a subject of great debate both within Japan and overseas. But in addition to this question of his ‘war responsibility’ (sensō sekinin), which has dominated most historical accounts, controversy also surrounds the forty-odd years of his reign since Japan’s defeat in 1945, as this book, one of the first in Western research to consider his postwar career in some detail, will show.

To illustrate briefly some of the main issues in these debates, on the one hand there are those who portray early Shōwa Japan as virtually the victim of the Emperor (tennō) and of the ‘emperor system’ (tennōsei), which ‘denotes a framework of power…including the imperial institution as its keystone, the palace bureaucracy, the legal system anchored in the constitution, the military, the police, the courts, the civil bureaucracy, even the political parties, and so forth’ (Bix 1982:4). As the Japanese historian, Inoue Kiyoshi, states,

The man Hirohito was no doubt a sympathetic and courteous gentleman to his family and advisers. But Emperor Hirohito reigned at the summit of an atrocious emperor system fascism and continued to direct both aggressive wars and a system which oppressed the people.

(Inoue 1975:84)

Depicting the Shōwa Emperor as both a willing symbol and active agent of authoritarianism and war, David Bergamini likewise held that Hirohito was instrumental in a ramified ‘imperial conspiracy’ that led early Shōwa Japan into repression at home and aggression overseas, ending in the Pacific War (Bergamini 1971). A more recent account by the journalist, Edward Behr, is also critical, although unlike Bergamini’s, it emphasizes not so much Hirohito’s sins of commission as a war leader than his sins of omission, suggesting that he could have done more than he did to prevent war (Behr 1989). ⁴

A sequel to these critical perceptions of the Emperor in early Shōwa history is the conviction many share, especially in Japan, that his continuation on the throne and the perpetuation of the Japanese monarchy after the Pacific War meant that the dangers of emperor-centered nationalism and militarism still existed in postwar Shōwa Japan behind the facade of democracy, hence the need to remain vigilant lest Japan be victimized once again by its imperial institution. Irokawa Daikichi typified this concern in 1983 when he wrote, ‘To resurrect the Emperor-system in its full power, as some conservative politicians now advocate, is dangerous dallying with illusion…. There is the real possibility that Japan will turn into a new and monstrous miltary power’ (Irokawa 1983:138).

On the other hand, there are studies which portray the Emperor as a victim of political elites, in particular the military, who manipulated him for their own ulterior purposes leading to aggression and war in early Shōwa. In these works, he emerges as a reluctant symbol and passive agent of dark forces beyond his control. Thus, drawing a distinction between the Emperor and the emperor system, Charles Sheldon writes,

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