The Emperor
The literature of Shinto (Way of the Gods) employs much mythology to describe the supposed historical origins of Japan. According to the creation story found in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, dating from AD 712) and the Nihongi or Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan, from A.D. 720), the Japanese islands were created by the gods, two of whom--the male Izanagi and the female Izanami--descended from heaven to carry out the task. They also brought into being other kami (deities or supernatural forces), such as those influencing the sea, rivers, wind, woods, and mountains. Two of these deities, the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, and her brother, the Storm God, Susano-o, warred against each other, with Amaterasu emerging victorious.
Subsequently Amaterasu sent her grandson, Ninigi, to rule over the sacred islands. Ninigi took with him what became the three imperial regalia -- a curved jewel (magatama), a mirror, and a "sword of gathered clouds" -- and ruled over the island of Kyushu. Ninigi's great-grandson, Jimmu, recognized as the first human emperor of Japan, set out to conquer Yamato. On the main island of Honshu, according to tradition he established the unbroken line of imperial descent from the Sun Goddess and founded the Land of the Rising Sun in 660 BC.
Gradually, from the inchoate elements of an Oriental civilization, was built up a dual empire, having as its sovereign heads a Mikado or Tenno, whose sway was spiritual and divine, and a Shogun or Tycoon, or temporal emperor. Of these, however, the original sole ruler was the Mikado, and from 663 BC, when Jimnu founded the throne of the Mikados, until the end of the twelfth century of the Christian era, the spiritual emperor reigned supreme. Eventually, the entanglements of the central power with that of the feudal princes caused the creation of the office and rank of military chieftain, or generalissimo; and this office, in time, became endowed with all the civil and military domination of the empire. Little by little, the secular power was taken from the Mikado, and in I585, Taikosama, one of the great military heroes of Japanese history, founded the Shogunate or Tycoonate, and the separation of lay and spiritual power was complete.
But if the Mikado was thus withdrawn from all participation in affairs of State, his ecclesiastical position was more exalted, and his divine attributes more pronounced and awful. According to the Shinto faith, the established religion of Japan, the Mikado was of divine origin. To be sure, there were five primeval deities, the chief of which was the Goddess of the Sun; but there is an innumerable company of born gods and deified mortals, most of whom are inferior to the Mikado, and in certain regular seasons they must wait upon him; during those occasions the temples are deserted and godless, only empty effigies remaining. The person of the Mikado was so sacred that he must dwell in utter seclusion, not touching the ground, or permitting his hair or nails to be trimmed, lest his body be desecrated. The vessels used in his service were immediately thereafter destroyed, lest they be touched by ordinary mortals. When he passed up into the heavens (i.e., died), a small and highly select company of the noblest of the land were permitted to commit hari-kari, thus happily despatching themselves in the train of the Vicar of Heaven on his way to his highest glory.
By the year 1000, Fujiwara Michinaga was able to enthrone and dethrone emperors at will. As the Son of Heaven, directly descended from mythic gods, and as chief priest and embodiment of all supernatural qualities in the national religion, Shinto, the emperor provides an icon of divine purity is handy to solve power struggles. In the past, Japanese strongmen who held the emperor hostage claimed that they derived their office from the throne (meaning from the gods). Anyone who challenged their rule was not only treasonous but blasphemous, deserving terrible punishment. For eight centuries Japan's emperors were kept hostage by military regimes, and defiant emperors were roughly treated.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 returned the emperor to prominence after centuries of rule by the shogun and ushered in a period of modernization and expansion. In 1867, the Komei Emperor died and was succeeded by his minor son Mutsuhito. Tokugawa Yoshinobu (or Keiki), reluctantly became head of the Tokugawa house and shogun. He tried to reorganize the government under the emperor while preserving the shogun's leadership role. Fearing the growing power of the Satsuma and Choshu daimyo, other daimyo called for returning the shogun's political power to the emperor and a council of daimyo chaired by the former Tokugawa shogun. Keiki accepted the plan in late 1867 and resigned, announcing an "imperial restoration."
The emperor emerged as a national symbol of unity in the midst of reforms that were much more radical than had been envisioned. Mutsuhito, who was to reign until 1912, selected a new reign title -- Meiji, or Enlightened Rule -- to mark the beginning of a new era in Japanese history. To further dramatize the new order, the capital was relocated from Kyoto, where it had been situated since 794, to Tokyo (Eastern Capital), the new name for Edo. The Meiji oligarchy was a privileged clique that exercised imperial power, sometimes despotically. The members of this class were adherents of kokugaku and believed they were the creators of a new order as grand as that established by Japan's original founders.
