding the immediate unconditional surrender of Japan's armed forces. But the government's decision at the behest of the military to ignore the demand held sway, resulting in the calamitous events of early August. On 9 August, with the government completely immobilized by conflict between advocates of surrender and the military, Suzuki took the unprecedented step at an Imperial Conference of asking the emperor to decide the issue.

Whereas in 1941 his self-image as a constitutional monarch had prevented him from interfering with the government's unanimous decision for war, the imminent destruction of Japan now resolved him to state his desire to surrender. Even then a second imperial intervention was required to end the war, at the decisive Imperial conference of 14 August, after the military had continued to reject surrender without clear Allied assurances that the monarchy would be retained. In an Imperial Rescript broadcast the next day Hirohito urged the nation to ‘endure the unendurable’ of defeat. Unlike 1941, the Imperial Will for peace, which the people obeyed, represented the emperor's personal will.

3. The aftermath of war

The war had resulted in immense suffering and loss of life throughout the Asian-Pacific region. Many atrocities had been committed by Japanese forces against Chinese civilians and Allied prisoners-of-war and civilians in conquered territories. Hirohito had been informed of some of these outrages, but his attempts to end them went unheeded. Perhaps it was the thought that he was morally, though not politically, responsible for a war which Japan had fought so destructively in his name that caused Hirohito, in his meeting with General MacArthur on 27 September 1945, to offer to take personal responsibility for everything Japan had done in the war. MacArthur, however, refused the offer, intending instead to use Hirohito's residual authority to assist the democratic reform policies of the occupation. For example, the imperial promulgation of a new constitution, in effect from 3 May 1947, stripped the emperor of all theoretical powers and redefined him as a ‘symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power’. Similarly, after the occupation proscribed State Shintō to demystify the emperor, Hirohito repudiated his so-called divinity in an Imperial Rescript on 1 January 1946. Since, as a scientist, he had never believed in the myth, he was glad to take this symbolic step, which also reflected his long-held desire to function as a secular constitutional monarch. He also undertook extensive post-war tours around Japan, to bring the monarchy closer to the people.

Hirohito was therefore not tried for war crimes. Rather, he co-operated with the occupation in helping to adapt the monarchy to democracy along the lines of constitutional monarchy in the UK. he continued to encourage this evolution of the Japanese imperial institution for the rest of his life. Yet Hirohito never fully justified his role in the war. When he died on 7 January 1989 after a reign of 64 years (the longest on reliable record in Japanese history), many people around the world still condemned him as a war criminal. A small minority in Japan did so, too, although Japanese public opinion polls from 1945 onwards consistently indicated strong popular support for him.

Stephen Large

Bibliography

Bix, H. P. , Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (London, 2001).
Large, S. S. , Emperor Hirohito and Shōwa Japan: A Political Biography (London, 1992).

Hirohito

Hirohito (1901-1989) was the 124th emperor of Japan. He reigned during a period of internal turmoil, foreign expansion, international war, and national defeat, and presided over the transformation of the Japanese monarchy into a purely symbolic institution. As the occupant of Japan's throne for 63 years, he was the longest living monarch in modern history.

Childhood and Education

Hirohito was born on April 29, 1901. He was the first son of Crown Prince Yoshihito, who later became the Taisho emperor, and the grandson of Mutsuhito, the Meiji emperor. Following long-established custom, Hirohito was separated from his parents shortly after birth. He was cared for under the guardianship of a vice admiral in the imperial navy until November 1904, when he returned to the Akasaka Palace, his parents' official residence.

Even from early years, Hirohito was trained to act with the dignity, reserve, and sense of responsibility his future role would require. He grew into a shy and grave young boy. In April 1908 he was enrolled at the Gakushuin (Peers School) in a special class of 12 boys, among them two of his imperial cousins. The head of the school was Gen. Maresuke Nogi, a celebrated soldier of the Russo-Japanese War. He took a personal interest in the education of the young prince and attempted to instill in him respect for the virtues of stoicism, hard work, and devotion to the nation.

