Customer Reviews

The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

"The Yamato Dynasty", Sterling & Peggy Seagrave's expose on the role of the Imperial Family in Japanese society since the Meiji Restoration is written in a style more resembling a political thriller than history. Sure, the mafia-like grip of Japan's all-powerful financial and business oligarchy over the nation's wealth and economy and the Imperial Family's collusion in willingly playing the part of a stooge in return for a lifetime of comfort and wealth with America's secret backing is a shocking eye opener for readers who know little of Japan's history. Reading the book helps us understand why the Japanese economy remains moribund and in a state of paralysis since the bubble burst in the early 90s. Genuine reform cannot take place because the oligarchs and political leaders pulling the strings will never act against their own interests. Neither will the bureaucracy which feeds from it. A truly damning appraisal of the state of Japan as a nation. Yet, I had difficulty accepting all of the Seagraves' account of it as history because of their highly controversial if not downright sensational style in telling it. If history were written and taught this way in school, you'd have no problems filling up the class. Don't get me wrong. The book makes for rivetting reading. It is absolutely unputdownable. Nevertheless, historians might react with horror at some of the gross oversimplication of the truth as told by the Seagraves. It is not difficult to imagine that that they might call into question the source and accuracy of some of the information used in the book. The Seagraves' monochrome/black and white portrayal of the wide cast of characters also turns history into faction, if not soap opera. I enjoyed 'The Yamato Dynasty" tremendously and would recommend it without hesitation to others. But I would be cautious in reading it as history. Better to judge it as a dramatised story of the Japanese imperial family in the post-Meiji era.

There was a quarrel in these reviews about the gentleman shown on the dust jacket of Yamato Dynasty, with one reviewer claiming it was not Hirohito but the former "boy emperor," later Emperor Pu Yi of Manchukuo (best known as the hero of the film The Last Emperor).

Well, I just now picked up a copy of Kempeitai by the British author Ramond Lamont-Brown, and the identical photograph (in black & white) appears on page 59, and captioned "His Imperial Majesty, Pu Yi, Emperor of China, 1908-12"

Of course, Lamont-Brown could be mistaken, but I am inclined to think that it was the publishers of Yamato Dynasty who made the howler. After all, the photo doesn't even look like Hirohito as an adult.

The Washington Post called this book "laughably ignorant," but it's a delightful read. Conspiracy buffs will love it, especially those who believe in a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy of Republicans bent on twisting history to their own money-grubbing advantage.

The history of the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa emperors up to 1945 isn't bad, as opposed what follows. The Seagraves have a knack for making individuals and situations come alive. They also have a knack for getting things wrong: MacArthur escaped from Corregidor by PT boat, not submarine; Japan had army and navy air forces, not a distinct "Japanese Air Force"; the great fire raid on Tokyo featured incendiary bombs, not napalm, and it killed about half the 200,000 cited by the Seagraves; in 1948 Edward Lansdale was a major, not a general....

More ominously, for a book that purports to give the inside scoop on the Emperor System, the Seagraves don't read Japanese and rarely if ever had translations made. For the first half of the book, I read the copious notes along with the text, and found no instance in which the Seagraves refer to a Japanese text. I can't be sure of this because I gave up this practice when I realized that the really interesting stuff was never supported by a source I knew and trusted.

Golden Lily, for example: as the Seagraves tell the story, Japan looted the nations it conquered, hid the treasure in caves in caves and sunken ships, and used it to enrich the emperor, bribe MacArthur and Herbert Hoover, finance the country's postwar expansion, and fund the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Evidently the Seagraves came across some (uncited) informant, then spun a book around this germ of a story, using whatever English-language sources they could find.

Read it by all means, but don't take it too seriously.

A prospective reader of this book could be confused by the variety of reviews available at this page, so let me add my voice to the cacaphony. The book covers the history of the Yamato dynasty during the twentieth century. It has had the misfortune to appear about the same time as the works of several renowned scholars who tackled similar material, e.g. Herbert Bix and John Dower, and their fame has dulled the luster of the Seagraves' book. The Yamato Dynasty is gossipy, full of inuendo, contains numerous minor errors of fact, and a paucity of Japanese primary sources. I must disagree with Daniel Ford; this book is not a rant about "right wing Republican" conspiracies... but parts of it are written in a style more in keeping with (sensational) journalism than with the drier academic style of a Peter Duus or Hebert Bix. The book is easy to read, then, but is it worth reading? Perhaps it is. It was recommended to me by several Japanese scholars, and I can see what attracted them: the ground it covers is not so different from what Dower and Bix cover, and even Iris Chang, and the Seagraves conclusions are not so different from theirs. Not bad when you consider that this book was published before those of Dower and Bix. It may be that in some ways, the Seagraves see the big picture just a little bit better than either Dower or Bix ( please see reviews for Herbert Bix and John Dower if you are not familiar with their work). Herbert Bix sees the Showa Emperor as being responsible for all things in Japan; the Seagraves put him in perspective. Dower lumps all Japanese officers together and absolves everyone else in Japan of responsibility for the war; the Seagraves see the situation as more ambiguous. Their depiction of the tensions in the officer class before the war is written in annoyingly breathless prose , but it is basically sound and quite succint. So the answer is... maybe you should judge for yourself. The book is certainly brief enough.

