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Emperor Hirohito: life of the week
00:42:02
Christopher Harding explores the life story of the emperor who reigned over Japan during World War Two and the decades of postwar transition that followed
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- [00:01]
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- [01:46]
Dr. Christopher Harding
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [03:25]
Rob Attar
Compared to the other wartime leaders, such as Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito still seems to be something of an obscure figure. Why do you think that is?
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Dr. Christopher Harding
I think of all the wartime leaders, probably Hirohito is the hardest actually to describe straightforwardly as a leader. He was in this, I think, quite strange position under Japan's constitution, where he reigned by, but he didn't actually rule. So there's this odd thing. Japan's constitution dates from the late 19th century, where if you drew a picture of it, you know, a kind of childlike picture with arrows pointing in various directions, you'd have the Cabinet, the Diet, the military, the judiciary, all essentially pointing upwards to Hirohito as the Emperor at the top. But the Japanese Emperor was also believed to be descended from the gods, and it was far, far beneath him to be involved in the everyday nitty gritty of running the country. So technically, he was in charge of everything. In reality, he was fairly aloof from it. And this became a real problem, actually, for Japan during the war because it was never really clear who was leading its policy. Particularly, you know, in those closing months, we'll probably get to when Japan was under enormous pressure to surrender, but no one could agree on whether to do it and how to do it, et cetera. And I think it comes down to that, really. Yeah, that really ambiguous position that Hirohito was in.
- [04:45]
Rob Attar
Would it in any way be comparable? And I appreciate there are lots of differences to the role of, say, a British constitutional monarch, someone like George VI in the Second World War, in terms of the kind of power and authority that he had.
- [04:57]
Dr. Christopher Harding
Yes, to an extent, there's a good comparison to be made there. I think the difference in Japan was that under the constitution, Hirohito technically was in charge of all the decisions, you know, including over the armed forces. So if you even just think about the structure of Japan's armed forces, principally the navy and the army, the only place where they met, where they had a common leadership, was in the figure of the Emperor. So I suppose slightly Unlike the British situation, in theory, he could be gone to for a decision and they would have these things called imperial conferences, where he would preside over all the decision makers around him. And now and again, they would be hoping for some kind of decision from him, some kind of indication, you know, of how he was feeling. And I think it really contributed to a very awkward situation for Japan. At least in the British case, the structures of power were fairly clear. In Japan, it was just a lot more muddy. And in a wartime situation in particular, that really showed, I think.
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Rob Attar
Now, if we could take the story back a few decades. Hirohito was born in 1901. What can you tell us about the state of Japan at the start of the 20th century?
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Dr. Christopher Harding
So, I suppose when Hirohito was born, Japan had been through three or four decades of really rapid modernization. So it had opened up to the west in the 1850s and 1860s, sort of gunboat diplomacy, really. You know, the American, later the British, the French, Russians and others, forcing Japan to open up to trade and to diplomacy. And the Japanese response to that, I think, was informed by looking at what happened to China just across the water, where the Chinese had been perhaps a little bit aloof, a bit snobbish about dealing with the West. And the result had been aggression from places like Britain and other countries, famously, you know, ending up in the Opium Wars. The Japanese decided to take a different approach, which was to say, at the very least, we need weaponry on the level that Western countries have it, which means we need industry on the level that they have it, which means, in turn, we need a whole range of modernizing efforts to try and kind of bring us up to the standard of Great Britain and the us. So that had all gone on in the final decades of the 19th century, most of it under Hirohito's grandfather, the Meiji Emperor. He became a real symbol of this rapid period of modernisation. And so by the time Hirohito was born in 1901, that process is largely complete. Japan is already a major world player, by far the most powerful country in Asia. I suppose it's underlined that point a few Years before, in 1894-95, winning a war over China. And when Hirohito was a toddler in 1904-5, Japan has this famous victory over Russia. So you could say it's a powerful and successful country at this point.