Appointed Heir to Throne

Hirohito was appointed heir apparent on September 9, 1912, shortly after the death of his grandfather Mutsushito and the accession of his father Yoshihito to the throne. Hirohito lost his mentor when Nogi and his wife committed ritual suicide on the day of Mutsuhito's funeral. His education was continued under another military hero, Adm. Heihachiro Togo, who had won the victory over the Russian navy in 1905. But Hirohito never became as close to Togo as he had been to Nogi. In his studies he also had little patience with his tutor in history, who taught that the early myth of the founding of Japan by the sun-goddess was historical fact. Skeptical by nature and scientific in his interest, he found natural history more to his liking. Under the guidance of his natural-history tutor, who remained a lifelong mentor, he began to develop an interest in marine biology, a field in which he became an acknowledged expert.

Crown Prince and Regent

On February 4, 1918, Hirohito became engaged to Princess Nagako, daughter of Prince Kuniyoshi Kuninomiya. Aritomo Yamagata and others raised objections to the match on the grounds that Nagako was descended from the daimyos of Satsuma, who had a strain of color blindness. The defect, they said, would taint the imperial line. But the imperial wedding finally took place on January 26, 1924. The imperial couple later had five daughters, the first born in December 1926, and two sons, the first born in December 1933.

In March 1921 Hirohito, accompanied by a large retinue, set off for a tour of Europe. The event was unprecedented, for it was the first time a crown prince of Japan had visited abroad. Although Hirohito traveled in France, the Netherlands, and Italy, his visit to England made the deepest impression on him. He was attracted by the freedom and informality of the English royal family. On Hirohito's first day at Buckingham Palace, King George V paid him an unexpected breakfast visit in suspenders and carpet slippers, and Edward, Prince of Wales, played golf with him and accompanied him on a round of official gatherings.

On November 25, 1921, shortly after his return to Japan, Hirohito was appointed to serve as regent for his father, who had begun to show increasing signs of mental derangement. In December 1923 Hirohito escaped an attempt on his life by a young radical.

Emperor of a Restless Nation

Hirohito acceded to the throne on December 25, 1926, and his formal enthronement took place in accord with ancient rituals in November 1928. He took as his reign name Showa ("Enlightened Peace"), and he was formally known as Showa Tenno.

The choice of reign name proved highly ironic for, shortly after Hirohito became emperor, Japan's relations with the outside world began to deteriorate. In 1927 Japanese army officers arranged the assassination of Marshal Chang Tso-lin, warlord of Manchuria, in hopes of provoking a Japanese takeover of the area. The young emperor, angered at the event, urged Premier Giichi Tanaka to discover and punish the culprits. He was equally indignant in September 1931, when elements in the Japanese army engineered the occupation of southern Manchuria under their own initiative. Encouraged by advisers like Count Nobuaki Makino and Prince Kimmochi Saionji, the Emperor privately urged moderation and caution on the army as it continued to deepen Japan's military involvement on the Asian mainland.

The Manchurian incident ushered in a period of profound domestic unrest. Dissident young military officers, often with the covert encouragement of their superiors, allied with civilian right-wing radicals to plot a series of unsuccessful coups d'etat and a number of successful assassinations. They hoped to overthrow party cabinets in order to establish a military regime that could govern in the name of "direct imperial rule."

Hirohito, however, believed himself to be a thoroughly human monarch, bound by the constitution his grandfather had promulgated in 1889. He saw himself as an organ of state rather than a personal autocrat and believed that the leaders of government should be men of moderation and non-militaristic in outlook.

During the military insurrection of February 26, 1936, when elements of the First Division occupied large areas of downtown Tokyo and assassination bands murdered many leading public officials, the Emperor urged swift suppression and punishment of the mutinous soldiers and the assassins. The uprising was crushed, and a number of ranking generals who were thought to have encouraged the rebels were forced into retirement.

Road to War

The country nevertheless continued its drift toward war. In July 1937 hostilities with China broke out. During the late 1930s Hirohito's advisers in the palace bureaucracy had urged him to remain aloof from direct intervention in politics lest he compromise the position of the imperial family. The Emperor followed this advice, giving his consent to whatever policies the increasingly belligerent governments decided upon.