With the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, thus relocating the capital to the latter city. Those people who wanted to end Tokugawa rule did not envision a new government or a new society; they merely sought the transfer of power from Edo to Kyoto while retaining all their feudal prerogatives. Instead, a profound change took place. The emperor emerged as a national symbol of unity in the midst of reforms that were much more radical than had been envisioned. The first reform was the promulgation of the Charter Oath in 1868, a general statement of the aims of the Meiji leaders to boost morale and win financial support for the new government.
The 1873 Korean crisis resulted in the resignation of military expedition proponents Saigo and Councillor of State Eto Shimpei (1834-74). Eto, the founder of various patriotic organizations, conspired with other discontented elements to start an armed insurrection against government troops in Saga, the capital of his native prefecture in Kyushu in 1874. Charged with suppressing the revolt, Okubo swiftly crushed Eto, who had appealed unsuccessfully to Saigo for help. Three years later, the last major armed uprising--but the most serious challenge to the Meiji government -- took shape in the Satsuma Rebellion, this time with Saigo playing an active role. The Saga Rebellion and other agrarian and samurai uprisings mounted in protest to the Meiji reforms had been easily put down by the army. Satsuma's former samurai were numerous, however, and they had a long tradition of opposition to central authority. Saigo, with some reluctance and only after more widespread dissatisfaction with the Meiji reforms, raised a rebellion in 1877. Both sides fought well, but the modern weaponry and better financing of the government forces ended the Satsuma Rebellion. Although he was defeated and committed suicide, Saigo was not branded a traitor and became a heroic figure in Japanese history. The suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion marked the end of serious threats to the Meiji regime but was sobering to the oligarchy.
The feudal system was abolished, and numerous Western institutions were adopted, including a Western legal system and constitutional government along quasi-parliamentary lines. In 1898, the last of the "unequal treaties" with Western powers was removed, signaling Japan's new status among the nations of the world. In a few decades, by creating modern social, educational, economic, military, and industrial systems, the Meiji Emperor's "controlled revolution" had transformed a feudal and isolated state into a world power.
The Taisho Emperor (August 31, 1879 – December 25, 1926), whose given name was Yoshihito, was the 123rd imperial ruler of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession, from 1912 until his death in 1926. He received the personal name of Yoshihito and the title Haru-no-miya (Prince Haru) from the Emperor Meiji on September 6, 1879. Prince Yoshihito contracted meningitis shortly after birth, leaving him in poor health both physically and mentally.
Unlike his father the Meiji Emperor, he did not play an active role in Japanese politics. He was plagued by ill health, mental and physical. Shortly after he was born, in 1879, he contracted what now appears to be meningitis. His education, such as it was, stressed physical training rather than academics. However, he was the first heir to the throne to receive a public education, attending the Peers School (now called Gakushuin University), studying Western subjects as well as the Chinese Classics. He started formal schooling in 1887 and attended for eight years. After that, he was privately tutored in Western and Chinese subjects.
Always regarded as somewhat mentally impaired, he did ascend the throne on his father’s death in 1912. By 1919, however, he was unable to undertake such official duties as presiding over the opening of the Diet. (This should not have surprised anyone since he was seen making a telescope out of a speech he was to read opening the 1913 Diet. He then gazed through it at the Prime Minister, his government and the opposition.) He spent more and more time away from Tokyo at various imperial retreats. In 1921, his son, Crown Prince Hirohito (the Showa Emperor) was appointed Regent. He served in this post until his father died in 1926.
As the US pivoted its great war effort from Europe to the Pacific, in early 1945 it came face to face with a startling fact — it was waging war against a god. Its sea armada had already crushed his island outworks. Its planes were pulverizing his cities. Now its armies were preparing to invade the sacred soil of his homeland. To the god's worshipers this would be a sacrilege such as the desecration of a church would be to the invaders. The great US military redeployment from West to East was aimed directly at the myth of the divine Mikado, ruling a divine nation on the warpath.
The Sun Goddess' great-great-grandson, Jimmu, became Japan's first emperor in the year 660 BC. He commanded his descendants to bring all the eight corners of the universe under the one roof of Japan. Thus, began the divine dynasty whose 124th scion was the Emperor Hirohito, the Magnanimous-Exalted, the Sublime Majesty, the Imperial Son of Heaven of Dai Nippon (Great Japan), in whose reign the Japanese nation was fated to attempt to carry out the Emperor Jimmu's command. It was forbidden for his subjects to look at his face, address him by name, or speak to him from a greater height.
