‘unequal treaties’ by the Western powers in the mid-nineteenth century dramatically produced new circumstances which were to greatly change the political position of the monarchy. The emperor was politically ‘rediscovered’ and made the symbolic focus of the armed movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shōgunate so that a new central government capable of saving Japan from foreign exploitation could be established. In this context the rebel slogan, sonnō jōi (‘revere the emperor and expel the barbarians’) signalled the emergence of the imperial court after centuries of political obscurity. ⁷ Then, once the destruction of the shōgunate was accomplished in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, with the emperor transferred from Kyoto to the shōgun’s castle in Tokyo, formerly Edo, there began the modern transformation of the Japanese monarchy through the ‘invention of tradition’, ⁸ blending certain elements adapted from Japan’s historical legacy and others adapted from the contemporary West. It was these which constituted the Shōwa inheritance with respect to imperial authority, power, and influence.

Their synthesis is most evident in the Meiji constitution, promulgated by Emperor Meiji on 11 February 1889. A hybrid of traditional Japanese and modern Western influences—the latter mostly reflecting Prussian precedents—the constitution ascribed extensive imperial prerogatives, or taiken, to the emperor which served notice that he would henceforth rule, as well as reign over, Japan. ⁹ Article IV began, ‘The Emperor is the Head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty’. Articles V-VIII elaborated his supreme legislative powers, including for example his power to convoke, open, close, and prorogue the imperial Diet, to dissolve the lower house of representatives and to issue imperial ordinances ‘in place of law’. In addition, article XI, it should be stressed, gave him ‘the supreme command of the Army and Navy’. Article XIII further empowered him to declare war, make peace, and conclude treaties; article XIV stated, ‘The Emperor proclaims the law of siege’; and so on.

The point is worth elaborating that these comprehensive powers, which signified an ‘absolute monarchy’ (zettai ōsei) were grounded on the emperor’s traditional religious authority, now reclaimed and firmly embedded in the law of the land (Nakano 1987:133). In promulgating the constitution, the Meiji Emperor declared, ‘The rights of sovereignty of State, We have inherited from our Ancestors’, in a ‘lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal’. This claim to divine lineage was reiterated in article I of the constitution, ‘The Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal’, and in article III, ‘The Emperor is sacred and inviolable’. That the sovereign would serve as the spiritual ‘pivot’ of Japan was intended by the government leaders who were responsible for drafting the constitution, including, above all, Itō Hirobumi (Toriumi 1980:113). In short, the emperor was the sacred pillar of the kokutai, or ‘national polity’.

This religious image of the emperor was one of Japan’s most potent ‘modern myths’ (Gluck 1985). For the Meiji leaders, it buttressed ‘the German historicist theory of the organic state which they had chosen to be the

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