There is every evidence that the Emperor felt uneasy about the unfolding of events, particularly after 1940. He did not favor the alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but he made no effort to oppose it. Similarly, he had grown distrustful of the judgments of the military leaders who kept assuring him of a quick end to the war in China. But when the final decision on war with the United States was made on September 6, 1941, his opposition was confined to an oblique reference to one of his grandfather's poems, which expressed hope for peace.

During the war Hirohito refused to leave the imperial palace at Tokyo, even after air raids began to demolish the city and fires destroyed many buildings on the palace grounds. He wished to share the hardships of his subjects.

Japan Defeated

By the summer of 1945 it was clear to most informed public officials, including many military leaders, that defeat was inevitable. But the decision to surrender did not come until after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At a historic imperial conference on August 9, 1945, the Emperor made clear his determination to "endure the unendurable" and expressed his opinion in favor of surrendering to the Allies.

Following Japan's formal surrender in September 1945, there was much speculation about whether the Emperor would be punished as a war criminal. Hirohito himself frequently expressed his willingness to abdicate as a token of his responsibility for the war. But the American authorities, including Gen. Douglas MacArthur, decided that it would better serve the goals of domestic stability and internal reform of Japan to let him remain as ruler. On January 1, 1946, however, the Emperor once and for all gave up any claims to being a sacred monarch by issuing a rescript that denied his divinity as a descendant of the sun-goddess.

Emperor's Life as a Mortal

During the years of the occupation and afterward, every effort was made to "democratize" the throne by having the Emperor mingle with the people. At first, the Emperor was inept and ill at ease when he met his subjects. He won the nickname "Mr. Is-that-so?" because of his perfunctory comments on visits to factories and schools. Even though he was personally aloof and somewhat awkward in public, the Emperor nevertheless became a popular figure. Pictures of the imperial family and stories of their activities became steady grist for weekly magazine and newspaper copy.

A respected marine biologist with a number of books on that subject to his credit, the Emperor lived a modest, sober, and retiring life when not engaged in official functions. His son Crown Prince Akihito married a commoner in 1959, and the line of succession was assured through their son Prince Hiro. In 1972 Hirohito traveled to Europe and was met with hostile demonstrations. A 1975 trip to the United States resulted in a more friendly reception. Hirohito died on January 7, 1989, at the age of 87. Symbolic of his interest in science and in modernizing his country, Hirohito reportedly was buried with his microscope and a Mickey Mouse watch.

Further Reading

The most complete biography of Hirohito in English is by Leonard Mosley, Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (1966). A journalistic sketch of Hirohito was written during the war by Willard Price, entitled Japan and the Son of Heaven (1945). Reading on the troubled years of the 1930s is provided by Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (1961), and James B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy (1966). The Emperor's role in the surrender decision is related in Robert J. C. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender (1954).

In 1996, Time published two retrospective articles by Carl Posey about Hirohito's life: "The God-Emperor Who Became a Man" and "From Militarist to Beloved Monarch." Time, Oct. 21, 1996.

Additional Sources

Large, Stephen S. Emperors of the Rising Sun: Three Biographies, Kodansha International, 1997 [biographies of Hirohito, his father, and his grandfather]. □

Hirohito

Born: April 29, 1901
Tokyo, Japan
Died: January 7, 1989
Tokyo, Japan
Japanese emperor

Hirohito was the 124th emperor of Japan. He reigned during a period of internal unrest, foreign expansion, international war, and national defeat. As the occupant of Japan's throne for sixty-three years, he was the longest living ruler in modern history.

Childhood and education

Hirohito was born on April 29, 1901. He was the first son of Crown Prince Yoshihito, who later became the Taisho emperor, and the grandson of Mutsuhito, the Meiji emperor. Following long-established custom, Hirohito was separated from his parents shortly after birth. He was cared for by a vice admiral in the imperial (of the empire) navy until November 1904, when he returned to the Akasaka Palace, his parents' official residence. Even after his return to the palace, he was only allowed to see his mother once a week and hardly ever spent time with his father.