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Rob Attar
What kind of upbringing did Hirohito have then, and did it prepare him sufficiently for the role he was to take on?
- [07:48]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I always Think he must have had quite a strange upbringing. So as a child, in the morning he would be woken up and he would go and say his prayers. But he's in this really interesting situation. I mean, you know, plenty of children all around the world saying their prayers in the morning or at night. But when he's saying his prayers, he's not just talking to the gods, he's talking to his own ancestors, talking to his own family, you know, in that Japanese belief that the Imperial family in Japan is descended from the gods. So a slightly strange aspect of his life there, I suppose, and we know that that had an effect because later in life, he never wanted to be an authoritarian monarch. He always shied away from that. But he had a really deep sense, I think, through his life, of that responsibility. So the Japanese imperial line is the oldest in the world. It goes back at least as far as the 6th century and possibly much further back than that. So Hirohito grew up with this really strong connection to his human ancestors and potentially to his divine ancestors as well. He was, I suppose, slightly sheltered, you know, grows up in the Imperial palace in Tokyo. We know that he was really interested in science and marine life. He had a little laboratory set up in the grounds of the Imperial Palace. But he seems also to have, I think, grown into a fairly serious character. He didn't drink or smoke. He wanted to keep himself physically fit for the role that he was going to have. And although his grandfather, the Meiji Emperor, who died in 1912, was this, as I say, this symbol of a successful period of modernisation for Japan, Japan, Hirohito's own father, the Taisho Emperor, who reigned from 1912 to 1926, was physically and mentally quite infirm. So I think that also had an impact on Hirohito and how he felt he really had to keep himself in. In good shape as far as possible growing up.
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Rob Attar
So Hirohito becomes emperor, as you say, on the death of his father in 1926, and it's not long after that that Japan begins to embark on a kind of expansionist, militaristic policies that would culminate in war with China. From 19. Do we have any sense of whether Hirohito supported policies like this and if not, whether he tried to do anything about it?
- [09:57]
Dr. Christopher Harding
So you put your finger on the biggest question, I think, surrounding the life of Hirohito. The difficulty we have is that either he didn't keep a personal diary or write many personal letters, or he did do these things, but then they were Destroyed or hidden away, perhaps for his own protection after the war. After the war ended, briefly, because obviously we want to talk about the period before, but after the war ended, there was a massive project around the Imperial family in Japan to retrospectively protect them and protect their reputation from the sorts of things that Japan got involved in. Right. In the 1930s and 1940s. I think that makes it harder for us historians to really know. So I think there are broadly two camps amongst historians thinking about Hirohito. Some would say actually, yes, he supported this expansionist agenda in the 1930s all the way through to Pearl Harbour in 1941. On the day of that attack, he came down dressed in his Imperial Navy uniform, apparently quite proud of what had happened and really on a high. So he's supporting all that, really, until it started to go badly wrong, at which point he was maybe having doubts or pulling back or brutally seeking to cover himself and the Imperial family. The other way of looking at this is to say actually he saw himself and you made that connection with Britain or that comparison with Britain, that actually he saw himself as a constitutional monarch, perhaps along British lines. Interestingly, Hirohita was the very first Japanese emperor ever to leave Japan. And he went to Britain and he was great friends for a while, at least with King George and the future King Edward. So we think at least some historians would say that that was his role. What he really wanted to do was have his politicians, his army men, his advisors make the decisions, come to him for his blessing if necessary, but otherwise not to involve him. So I think there are those two camps. I suspect there always will be, because we don't have enough source material to really judge it in the final analysis.
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Rob Attar
And on that point about blessing, did Hirohito have to sign off on policies like this, even if that may have been a bit like a rubber stamping, like a British monarch would do? Did he still have to have some kind of active involvement in policies such as war and expansionism?
