Oh I highly recommend the book then.

Also Bergamini's "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy" or Inoue Kiyoshi's "Tenno no senso sekinin" (not sure if this has been translated to English). And of course John Dower's "Embracing Defeat". Hirohito's own monologue "dokuhakuroku" is fairly damning too.

"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. "

Sounds interesting, I'll have to read it.

buonaparte Wrote:Ever since the Meiji Restoration the Emperor was not just a figurehead. He had real power.

That is the story behind every insurrection in Japanese history.

I'd have to read the books in question to address anything in them though.

buonaparte Wrote:Ever since the Meiji Restoration the Emperor was not just a figurehead. He had real power.

The Meiji emperor was a figurehead of the oligarchy. The historical figure Ken Watanabe's character in The Last Samurai was based off started his samurai rebellion in part because he was a true monarchist at heart and objected to the rubber-stamping figurehead treatment given to the Meiji emperor. The Taisho emperor was mentally disabled. Maybe, *maybe* the Showa emperor took interest in the war his country was raging, and that was later downplayed by the occupying forces. But at worse his crime was negligence. He certainly wasn't calling the shots. As Jarvik7 said, rubber stamping != commanding.

This biography sounds typical of those written about recently deceased figures (I haven't read it!). There's a cycle to these things: you start of with a slew of praises of the good things he has done, then there's some alarmist writings about the recently discovered bad things he did. In 50 years we'll have settled on a middle ground. Until then, じゃあな.