In the Meiji Constitution, the emperor was sovereign and was the locus of the state's legitimacy. The preamble stated, "The rights of sovereignty of the State, We have inherited from Our Ancestors, and We shall bequeath them to Our descendants." Concerning the issue of the attack on Pearl Harbor, both Naval Chief of General Staff and Prime Minister Tojo admitted having consulted with Emperor Hirohito, at which Tojo expressed confidence in the result. Then the Presiding Judge Webb commented: "The Emperor then directed that the program be carried out. . . It will remain that the men who advised the commission of a crime, if it be one, are in no worse position than the man who directs the crime be committed." In spite of much he tried to defend Hirohito's innocence, Tojo was obliged to confess that "the Emperor had consented, though reluctantly, to the war" and that "none of us would dare act against the Emperor's will."
From the documents of the General Headquarters of the Army and Navy released by the Japan Defense Administration after the war, some logical conclusions can be easily drawn as follows: (1) All major campaigns, such as those of "August 13" of Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Burma, and "Ichigo" had been meticulously studied by Hirohito before he ordered them to be carried out with his blessings; (2) the appointment or dismissal of a division commander (a division usually having the strength of 16,000 to 22,500 men) must have had the approval of Emperor Hirohito and, more often than not, he would have an audience with the appointee before being announced; and (3) any maneuver of troops above the divisional level and a new division being established had to have his approval.
The Japanese Government indicated it would accept the Potsdam Declaration on the understanding that it would not include any demands prejudicing the prerogatives of the Emperor as a sovereign ruler, so as to preserve the kokutai, or national polity through "a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal." In response to this, the Allied Powers stated their position as "the authority of the Emperor...to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers" and "the ultimate form of Government of Japan shall...be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people." At the Imperial Conference on August 14, 1945, the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was decided and in the "Imperial Rescript of the Termination of the War", the Emperor stated that "the kokutai has been maintained." The meaning of the national polity [kokutai] to him was not the welfare of the Japanese public, but the status of emperor and the Imperial Family.
On 15 August 1945, the Showa Emperor addressed the nation, saying "To ensure the tranquillity of the subjects of the Empire and share with all the countries of he world the joys of coprosperity, such is the rule that was left to Us by the Founder of the Empire of Our Illustrious Ancestors, which We have endeavored to follow. Today, however, the military situation can no longer take a favorable turn, and the general tendencies of the world are not to our advantage either.... "
As signs of defeat gradually emerged in the latter half of the Pacific War, those close to Hirohito began shifting war responsibility to the Gunbatsu [the military and naval leadership]. They worried about the possibility of blame being placed on Hirohito and the entire imperial system. In the post-War Tokyo Tribunal, Hirohito was one notable absentee from the prisoner's dock. Under the pre-war Japanese system he would seem to be as great a conspirator against world peace as any of his Ministers, Generals or Admirals. But the Emperor was granted immunity in the interests of the Allied Powers. That put the question of his guilt or innocence outside the province of the Tribunal.
In the postwar constitution, the emperor's role in the political system was drastically redefined. A prior and important step in this process was Emperor Hirohito's 1946 New Year's speech, made at the prompting of MacArthur, renouncing his status as a divine ruler. Hirohito declared that relations between the ruler and his people cannot be based on "the false conception that the emperor is divine or that the Japanese people are superior to other races."
In the first article of the new constitution, the newly "humanized" ruler is described as "the 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." The authority of the emperor as sovereign in the 1889 constitution was broad and undefined. His functions under the postwar system are narrow, specific, and largely ceremonial, confined to such activities as convening the Diet, bestowing decorations on deserving citizens, and receiving foreign ambassadors (Article 7). He does not possess "powers related to government" (Article 4). The change in the emperor's status was designed to preclude the possibility of military or bureaucratic cliques exercising broad and irresponsible powers "in the emperor's name"--a prominent feature of 1930s extremism. The constitution defines the Diet as the "highest organ of state power" (Article 41), accountable not to the monarch but to the people who elected its members.
The use of the Japanese word shocho, meaning symbol, to describe the emperor is unusual and, depending upon one's viewpoint, conveniently or frustratingly vague. The emperor is neither head of state nor sovereign, as are many European constitutional monarchs, although in October 1988 Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed, controversially, that the emperor is the country's sovereign in the context of its external relations. Nor does the emperor have an official priestly or religious role. Although he continues to perform ancient rituals, such as ceremonial planting of the rice crop in spring, he does so in a private capacity.
