Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan [Paperback]

Herbert P. Bix (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 4, 2001

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority.

Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past.

Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To many, Emperor Hirohito of Japan is remembered as a helpless figurehead during Japan's wars with China and the U.S. According to the received wisdom, he knew nothing of the plan to bomb Pearl Harbor and had no power to stop atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. The emperor was the mild-mannered little man who traipsed with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland and who brought peace through surrender, certainly not "one of the most disingenuous persons ever to occupy the modern throne." Herbert Bix's charged political biography, however, argues that such accepted beliefs are myths and misrepresentations spun by both Japanese and Americans to protect the emperor from indictment. Since Hirohito's death in 1989, hundreds of documents, diaries, and scholarly studies have been published (and subsequently ignored) in Japan. Historian Bix used these sources to develop this shocking and nuanced portrait of a man far more shrewd, activist, and energetic than previously thought. Caught up in the fever of territorial expansion, Hirohito was the force that animated the war system, who, acting fully as a military leader and head of state, encouraged the belligerency of his people and pursued the war to its disastrous conclusion. To the very end, Hirohito refused to acknowledge any responsibility for his role in the death of millions as well as the brutalities inflicted by his forces in China, Korea, and the Philippines. In fact, he worked with none other than General MacArthur to select his fall guys and fix testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials--the emperor trying to protect the throne at all cost, the U.S. acting to ensure control of the Japanese population and the military by retaining Hirohito as a figurehead.

Not surprisingly, this hefty work of scholarship is making waves, as Americans and Japanese reconsider their roles in WWII and its aftermath. By placing Hirohito back in the center of the picture and puncturing the myths that surround him, Bix has effectively asked the Japanese to come out of their half-century repression of the past and face their wartime responsibility. Without doing so, he implies, the monarchy will forever impede the development of democracy. For those interested in Japan's wartime past and its influence on the present, this is fascinating, if lengthy, reading. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Bix penetrates decades of "public opacity" to offer a stunning portrait of the controversial Japanese emperor, "one of the most disingenuous persons ever to occupy the modern throne." Hirohito ascended to the Japanese throne in 1926 (at the age of 25) and ruled until his death in 1989. Bix closely examines his long, eventful reign, concentrating on the extent of the emperor's influence-which was greater than he admitted-over the political and military life of Japan during WWII. Bix's command of primary sources is apparent throughout the book, especially in the voluminous endnotes. From these sources, the author, a veteran scholar on modern Japanese history, draws a nuanced and balanced portrayal of an emperor who did not seek out war, but who demanded victories once war began and never took action to stop Japan's reckless descent into defeat. Bix makes Hirohito's later career intelligible by a careful exposition of the conflicting influences imposed on the emperor as a child: a passion for hard science coexisted with the myths of his own divine origin and destiny; he was taught benevolence along with belief in military supremacy. These influences unfolded as Hirohito was drawn into Japan's long conflict with China, its alliance with the fascist states of Europe, and its unwinnable war against the Allies. The dominant interest of the Showa ("radiant peace") Emperor, Bix convincingly explains, was to perpetuate the imperial system against more democratic opponents, no matter what the cost. Bix gives a meticulous account of his subject, delivers measured judgements about his accomplishments and failures, and reveals the subtlety of the emperor's character as a man who, while seemingly detached and remote, is in fact controlling events from behind the imperial screen. This is political biography at its most compelling. Agent, Susan Rabiner. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 832 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060931302
• ISBN-13: 978-0060931308
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #561,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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64 of 68 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Revealing, but may stretch its point. July 16, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Herbert Bix's biography of Emperor Hirohito of Japan is an outstanding work, but it must be read with caution, a critical eye and an open mind. The work is permeated with a sense of Bix's righteous indignation at Hirohito's escape from censure for his part in Japan's role in China and in the Second World War and this seems to color his judgment when facts grow thin and motivations are evaluated.

What Bix contributes to the historical record regarding Hirohito, the Japanese military, and Japan's wars is important and revealing. In Western culture the term "emperor" connotes Rome with a sort of English royalty superimposed on it, a blend of the two greatest empires of the Western world. What gets lost in this merger is the memory that the emperor in the Roman system enjoyed a godhead and that the empire was partly a theocracy.

Theocracy is a missing element in most evaluations of the seemingly insane strategic decisions that governed Japan's entry into, atrocities during, and conduct of World War II. The blind faith that overrode rationality in upper echelons of the Army and Navy makes more sense in the light of the theocratic Shintoist emperor system. Bound up with a system of belief in a state headed by a living god, the racist inhumanity of Japanese atrocities becomes more understandable, but not justifiable. The willingness to "die for the Emperor" in banzai charges and kamikaze flights also becomes more clear.