- [12:12]
Dr. Christopher Harding
Yes. So they have these Imperial conferences where all the advisors would gather together, including Hirohito as well. But they are quite formal occasions, and there are all sorts of ways in which those could be manipulated or subverted. So to give you just a couple of examples, what would often happen is there would be a rhetoric around Hirohito that the emperor shouldn't be bothered with too much detail or with, you know, with overly difficult decisions. And so people were quite careful about what they would present him with in terms of information. So if you imagine that you have Perhaps civilian politicians disagreeing with, particularly the Imperial Japanese army, who often seem to be more hawkish in this period. Certain elements of the army, in any case, than, for example, the Navy. If you have those sorts of tensions. On the basis of those tensions, decisions would be made about what Hirohito would be told, or how his opinion would be sought, or in what kind of language from the other side. Hirohito. He didn't want to intervene too powerfully in these conversations. So he would often take kind of roundabout ways of making his feelings known. To give you just two examples. One, he would sometimes ask a pointed question where the subtext of that question was, this isn't what I want to hear, or this isn't going the way I want it to go. He would also sometimes employ a strategic silence, which, if any of our listeners who've been to Japan or know about Japanese culture, sometimes a strategic silence is a powerful way of disagreeing with something, and the meaning of it is generally understood. So I think from both sides, these formal occasions where decisions were being made could be manipulated. And there was also room for nuance and even a lack of clarity.
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Rob Attar
I think now we'll come on to talk about what happened in 1945 a bit later. Do we know of any other examples where Hirohito actively intervened in the 1930s and 40s to challenge any policies that were being made or any actions were being taken?
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Dr. Christopher Harding
I think probably an important point in the 1930s is February 26, 1936, where there's an attempted coup in Japan. So briefly, the context to this kind of thing is what would often happen in Japan. If we think by the time you get to the 1930s, emperors in Japan haven't actually run the country for almost a thousand years. You've had warlords, shogunates, various other forms of government, all of which pay a kind of lip service to the Imperial family as the ultimate source of legitimacy in Japan. Right. And often what would happen is if some upstart wanted to take some new direction or seize power there, they would say, in the name of His Majesty, I'm doing this. And often you would have slogans which would invoke the authority of the emperor. And this is exactly what happened. In February 1936, there is an attempted coup led by around 1400 soldiers from the Imperial Japanese army in Tokyo, take over the Diet building their equivalent of a parliament, assassinate a number of their enemies, and they have this slogan, revere the Emperor, destroy the traitors. What they really wanted was basically to overthrow civilian politics. In Japan to have a kind of military coup, have the army in the driving seat, have a more assertive foreign policy abroad. And Hirohito is really, really worried at this point about what might happen. And so he signals his displeasure. But that isn't enough for these coup leaders. It doesn't persuade them in the end to stand down. They're there and things are looking extremely dangerous. So in the end, he has to take a further step of labelling them insurgents and commanding other parts of the armed forces to threaten and crush the rebellion. So you have this odd situation where you have navy ships being sailed into Tokyo Bay, pointing their guns at members of the Imperial Japanese army, you know, to persuade them to stand down. So it's a really serious moment, but it's a moment, a rare moment, I think, at which Hirohito does manage to put his foot down and he does manage to get this coup quashed. So it shows you if he really wanted to do it, he could. But I suppose one quick extra element to add in there, which gives you a sense of, I think, how difficult his position is, is that people around Emperor Hirohito, you know, in his Imperial household, one thing they want to protect him from is anger. In the Imperial Japanese army, there's a real kind of loyalty towards the emperor, even though they don't really know him very well in the Imperial Japanese Army. And there's always an attempt insulate the emperor, so his advisors don't really want him to speak out that forcefully against the army, because then he could inflame things even more so in all sorts of ways. You know, although he's technically overall in charge of everything, he's really hemmed in by all these, I think, quite difficult considerations.
- [16:52]
Rob Attar
Now, during the course of the war against China and then the broader war in the Far east, the Japanese army committed a number of atrocities, which some people later be tried for them. Do we think Hirohito, from Japan itself, would have been aware of some of the things that were going on in Japanese's nascent empire?