I am a bit puzzled by this book. As the bibliography shows, most of it is not new and has been documented by other writers, but the Seagraves should be commended for writing this history in a very compelling and interesting way. They document most of their facts well and relate them to an extensive bibliography. What disturbs me is that the parts of the story that are new are not nearly so well sourced. For example, on page 295 the Seagraves write: 'Documents also show that one of the big gold-bullion accounts set up by Santa Romana was in the name of General Douglas MacArthur. Other documents indicate that gold bullion worth $100 million was placed in the account of Herbert Hoover.E This is astonishing news. So I looked in the book notes to find out where it came from, but there was no reference. The documents are not reproduced and there is no further explanation of them. What are they? Where are they? What do they say? Also puzzling is the lack of a single named Japanese source, either verbal or written. The only exception is where the Seagraves reproduce quotes from someone else's research, such as Ian Neary (p.358) The Seagraves say they did their research in California, Virginia, Washington, France and England (p. xvii) but they do not mention that they ever went to Japan (which could explain some elemental mistakes in the book.) So just how did they interview these numerous Japanese eye-witnesses to operation Golden Lily? Since they clearly do not speak Japanese (again, obvious from the book) where is the acknowledgement to their Japanese interpreter and translator? All this made it difficult to trust the book. Some 'facts' were patently absurd and show a poor knowledge of Japan. Just a couple of examples: 'No young Japanese woman can refuse to become Empress' (p. 301) -- In fact, many women did turn the Crown Prince down, which is why Naruhito had such a hard time finding a bride. Yamaguchi prefecture . . .is famous as the home base of one of Japan's biggest underworld organizations, the Yamaguchi Gumi (sic)' (p.219) -- This is laughable. Nearly everyone in Japan knows that the Yamaguchi-gumi's home base is Kobe. If the Seagraves really wanted this book to make a splash they would have stopped peppering their story with 'documents show . . .Eand provided us with copies of the documents so we could judge for ourselves. Still, a well-written yarn if you don't take it too literally.

Well now, I've heard many stories about Japan before, during, and after WWII, but this is the first one claiming GOLD (and tons of it... yes, tons) were shipped to first Japan, and then later stockpiled in the Phillipines due to US Submarines blockading off any shipping to Japan.

General MacArthur, Herbert Hoover, the OSS (later CIA), President Marcos, and the US Republican Party were all hauling off their share of the gold bars too? Is this why MacArthur did not say anything more about becoming the Republican Party nominee for the 1948 Presidential Election?

Maybe there are tons of Gold Bars in Japan, the Phillipines, and MacArthur's personal bank account, but I think we need to reserve making a decision until more evidence is forthcoming.

And by the way, Bergamini ("JAPAN'S IMPERIAL CONSPIRACY") reported that MacArthur left the Phillipines by PT Boat... NOT submarine. So that contradiction needs to be straightened out too.

The one area I most enjoyed reading were the sections covering Japan's "INVISIBLE MEN". Who were (are) they, and how they fit into this puzzle makes for even more interesting reading.

In spite of some questionable issues, I still think this book is worth reading. Make your list of events to get to the bottom of, and hopefully, one day, the truth shall finally emerge...

This is one of the most pathetic pieces of "history" I've ever read. "Documents show" and "sources indicate" is not documentary evidence. Who were the sources, where are the cites? This is bad journalism, bad scholarship, and bad history. The writing, frankly, isn't that impressive, either. And for the record, the cover photo *is* P'u Yi, not Emperor Showa. Look at the uniform; the Chinese dragons on the collar are a dead giveaway even if you can't tell the faces are different, which they clearly are. I want to rate this book ZERO stars, but the Amazon Powers That Be have not provided the option to so brand a book, so please ignore the star and pretend you see a hole there.

This book on the 'history' of the dynasty that rules Japan suffers from its own sloppy sensationalism. It is not entirely useless, but nearly so. It kills its interesting subject by its manic devotion to conspiracy theories.
Probably the authors are entirely innocent of the cover blunder, but it is somehow symptomatic: the cover photo is not even a Japanese, not remotely a member of the dynasty that gave the book its title, but a Chinese and probably the last emperor, Pu Yi, the monarch of Manchukuo, poor man.
Seagrave wrote some interesting popular history books on China, mainly his Soong Dynasty and his book about the Empress Dowager are worth reading as an introduction to 20th century China. But forget this Japan book. Better to try Herbert Bix on Hirohito (who, by the way, does not even mention Hoover in the context of Hirohito's post WW2 predicaments).