But where Bix's work raises question marks is in his evaluation of Hirohito's role. While Bix has unearthed an emperor who definitely had a hand in government and the fatal decisions that propelled Japan into war, and bore unacknowledged responsibility for those decisions, he has not necessarily proven Hirohito to be their animating force.... But that is the light in which Bix evaluates those missing elements of the record that call for speculation.

An alternative interpretation occurs which, while not going as far as Bix's evaluation, does not divorce Hirohito from his responsibility. Where Bix sees Hirohito as an animating force in the actions of Japan's ruling elites and militarists, too often that animation comes in the form of ratifying faits accompli. Too often intentions that Bix would have us believe were formed by Hirohito were initiated by others, sometimes without Hirohito's foreknowledge. What occurs is that, perhaps, Hirohito did not hold the initiative in the Japanese government.

What becomes apparent in Bix's description of Hirohito's upbringing, personality and conduct, is that he was so insulated from reality that he never enjoyed an undistorted view of the world. He was certainly not the disconnected figurehead who only stepped in at the last moment to save Japan from more atomic bombs and partition with the Soviets. He was definitely active in charting Japan's course, but he did not necessarily hold the compass.

Bix would have us see Hirohito as the ultimate master of indirect rule, served by private intelligence systems to feed him the truth and manipulating all from behind the scenes in ways to make governmental decision appear to be the unanimous work of others presented to him only for his purely ceremonial rubber stamp. But was this a mastermind at work, or a relatively intelligent but confused and uncertain man trying to keep his head above water in a political/religious system he nominally enjoyed power over, but in which his military routinely indulged in acts of grand insubordination, assassination and mutiny? Japanese emperors had been deposed before, and while Hirohito nominally controlled the military, it obeyed when it chose and the ruling elites talked behind his back of the emperor's less than godlike bearing.

Had he been other than the awkward intellectual he was, Hirohito might well fit the role Bix casts for him, but his personality lacks the earmarks of a conqueror. It does bear the earmarks of uncertainty, fear and reaction. His actions are equally explainable as those of a man raised to be a god and generalissimo; who knew intellectually if not emotionally that he was neither; but was emotionally driven to fulfill those roles in all earnestness; attempting to survive in a cut-throat political system and becoming caught up in his role and his military's initial success to the ultimate detriment of himself and the nation.

Hirohito, while awkward of manner, was not stupid. He did not lack for political or military talent, but was no genius in either field. He did, after all, manage to survive, and in his circumstances that took considerable doing and the good fortune to be a useful symbol and tool to others in power, whether the Japanese elites, the Japanese military, or the American Occupation. He was also far from blameless for what happened in his merely human efforts to fulfill a role in which a god would find success difficult.

Hirohito should have been forced to abdicate and confined for life to a Shinto monastery. Japanese emperors had been forced into monastic retirement before and this would have been a suitable punishment for a man who abetted horrible crimes in an earnest attempt--later overtaken by hubris--to fulfill an unrealistic role he was raised and trained to from birth. His brother Takamatsu should have been Regent for Akihito's seven years of remaining minority under the strict supervision of the Occupation, and Akihito's enthronement should have coincided with the peace treaty, the Occupation's end, and the ratification of a new Constitution reducing the monarchy to figurehead status.

Bix's frustration with the unrepentant emperor and the unindicted elites of Japan is palpable. Perhaps had the Americans come as conquerors willing to destroy, vice avengers willing to rehabilitate, then there might have been some justice which might assuage Bix's understandable--but maybe unrealistic--moral outrage.

After all, can you condemn a man to death for his religious beliefs and for attempting to fulfill a delusion instilled in him from birth? For the horrible crimes along his tragic path he can certainly be confined for life...but not hanged. Read more ›

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Unseating the Divine. September 28, 2000

By John Barry Kenyon

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This very detailed book needs your determined concentration. It is indeed a meticulously researched account of the life of Hirohito. Bix writes convincingly of the successful attempts, by Americans as well as by Japanese, to ensure Hirohito avoided a trial for war crimes and remained an anti-communist symbol of national unity. He also brings forward a mass of material to illustrate that the emperor was intimately involved in Japan's military policy in the 1930s and early 1940s. Although the general reader is hardly in a position to check first hand all Bix's primary source claims, it is the small details which stick in your mind: the special naval uniform Hirohito wore as Japan attacked the US navy in December 1941 and the private grief he expressed when Tojo was hanged in 1948. Bix has made it impossible for anyone seriously now to regard the emperor as a mere cypher or a victim of war Cabinet decisions. He needed a debunk in the English language and he has gotten precisely that.