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Dr. Christopher Harding
So that's another part of that big question about Hirohito and his role in the war. I think our evidence shows that he was to some extent aware of what was going on, but he had nowhere near the full picture. For example, we know that he asked members of his own family who had various positions in the army how the war was really going, what was really happening in China, because he suspected he wasn't getting the full truth out of anybody. One of the strange aspects I suppose of Japan's war in a place like China is the way the military hierarchy worked because you would often have a senior officer giving a certain set of orders and then officers lower down the rankings seeming to countermand those, or lying about what they had been asked to do and asking their own juniors to do something completely different. So one of the most famous atrocities of that war at Nanjing, the so called Nanjing Massacre in The winter of 1937-1938 is an example where the top commander doesn't seem to have had much of a direct role, but people lower down were either ordering some of those killings, including of civilians, or were allowing their ordinary rank and file to basically run rampage in that city. So all the way up the hierarchy, communication one way and orders going the other, is in all sorts of ways faulty and full of holes. So by the time you get all the way up to Hirohito, precisely what he knew and precisely how he felt about it I think is quite difficult to be sure of. But I think it would probably be naive of us as historians to say that he was completely unaware. I just don't think that's very likely. Although it's really hard to pin down precisely how good his information was. This History Extra podcast is brought to you by Rocket Money. Throughout history, experts have offered various solutions for ensuring your financial well being. In the medieval era, for instance, carefully managing an unlikely resource eels could ensure that you had an effective, if unusual, way of paying your debts. For steely eyed Victorian industrialist Andrew Carnegie, ruthless efficiency was key to balancing the books. But it's not always easy, as my own attempts to keep track of my finances suggest. But help is at hand. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money automatically categorizes what you're spending across your accounts, letting you choose the categories and tags you need to successfully manage your finances and track patterns in your outgoings. It also consolidates checking, savings, loans and investments into a single helpful dashboard offering a crystal clear view of your financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com HistoryExtra that's RocketMoney.com HistoryExtra RocketMoney.com HistoryExtra. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet, like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking champion of checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today@shopify.com win this.
- [20:40]
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Rob Attar
So one moment where Hirohito very decisively did act is in the final surrender of Japan in the summer of 1945. I wonder if you could talk us through what happened at this stage and how Hirohito became involved.
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Dr. Christopher Harding
Yes, so I think by the summer, early summer of 1945, I mean, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain in Japan that the war is lost. You know, you've had the Battle of Okinawa, April 1945, the Americans coming closer and closer in that island hopping strategy. Much of Japan's cities have been laid waste. American bombers meet more or less no resistance coming across into Japan. So all these things are very clear. But there's still a hope, including on the part of Hirohito actually, that because Japan wasn't yet at war with the Soviet Union, there might be a way of going via Stalin to try to negotiate with the other allies to try and get Japan out of this situation with a little bit of what it still wanted. And what did it still want, or at least in the Imperial Japanese army, they wanted things like the Imperial institution to be guaranteed that it wouldn't be wiped away in any occupation. Some in the army actually wanted to avoid an occupation. Others wanted to be in charge of any kind of reorganization of Japan's military that might happen after the war. These were, in retrospect, quite naive things to still be hoping for given how badly the war was going. But nevertheless these, these were the sorts of things into July 1945 that everyone was hoping to achieve. And the big difficulty, of course, was the difficulty that Japan has always had under this constitution, this Meiji era constitution, that any disagreements between civilian politicians, diplomats, people in the armed forces, etc. Could go all the way to Hirohito without being resolved. So it was really difficult. Even after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and The Japanese realized quite soon what that was. They sent one of their own physicists to Hiroshima to do some tests on, sadly, the bones of people who'd been incinerated and find out what was going on. So they knew what this weapon was very soon. But even then, there were people in the army who were saying, there's still time for us to try and find out what we can get out of the Allies. They had no, I think, yet real sense of urgency. And I think some people even who are inclined to be quite generous to Hirohito would say that even then he was too slow in being forceful in wanting an end to this war. He could have imposed himself earlier. He could have imposed himself before Hiroshima. Of course, hindsight is 20 20, but nevertheless could have imposed himself earlier. But it takes much longer before he finally makes what's called a sacred decision, you know, which is the kind of ultimate trump card that Hirohito has as a commander in chief. And that doesn't happen until after the bomb has been dropped on Nagasaki and the Soviets have entered the war, and until they manage to get a hint out of the Americans that the Imperial Institution will be preserved, that Hirohito finally makes that sacred decision and says, we have to accept the Potsdam Declaration and we have to surrender. So he's very late in doing it, but he does eventually put his foot.