Laws relating to the imperial house must be approved by the Diet. Under the old system, the Imperial Household Law was separate from and equal with the constitution. After the war, the imperial family's extensive estates were confiscated and its finances placed under control of the Imperial Household Agency, part of the Office of the Prime Minister and theoretically subject to the Diet. In practice remains a bastion of conservatism, its officials shrouding the activities of the emperor and his family behind a "chrysanthemum curtain" (the chrysanthemum being the crest of the imperial house) to maintain an aura of sanctity. Despite knowledge of his illness among the press corps and other observers, details about the late Emperor Hirohito's state of health in 1988 and 1989 were tightly controlled. The use of the masculine pronoun to describe the emperor is appropriate because the Imperial Household Law still restricts the succession to males, despite the fact that in earlier centuries some of Japan's rulers had been females.
The emperor's constitutional status became a focus of renewed public attention following news of Hirohito's serious illness in late 1988. Crown Prince Akihito became the first person to ascend the throne under the postwar system. One important symbolic issue was the choice of a new reign title under the gengo system-- borrowed originally from imperial China and used before 1945-- which enumerates years beginning with the first year of a monarch's reign. Thus 1988 was Showa 63, the sixty-third year of the reign of Hirohito, the Showa Emperor. The accession of a new monarch is marked by the naming of a new era that consists of two auspicious Chinese characters. Showa, for example, means bright harmony. Critics deplored the secrecy with which such titles were chosen in the past, the decision being left to a governmentappointed committee of experts, and advocated public discussion of the choice as a reflection of Japan's democratic values. Although the gengo system was accorded official status by a bill the Diet passed in June 1979, some favored the system's abandonment altogether in favor of the Western calendar. But on January 7, 1989, the day of Hirohito's death, the government announced that Heisei (Achieving Peace) was the new era name. The first year of Heisei thus was 1989, and all official documents were so dated.
Still more controversial were the ceremonies held in connection with the late emperor's funeral and the new emperor's accession. State support of these activities would have violated Article 20 of the constitution on the separation of state and religious activities. Rightists, such as members of the Society to Protect Japan (Nihon o Mamoru Kai), a nationwide lobbying group, demanded full public support of the ceremonies as expression of the people's love for their monarch. Walking a tightrope between proconstitution and rightist groups, the government chose to divide Hirohito's state funeral, held February 24, 1989, into official and religious components. Akihito's accession to the throne in November 1990 also had religious (Shinto) and secular components: the Sokuino -rei, or Enthronement Ceremony, was secular; the Daij sai, or Great Thanksgiving Festival, traditionally, a communion between the new monarch and the gods in which the monarch himself became a deity, was religious. The government's decision to use public funds not only for the Sokui-no-rei but also for the Daijosai, justified in terms of the "public nature" of both ceremonies, was seen by religious and opposition groups as a serious violation of Article 20.
In the early 1990s, an array of such symbolic political issues brought attention to the state's role in religious or quasireligious activities. Defenders of the constitution, including Japanese Christians, followers of new religions, leftists, and many members of the political opposition, considered any government involvement in religious aspects of the enthronement to be a conservative attempt to undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitution. They also strongly criticized the 1989 Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture's controversial directive, which called for the playing of the prewar national anthem ("Kimigayo," or "The Sovereign's Reign") and display of the rising sun flag (Hinomaru, the use of which dates to the early nineteenth century) at public school ceremonies. Although since the late 1950s these activities had been described by the ministry as "desirable," neither had legal status under the postwar constitution.
Another issue was state support for the Yasukuni Shrine. This shrine, located in Tokyo near the Imperial Palace, was established during the Meiji era as a repository for the souls of soldiers and sailors who died in battle, thus a holy place rather than simply a war memorial. Conservatives introduced bills five times during the 1970s to make it a "national establishment," but none was adopted. On the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II in Japan, on August 15, 1985, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro and members of his cabinet visited the shrine in an official capacity, an action viewed as a renewed conservative effort, outside the Diet, to invest the shrine with official status.
Despite the veneer of Westernization and Article 20's prohibition of state support of the emperor's religious or ceremonial activities, his postwar role was in some ways more like that of traditional rather than prewar emperors. During the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-26), and early Showa (1926-89) eras, the emperor himself was not actively involved in politics. His political authority, however, was immense, and military and bureaucratic elites acted in his name. The "symbolic" role of the emperor after 1945, however, recalled feudal Japan, where political power was monopolized and exercised by the shoguns, and where the imperial court carried on a leisurely, apolitical existence in the ancient capital of Kyoto and served as patrons of culture and the arts.
Emperor Akihito, in an effort to put a modern face on the Japanese monarchy, held a press conference on August 7, 1989, his first since ascending to the throne. He expressed his determination to respect the constitution and promote international understanding.