From early on, Hirohito was trained to act with the dignity, reserve, and sense of responsibility his future role would require and he grew into a shy and serious young boy. In April 1908 he was enrolled at the Gakushuin (Peers School) in a special class of twelve boys. The head of the school was General Maresuke Nogi, a celebrated soldier of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05; a conflict with Russia over Manchuria and Korea). He took a personal interest in the education of the young prince and attempted to introduce him to respect the virtues of hard work, the importance of devotion to the nation, and the practice of stoicism (the ability to ignore pleasure or pain).

In 1912 Mutsishito died and paved the way for Hirohito's father Yoshihito to take the throne. Hirohito then began an intense study of natural history. Under the guidance of his natural history tutor, he developed an interest in marine biology, a field in which he became an acknowledged expert.

Crown prince

On February 4, 1918, Hirohito became engaged to Princess Nagako, daughter of Prince Kuniyoshi Kuninomiya. The imperial wedding finally took place on January 26, 1924. The imperial couple later had five daughters, the first born in December 1926, and two sons, the first born in December 1933.

In March 1921 Hirohito, accompanied by a large group of attendants, set off for a tour of Europe. Never before had a crown prince of Japan visited countries abroad. Although Hirohito traveled in France, the Netherlands, and Italy, his visit to England made the deepest impression on him. He was attracted by the freedom and informality (without ceremony) of the English royal family.

On November 25, 1921, shortly after his return to Japan, Hirohito was appointed to serve as regent (acting ruler) for his father, who had begun to show increasing signs of mental instability. In December 1923 Hirohito escaped an attempt on his life by a young radical.

Emperor of a restless nation

Hirohito took the throne on December 25, 1926. He took as his reign name Showa ("Enlightened Peace"), and he was formally known as Showa Tenno. However, the choice of reign name would not hold true. Shortly after Hirohito became emperor, Japan's relations with the outside world began to fall apart. In 1927 Japanese army officers, without the agreement of Emperor Hirohito, sparked conflict with Manchuria and later occupied parts of that country. Hirohito soon found his military deeply involved on the Asian mainland.

The Manchurian incident ushered in a period of serious unrest within Japan. Young military officers plotted a series of unsuccessful takeovers as well as a number of successful assassinations (secretly planned murders). They hoped to overthrow parts of the government in order to establish a military regime that could govern in the name of "direct imperial rule." In other words, Hirohito would still be called emperor and would be the head of the government, but the military would actually be in control. Hirohito, however, saw himself as part of the state rather than a sole ruler and believed that the leaders of government should be men of moderation and nonmilitaristic in outlook.

During the military revolt of February 26, 1936, elements of the First Division occupied large areas of downtown Tokyo, and assassination bands murdered many leading public officials. Emperor Hirohito urged swift end to the revolt and punished those involved. The uprising was crushed, and a number of ranking generals who were thought to have encouraged the rebels were forced into retirement.

Road to war

Nevertheless the country continued to drift toward war. In July 1937 hostilities with China broke out. During the late 1930s Hirohito's advisers in the palace urged him to stay away from direct involvement in politics or be forced to compromise the position of the imperial family. The emperor followed this advice, and agreed to whatever policies the governments decided upon.

There is every evidence that the emperor felt uneasy about the unfolding of events, particularly after 1940. He did not favor the alliance with Germany and Italy in World War II (1939–45), but he made no effort to oppose it. Similarly, he had grown distrustful of the judgments of the military leaders who kept assuring him of a quick end to the war in China. But when the final decision on war with the United States was made on September 6, 1941, he barely opposed it.

During the war Hirohito refused to leave the imperial palace at Tokyo, even after air raids began to demolish the city and fires destroyed many buildings on the palace grounds. He wished to share the hardships of his subjects.