- [24:17]
Rob Attar
Down, and am I right, that he then also broadcasts to the Japanese people, which is a very unprecedented step for an emperor.
- [24:23]
Dr. Christopher Harding
He does, yes. He makes this famous surrender broadcast. And even the story around that, I think, tells you a little bit about how chaotic things could be at the top of Japanese politics in this period. Because once it was known that he had decided this and that he was going to record this surrender broadcast and have it broadcast out on the radio, some in the Japanese army tried actually to stop it. They attacked the broadcasting facilities when this little record had been made that would be broadcast. They even tried to capture that. We're told that the recording had to be smuggled out in a laundry basket so that members of the Imperial Japanese army couldn't find it and stop all this, which I think really shows you something, because they knew that Hirohito had made this sacred decision. So all their protestations about doing things in the interest of the Emperor or the Imperial Family suddenly look quite thin, or at least we should look back and perhaps nuance. What they were really thinking, which I think is that they wanted to protect the Imperial House, the Imperial line, even if whoever currently sat on the throne wasn't up to the job or they didn't entirely support that individual. So I think their real loyalty was to the line and to the ideal, rather than necessarily to whoever the incumbent was. Because the disrespect shown to Emperor Hirohito by that kind of chaotic, almost comedic series events, I think, is rather clear. But, yes, then he makes that famous scene, surrender speech. People in Japan had never heard his voice before. Even people who heard that broadcast wouldn't necessarily have understood everything he was saying because he uses this archaic Japanese, you know, linked to the Imperial Japanese Court. But I think, nevertheless, they will have got the basic message, which was that the Americans have what I think Hirohito called this new and most cruel bomb, and that that weapon threatened the entirety of human civilization and that in the interests of civilization writ large, Japan had to lay down its arms.
- [26:22]
Rob Attar
Now, in your last answer, you hinted at this idea that the Americans would be prepared to allow the imperial institution to continue in some form, which is quite interesting, because in general, the policy of the Allies was unconditional surrender on the Axis. Most other surviving wartime leaders were then put on trial. Many of them were executed. Why was this exception made for Hirohito?
- [26:42]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think because of a sense of practicality. So the Americans, since soon after Pearl harbor, had begun planning for an eventual occupation of Japan. So they had had time, they put a lot of thought into this. They had quite a clear sense of what, during an occupation, they wanted to do in Japan, which, very briefly, we sometimes call it the 3Ds, decentralization of power, economic power, demilitarization, of course, getting rid of the armed forces and democratization. So giving Japan what the Americans consider to be a proper democracy under a new constitution. And I think their calculation, quite rightly, actually, was in terms of guilt for the war. The most sensible policy was to home in on a small group of elites, try them, execute them, or imprison them, depending on what the court found, and effectively exonerate everybody else so that they, the rest of the Japanese population, so that they could become part of this work of rebuilding Japan. And I think they calculated that they would struggle to do that and they would struggle to keep the occupation peaceful. If they tried and then executed the emperor, much better to do what they did do, which was to turn him into a kind of symbol of the nation. I think that was a smart strategy. Not everyone amongst the Allies wanted to do it that way, but I think in the end that was probably the right thing to do.