46 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hirohito unveiled September 19, 2000

By Marvin R. Weatherly

Format:Hardcover

In 1971 David Bergamini, a Rhodes Scholar, who was raised in the Orient and who speaks and reads Japanese, authored, "Japan's Imerial Conspiracy." Bergamini set forth a compelling argument in the role of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito in the planning and guidance of Japan's aggression before and during World War II. Japanese historians and western academia of the time savaged Bergamini; they closed their minds and buried the truth.

Professor Bix has researched and documented the truth of Bergamini's earlier thesis. He does not merely rewrite Bergamini's work but he puts flesh and meat on the bare bones of truth so denounced in 1971. Professor Bix presents the story of Hirohito. A story of deception extending from the Meiji Restoration to the creation of the plausible deniability doctrine of Emperor Hirohito. The Bix work sheds light as to why Japan has refused an apology to China and other of her victims of World War II; to apologize would be a grievious mortal affront to nation's sacred beliefs in the Enperor.

Publishers in Japan have refused to publish, "Hiohito: And the Making of Modern Japan." Japanese in many quarters, including the schools, still maintain the Rape-of-Nanking is but a vicious lie by those who are jealous of Japan. They cannot accept the truth that their Emperor would be a party to the atrocities committed against China and others.

To those readers who seek to fill-in the blank spaces of knowledge dealing with World War II, Professor Bix's work is a must-read. I would only hope that a like work will one day honestly document the excesses of the United States before and during World WarII.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Less than meets the eye February 26, 2001

By James E Geoffrey II

Format:Hardcover

Professor Bix has obviously done a great amount of research for this book, and their is no denying that it is one of the most comprehensive works about the Showa Emperor to come out in the West. However, his extensive documentation never quite seems to prove his case that Hirohito was a ruthless and determined warlord, and it is further flawed by several factual errors.

To be sure, most of those errors are about people and events outside of Japan. For example, Bix talks about Crown Prince Hirohito's visit in 1921 to the "independent" Vatican. In fact, Vatican City did not gain independence until the signing of the Lateran Accords with the Kingdom of Italy in 1929.

Leaving this and several other such errors aside, the main problem is that Bix seems determined to caricature the Emperor in spite of whatever the Emperor says or does. When Crown Prince Hirohito writes to his advisers of his enthusiasm for the League of Nations, Bix assures us that this is merely youthful enthusiasm and should not be taken too seriously. Some might argue that what the then Crown Prince wrote in a not to be published letter ought to be given at least a little credence.

Then there is the entire run up to war in 1941. Bix routinely tells us how the Emperor resisted the expansionists in the military who argued for going to war against Britain and the United States. Then goes on to say how the Emperor was really siding with them the whole time.

The problem is not that Bix's research is wrong or bad, it is that he is determined to take a very nuanced picture of a complicated man and turn it into a black & white caricature. Ignoring Bix's (repeatedly) stated opinions of the Emperor's actions, the picture emerges of an Emperor who vacilated in his role. Sometimes acting, sometimes not.... In this light, the Emperor emerges as a flawed man who worked hard, knew his duties and yet who, because of irresolution and the ambiguous nature of the monarchy and the Meiji Constitution, failed to take a consistent stand for or against war. As a result, the Emperor was warning his military against war, even as he made it possible.

Given the context in which the Emperor reigned, this seems a fairer assesment of his role than Professor Bix's depiction of an agressive warrior. As to the Emperor's later post-World War II role and his "suppression of the Japanesse people's sense of empowerment," this is mostly hogwash and a reflection of the professor's own political predilictions. Monarchy is no more incompatible with democracy in Japan than it is in Canada, Australia,Norway, Sweden, Monaco, Britain or Spain. To hang the peculiar state of Japan's current political institutions around Hirohito's neck is to heap a lot of 1,000 years of history on one man.

Did the United States - specifically MacArthur - save the Emperor for its own reasons? Of course. The Soviet Union and Mao were close by. The spectacle of Germany's Weimar Republic, of a nation suddenly cut culturally adrift by the loss of its own monarchy after a major war, was recent history. Its lessons of a society made ripe for totalitarianism by the loss of established institutions however flawed, were not lost on an American government increasingly faced with the prospect of Cold War.

Unfortunately, Professor Bix makes his moral judgment of the Emperor in curious isolation from the Emperor's time and place. This does not mitigate the Emperor's failings, but it does make for a more complicated historical judgment than the professor suggests.

Best advice about this book: Get it, read it for the undeniably rich trove of data, facts and narrative drama that it offers, but put Professor Bix's shrill sermonizing on the Emperor and the evils of monarchy to one side. Read more ›