Here you get 2 stories. The first is real which is a history of the imperial family in Japan from pre-Meiji to the current day (1998) and the origins of Japan Yakuza (mafia) and the founding principles that tie big business, the politicians and organized crime together. It's a worthwhile read as there is too little material about them. The story is interesting and nuanced. Seagrave's pace and confident claims make this a fun and easy book to read.

How the imperial family was resurrected and the people who surrounded them in the 1860's through to the modern day is fascinating. As are the roots of Japan's politics, industry and organized crime all based on two rival clans from Kyushu competing and fighting for the past 1000 years. There are great sections early on about Japan 1850 to 1900 which I just had not had a chance to read elsewhere.

This story shines a light on Hirohito and his brothers on just how active they were and complicit in the build up before and during WWII particularly in some of the major atrocities at Nanjing and the overall policy of complete and total war which entailed far greater death, torture and cruelty than ever seen before. This is a worthwhile account.

The second story is a joke. Seagrave goes off into numbers neverland claiming the Japanese mined or stole and then hid 8,000 tons of gold. This is the amount that sits in Fort Knox and unlikely that the countries of Asia pre-1940 had accumulated anywhere near this amount of wealth. He claims that Sagawa delivery company was able to pay $1 billion in bribes on politicians in the 1960 and 1970's because they were the secret courrier of much of this pilfered wealth during the war (they did not exist in any form before 1960). And of course MacArthur is implicated with profiteering for hundreds of millions of dollars.

On almost every page there are exaggerations or unsubstantiated hyper-claims that undermine any credibility Seagrave might have. He talks about Guaranty Trust as being part of JP Morgan since the 1920's which is definitely not the case. It merged in 1959 and the 2 companies had hardly known each other. His conversions between Yen and $'s is off by many many multiples and thus inflating at every opportunity.

The footnotes are very selective. In one passage he claims MacArthur's staff was on the take and that Intelligence Officer Willoughby was on secretly selling Japan's gold (on whose behalf is never said). But in the footnotes Seagrave says in can never be proven but it must be the case! No where does he discuss whether or source is more or less credible. Given all the wild claims in the book this would seem to be required.

Overall it is entertaining. There are some good discussion points but with factual errors on every page this cannot be taken seriously. Too bad. The subject deserves a good historian.

The Yamato Dynasty brilliantly and painstakingly describes Hirohito's Golden Lily project. As the war progressed, the emperor ran low on funds. One day a kuromaku recommended he organize an asset-stripping plan for occupied countries, rather than letting the commanders continue to randomly loot and pocket the spoils. The Japanese had financial needs _ didn't all conquerors? World War II cost plenty. Fortunately, Hirohito's glamorous brother, Chichibu Yamato, realized the vanquished countries teemed with gold and treasure; he delighted in taking charge of an operation codenamed Golden Lily. The emperor trusted his Chichibu-san, unlike his other brothers. Chichibu pretended to need medical leave from the army owing to tuberculosis, claimed he repaired to a sanitarium near Mt. Fuji, where his wife assisted in nursing him back to health. His people prayed for his recovery, bowing before flickering candles and bowls of billowing incense. He walked in the dust of ancient roads in occupied China and Southeast Asia, his piglet hands clutching at every piece of gold he found. Some were large, for example a dozen solid gold Buddhas, each weighing over a ton. He collected fine Asian art, and he appreciated jewelry, though not as much as his brother the Emperor. Chichibu gathered up the bounty and sent it off on fake hospital ships to various locations. With his cultivated taste and love of souvenirs, he did save some pretty jewels for his wife and daughters, not to mention a few objects to freshen up his palace.
His belief in the sacred also motivated him to collect religious artifacts for the emperor. Hirohito responded to esthetics, or so he said, provided the objects were fabricated from gold or jade and encrusted with precious gems. He favored Shakyamunis, (Buddha, the lion of the Shakya tribe), Padmapanis, (queens of heaven), Tao-tieh (tiger-god) masks, and dragons. In time Chichibu seized so much treasure, it became physically impossible to move it to Japan, so he conscientiously stashed it in the Philippines, hiding it in over two hundred church vaults, bunkers, and underground tunnels. The hills were alive with the sound of coins clinking. In Ipoh, Malaysia, Chichibu melted gold and created bars of bullion bearing the stamp of the Golden Lily logo he helped design. The bounty still lurks in caves, and every so often, someone discovers a bit of it. A recently unearthed solid gold Philippine Buddha weighing close to a ton reportedly resides in a Zurich vault.
- Ann Seymour, author of "I've Always Loved You"