- [28:05]
Rob Attar
How then did Hirohito adapt to his new diminished role and then work with the occupying authorities.
- [28:12]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think he played it rather well, actually. There's a very famous photograph of General Douglas MacArthur, who was the supreme commander of the Allied powers in Japan in this period, standing next to Hirohito. And MacArthur is kind of looming over him. And if you look closely at Hirohito, his suit doesn't fit him terribly well because he was considered to be semi divine. His tailor wasn't allowed to touch him. Him. Some of his clothes didn't actually fit him terribly well, but it gave him, on the plus side, a kind of atmosphere of normality. So when he started after the war to go on these tours around Japan, meeting people now as the symbol of the nation rather than this semi divine monarch, he actually looked like an ordinary man. He had a slight stoop. He had now and again a couple of sort of verbal tics. He was fairly awkward. He was basically the polar opposite of a kind of charismatic, authoritarian, demagogue type leader. So I think it made it easy for him because that was his character, it was who he was. He was just naturally a kind of average, modest man. I think he fit that role actually quite well. And polling of the Japanese population during the occupation suggests that actually that's what people wanted. They wanted the Emperor to remain, but they wanted to have him as a symbol of the nation rather than risk, not just the emperor having a kind of authoritarian power, which Hirohito had never been interested in wielding, as we've said. But they didn't want the Emperor anymore to be the focus of a kind of semi mystical cult, because during the war, the Japanese government had leaned really heavily on that. And so I think a lot of the Japanese population were kind of inoculated against that kind of leadership. So they were. Were, I think, generally pleased with what the Americans came up with.
- [30:00]
Rob Attar
What steps did Hirohito take personally to build bridges with countries that Japanese had either fought or had occupied during the war?
- [30:09]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think probably his son, when he took over as emperor in 1989, Emperor Akihito, who just retired a few years ago as emperor, his son did quite a lot. Emperor Hirohito, I think his contribution was more presiding over the growth of a Japan that was peaceful, that was gradually trying to return to the international community. And that was, if it had any sense of international competition, that competition was going to be carried out by way of business. Companies like Sony, etc. Formed during the occupation. So Hirohito's reign, long reign, all the way to 1989, often seen as a game of two halves. You know, that changes in 1945, of course, with the end of the war and the beginning of his post war role. Nevertheless, I think because he had been the commander in chief during the war, inevitably he was always associated with that conflict. You know, for all that he tried to mend bridges diplomatically abroad, tried to symbolize a nation that was dedicated to peace, which it genuinely was. After the experience of that war. It's interesting, I think, that in 1989 when he died, only at that point did some in Japan feel they could really discuss the war because the man, as it were, who'd been at the top during that period had passed away. So I think really until his death, some elements of healing after that conflict simply couldn't begin. Which is why I think his son did so well.
- [31:40]
Rob Attar
But Hirohito did travel a fair bit, didn't he, in the later decades of his reign? He did go abroad and meet other world leaders and, and get more of a sense perhaps of the rest of the world.
- [31:50]
Dr. Christopher Harding
Yes, he did. And I think you can probably, if we're thinking about the 50s and the 60s, you could probably say that by the time we get to the mid late 1950s, what Japan is becoming after the war is more and more clear to people. There's a sense that Japan isn't likely to backslide. There isn't going to be a return to the sort of militarism of earlier years. Bit by bit, world leaders are prepared to receive Hirohito and prepare to take this new sort of Japan on its own terms. But it does take a while. You know, the London Olympics organized just not long after the war. Japan wasn't invited. Japan doesn't join some of these big international organizations until various points in the 1950s and the early 1960s. So I think it does take a while. And you know, and Hirohito, certainly, as I say, because of his character, he became quite a good international ambassador for Japan. But I still think for some, the taint of his wartime presence, if not leadership, and the suspicion about the degree to which he'd supported that effort and yet, as it were, got off scot free without being put on trial. I think for some people in the west that remained did he make much.
