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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Revealing, but may stretch its point., July 16, 2001
By A Customer
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.
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by Professor Donald Keene
by Edwin P. Hoyt
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