Japan defeated

By the summer of 1945 it was clear that defeat was at hand. But the decision to surrender did not come until after atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At a historic imperial conference on August 9, 1945, the emperor made clear his opinion in favor of surrendering to the allied powers led by the United States.

Following Japan's formal surrender in September 1945, there was much discussion about whether Emperor Hirohito should be punished as a war criminal. Hirohito himself frequently expressed his willingness to step down as a token of his responsibility for the war. But the U.S. authorities, including General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), decided that it would better serve the goals of Japanese stability to let him remain as ruler. On January 1, 1946, however, the emperor once and for all gave up any claims to being a sacred ruler by issuing a law that denied his god-like status as a descendant of the sun goddess.

Emperor's life as a mortal

During the years of the occupation and afterward, every effort was made to "democratize" the throne by having the emperor mingle with the people. Even though he was personally distant and somewhat awkward in public, the emperor nevertheless became a popular figure. Pictures of the imperial family and stories of their activities became a steady part of weekly magazine and newspaper copy.

A respected marine biologist with a number of books on that subject to his credit, Emperor Hirohito lived a modest, sober, and retired life when not involved in official functions. In 1972 he traveled to Europe and was met with hostile demonstrations. A 1975 trip to the United States resulted in a more friendly reception. Hirohito died on January 7, 1989, at the age of eighty-seven. Symbolic of his interest in science and in modernizing his country, Hirohito reportedly was buried with his microscope and a Mickey Mouse watch.

For More Information

Bix, Herbert P. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

Hoyt, Edwin Palmer. Hirohito: The Emperor and the Man. New York: Praeger, 1992.

Large, Stephen S. Emperors of the Rising Sun: Three Biographies. New York: Kodansha International, 1997.

Mosley, Leonard. Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

Severns, Karen. Hirohito. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.

HIROHITO

Hirohito was the emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989. His reign encompassed a period of Japanese

militarism that resulted in Japan's participation in world war ii, the United States' dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the United States' military occupation of Japan following Japan's defeat. After World War II, Hirohito's authority changed, and he was reduced to a ceremonial figure.

Hirohito was born in Tokyo on April 29, 1901, and was educated in Japan. He became emperor on December 25, 1926, at a time when Japanese parliamentary government suggested that democracy and international cooperation would continue to grow. However, forces within the military sought to dominate the government and embark on a course of expansionism within Asia. Though he had private misgivings about the rise of militarism, Hirohito took no action to stop the generals. His advisers were concerned that imperial opposition would lead to the military overthrow of the monarchy.

As the 124th direct descendant of Japan's first emperor, Jimmu, Hirohito was considered sacred and was referred to as Tenno Heika, meaning "son of heaven." Because Hirohito was unwilling to exercise his divine authority against the military, the Japanese army invaded China in 1937 and in 1940 joined in a military alliance with the Axis powers. The alliance led to Japan's participation in World War II and its attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States on December 7, 1941.

The attack on the United States led to severe consequences for Japanese Americans. On February 19, 1942, President franklin d. roosevelt issued executive order No. 9066, forcing the relocation of all 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast (including 70,000 U.S. citizens) to detention camps in places such as Jerome, Arkansas, and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Roosevelt issued the order after U.S. military leaders, worried about a Japanese invasion, argued that national security required such drastic action.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the forced relocation in korematsu v. united states, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944). Justice hugo l. black noted that curtailing the rights of a single racial group is constitutionally suspect, but in this case military necessity justified the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. In retrospect historians have characterized the removal and detention as the most drastic invasion of individual civil rights by the government in U.S. history.

Hirohito gradually became more open, within the inner circles of government, about his desire to end the war, especially after the United States inflicted numerous military defeats on Japan. But many members of the military wished to fight until the very end. With the United States' dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Hirohito pushed for the surrender of Japan. On August 15 he broadcast Japan's surrender to the Allied forces. He broadcast to the Japanese people additional messages that were credited for the smooth transfer of power from Japan to the U.S. military occupation force, under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur.