- [33:04]
Rob Attar
Acknowledgement of some of the wrongs that were carried out during the war in his later years.
- [33:09]
Dr. Christopher Harding
So that was usually left more to politicians in Japan. That was their role. So as a symbol, the Japanese monarchy, I think is more tightly constrained. Even than the British monarchy in terms of what they can get involved in in politics. So for my money, it tends to be more after his death, into the 1990s and the early 2000s, where, for example, his son, Emperor Akihito, he is quite explicit when he's in China apologizing for the actions of Japan during the war, apologizing for the harm caused, and also, I think, very significantly for Akihito, talking about the Korean ancestry of the Imperial Japanese family, because if you go back far enough, there had been some intermarriage. That in Japan was actually a highly controversial thing to do amongst some people, but he was prepared to do it. He was prepared to use his platform and his stature do it. So I think Akihito, as the son of Emperor Hirohito, probably achieved more than Emperor Hirohito did. But nevertheless, Hirohito, as this symbol of a new and peaceful Japan, I think was. Was pretty successful. And I think just one, I suppose one image of him that people in Japan really love and I think gets at this to some extent, the internationalism of the second part, you know, of his reign was that he was a big fan of Disney, and he's said to have been buried with his favorite Mickey Mouse wristwatch. And if you just compare that as an image to how Japan saw itself in the early 1940s and its attitude towards America and American culture, it shows you that actually by the time of Hirohito's death, you know, so much had been done, really big strides had been done to really reforming Japan's reputation.
- [34:58]
Rob Attar
And on that note, did he not, in fact, visit Disneyland at one point when he went to the us?
- [35:02]
Dr. Christopher Harding
Yes, yes, he did. I think that's part of his love for Disney. One of Japan's senior ministers just after the. The war ended, because Japan knew obviously that it was going to have to not just lay down its arms, but the army was going to be disbanded, its armed forces would be no more. He had a really useful phrase. He said, we go forward with culture, which can sound kind of rather general, rather abstract, but what I think he meant was, and certainly this is how it played out, Japan's place on the international stage in the future will be not just peaceful, but will be to do with the export of its culture in all sorts of different ways rather than the projection of force. And I think the significant thing about Hirohito being interested in Disney was that by the 1970s and 1980s, one of Japan's really big exports was already starting to be animation. So Alongside manga, you have anime created by Japan's godfather of manga, really, a guy called Osamu Tezuka. And the gradual build up of some kind of an affection for Japan internationally, really starting to begin, I think, in the 70s, 80s, and then it explodes really, in the 1990s, was to do with that ideal of going forward with culture. And I think Hirohito represented that really well by this quite straightforward and quite innocent investment, you know, in the fantasy world of Disney, that really fit, I think, the reputation that Japan was starting to build for itself. So he was a great. Yeah, he was a great cultural ambassador in that sense.
- [36:34]
Rob Attar
You've mentioned his son a few times, but we haven't really talked much about Hirohito's home life or family life. What can you tell us about that?
- [36:41]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think he was a good father to Akihito. Akihito always spoke quite warmly about him. The Imperial family is always fairly guarded about what it shares, so it's difficult to really know too much about the relationship that those two have. Other than that it's clear that Hirohito passed on his love of science to his son. Akihito always had a big interest in that. I think he also passed on this sense of the importance of talking to the nation in a time of tragedy, because I think it's remarkable that the one part of Emperor Akihito's reign that often gets compared to that surrender broadcast by his father is in March 2011 in Japan, where they went through what we call the triple disasters. Earthquakes, tsunami, nuclear meltdown. And Emperor Akihito made a speech reassuring the Japanese public, you know, asking them to come together. And he also, with his wife, went and toured around some of these enormous school gymnasiums, where people whose homes had just been washed away were gathering and sleeping and queuing for food. So I think he took that from his father, that sense of wanting to reach out to people and try to. To speak to the population. Where in the past it had been part of the mystique of the imperial line that you wouldn't really do that kind of thing. You might be seen in public and schools all around Japan used to have paintings of the Meiji Emperor somewhere in the school. And apparently, if the school was ever on fire, the one thing you'd have to rescue would be the painting of the emperor. So I think steadily, the second half of Hirohito's reign and then during Akihito's reign, the gradual removal of that mystique and its replacement, with a willingness to actually engage with the Japanese public and to speak to them as well as serving as a symbol.
- [38:34]
Rob Attar
So we're now more than 35 years after the death of Hirohito. How is he viewed in Japan nowadays?
- [38:40]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think how people view him probably is caught up with how they view the war. And people often say that compared with Germany in the Dec or West Germany in the decades after the Second World War, Japan hasn't fully been through that process of reflection and reckoning with that period. I'm not always sure how fair that is, because there have been some fairly clear apologies issued by Japanese politicians down the years. But nevertheless, there is always a part of the Japanese population that thinks that one of the things the Americans did during the occupation was not just to radically change the role of the emperor, which some people regret, but also to inflict on Japan a kind of guilt inducing narrative about the war, that it was purely a war of aggression and that the Japanese as a whole should feel guilty about it, even though, you know, only a small group of people were actually put on trial. Whereas the view amongst some people in Japan, I think, is actually in that period, what Japan's leaders, including Hirohito, were having to cope with was there was so called encirclement by hostile powers. The Americans, the British, the Chinese, the Dutch and the Soviet Union. If you looked at a map of Japan in that period, it does look a little bit like encirclement. I still wouldn't buy the argument that, you know, Japan was involved in anything other than a straightforward war of aggression. But nevertheless, some people, I think, if they're inclined towards a slightly rosy view of Hirohito, would say he was struggling to do his best in a time when Japan was surrounded and threatened and had only bad decisions to choose from. I think they would regard him probably in that light. Others, I think, would say Hirohito, after the war, he managed to fully embrace that new role that he was given. And he did it diligently. The tours abroad that you've mentioned, the tours at home, and he managed to successfully entrench that new culture in the imperial household. And he didn't allow himself to become the focus of kind of romantic longing, you know, for a mystical past. So in that sense, by doing that and by surviving as long as he did, he normalized that new role. And I think at least some in Japan feel quite grateful for that.
- [40:58]
Rob Attar
And then as a historian, how do you think we should understand Hirohito and his role today?
- [41:03]
Dr. Christopher Harding
I think one of the important things to take away from Hirohito's life, and I think in particular those really difficult years in the 1930s and the early 1940s, is the danger for a country of having constitutional arrangements that rely too much on people behaving well, people sticking to sort of customary rules on things being too vague and flexible. Because I think both in the way that the war was allowed to start with acts of aggression by the imperial Japanese army on the Asian mainland, which weren't successfully reined in by politicians, and ultimately by the emperor back home, and then especially in July and early August 1945, when again, the Japanese leadership just seems paralyzed and unable to make a decision partly because of that ambiguous position of the emperor. I think that's a real lesson, not just for Japan, but for any other country as well, in the danger of relying on customary relationships, on people to sort of behave the right way rather than having real clarity and powerful rules to guide how decisions are made. Because I think the most sympathetic view of Hirohito, not necessarily the one I would take, is that he was a prisoner of this very, very poor system which ultimately served the people of Japan very badly in this period for him, for his life. The one thing that I take away is whether it's his fault or not, the fact that the Japanese people as a whole were imprisoned by that system of which the emperor was a very strange and ambiguous part, I think is probably the most important element here to take away.
- [42:46]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
That was Dr. Christopher Harding of the Universe University of Edinburgh. Christopher is the author of the a history in 20 lives and can also be found on substack at History with Chris Harding.
- [43:10]
Dr. Christopher Harding
Hablas espanol? Spritz du dzoich?
- [43:13]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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