Although Hirohito was implicated in Japanese war plans, he was exonerated in the war crimes trials of 1946–48. He had changed the importance of the monarchy in 1946, when he publicly renounced his divine authority. The 1947 constitution that was written for Japan by MacArthur and his advisers had transformed Hirohito from a sovereign with supreme authority into a "symbol of the state," and placed control of the government in the hands of elected officials. Hirohito had endorsed the change, which reduced the emperor to a ceremonial figure.

Hirohito embraced the ceremonial role. He traveled widely and became more accessible. He also pursued his interest in marine biology. He died on January 7, 1989.

further readings

Bix, Herbert P. 2000. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York, N.Y.: HarperCollins.

Executive Order No. 9066. 1942. Federal Register 7:1407.

cross-references

Japanese American Evacuation Cases.

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

Hirohito (b. 29 Apr. 1904, d. 7 Jan. 1989). 124th Emperor of Japan 1926–89 After World War II, the question of responsibility for Japan's decision to attack its neighbours was to remain a source of controversy for Emperor Hirohito and much attention has focused on the early years of his reign. After attending the peers' school, Gakushûin, he took a tour of Europe in 1921 to see for himself the role of constitutional monarchy in Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, and Italy. In the same year Hirohito was appointed regent because of the illness of his father. Known as the Shôwa Emperor, the extent to which Hirohito could exercise influence over political developments in Japan at this time is a matter of debate, although it seems clear that the removal of his support for Tanaka Giichi's Cabinet was instrumental in its downfall. Moreover, his forthright opposition to the coup attempted by army officers in the 26 February Incident (1936) did much to facilitate its suppression. Nevertheless, the imperial house has provided evidence that Emperor Hirohito was unable to block Japanese aggression until he insisted on the surrender in August 1945. After the surrender, Hirohito became integral to the US occupation's successful programme for the democratization of Japan. Crucial to this process was his renunciation of divinity in his New Year radio message of 1946. Under the new Japanese constitution, the Emperor's sovereignty was made subject to that of the people. In private life Hirohito avoided much controversy, devoting much of his time to marine biology.

Hirohito , 1901–89, emperor of Japan. He was made regent in 1921 and succeeded his father, Yoshihito (the Taishō emperor), in 1926. He married (1924) Princess Nagako Kuni (1903–2000); a son and heir, Prince Akihito , was born in 1933. For 20 years he reigned as sovereign as Japan went to war in China and the Pacific, and in 1945 he made an unprecedented radio broadcast announcing Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies. Under Allied occupation, he retained the throne, but was transformed from imperial sovereign to democratic symbol. The constitution of 1946 made him "symbol of the state and of the unity of the people," and he became familiar as a marine biologist, family figure, and greeter of foreign heads of state. His Showa ( "enlightened peace" ) reign was the longest and one of the most turbulent in Japan's history.

Bibliography: See D. Irokawa, The Age of Hirohito (1995); H. P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2000).

Hirohito (1901–89) emperor of Japan (1926–89) during World War II, though the military controlled the government and conducted the war in his name. It was Hirohito, however, who eventually brought about the peace by intervention in a government deadlock and a broadcast to the nation (1945) announcing Japan's surrender. After the war he was retained on the throne in a purely ceremonial capacity.

Hirohito was the longest reigning monarch in Japan's history, and the first Japanese crown prince and the first reigning Japanese monarch to travel abroad.

Hirohito (born Michinomiya Hirohito) (1901–89) Emperor of Japan (1926–89). Regarded as the 124th direct descendant of Jimmu, he ruled as a divinity and generally refrained from involvement in politics. In 1945, however, he was instrumental in obtaining his government's agreement to the unconditional surrender which ended World War II. He was obliged to renounce his divinity and become a constitutional monarch by the terms of the constitution established in 1946.

Hirohito (1901–89) Emperor of Japan (1926–89). He was the first Crown Prince to travel abroad (1921). Although Hirohito generally exercised little political power during his reign, he persuaded the Japanese government to surrender to the Allies in 1945. Under the new constitution of 1946, he lost all power and renounced the traditional claim of the Japanese emperors to be divine. He was succeeded by his son Akihito.

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