Hirohito: The Showa Emperor in War and Peace

302 Pages·2007·0.95 MB·English

by  Ikuhiko Hata

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HIROHITO: THE SHO¯WA EMPEROR IN WAR AND PEACE
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General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito photographed in the US Embassy,
Tokyo, shortly after the start of the Occupation in September 1945. (See page 187)
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Hirohito:
The Sho¯wa Emperor
in War and Peace
Ikuhiko Hata
NIHON UNIVERSITY
Edited by
Marius B. Jansen
GLOBAL
ORIENTAL
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HIROHITO: THE SHO¯WA EMPEROR IN WAR AND PEACE
by Ikuhiko Hata
Edited by Marius B. Jansen
First published in 2007 by
GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD
P.O. Box 219
Folkestone
Kent CT20 2WP
UK
www.globaloriental.co.uk
© Ikuhiko Hata, 2007
ISBN 978-1-905246-35-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from
the Publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available
from the British Library
Set in Garamond 11 on 12.5 pt by Mark Heslington, Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Printed and bound in England by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear
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Contents
The Author and the Book vii
Editor’s Preface ix
Author’s Preface to the English Edition xix
Chapter 1: Emperor Hirohito and the February 26 Army
Uprising 1
Chapter 2: The Decision to End the War 44
Chapter 3: Schemes for Survival of the Imperial Line 88
Chapter 4: One Thousand Letters that Saved the Emperor 160
Chapter 5: Emperor Hirohito is Not to Abdicate 181
Chapter 6: The Emperor Hirohito in War and Peace –
Confrontation with MacArthur 215
Index 263
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The Author and the Book
Professor Ikuhiko Hata, born in 1932, is Professor of History at
Chiba University* and a leading historian of contemporary
Japan. After graduation from the University of Tokyo, he continued
his studies at Harvard and Columbia, after which he served
successfully as researcher at the Defence Agency, instructor at the
Defence Institute, Chief Historian of the Financial History
Research Division of the Ministry of Finance, and Professor of
Takushoku University before accepting his present position.
He has been Visiting Fellow at Columbia and Princeton
universities. His books published in Japan include ‘Studies of
Sho¯wa Military Fascism’, ‘The Sino-Japanese War’, ‘The Nanking
Incident’, ‘The Rearmament of Japan’ and ‘The Enigmas of Sho¯wa
History’. He has also compiled reference dictionaries and directories
of the Imperial Army and Navy, the pre-war Japanese bureaucracy
and a compendium of the political institutions, politics and leaders
of major countries during the twentieth century.
Individual chapters of this book appeared in various historical
periodicals in Japan between 1979 and 1983. They were published
as a book by Kodansha in 1987, entitled Hirohito Tenno¯ itsutsu no
ketsudan (‘Five Decisions by Emperor Hirohito’). It was
subsequently republished (1994) by Bungei Shunju as Sho¯wa Tenno¯
itsutsu no Ketsudan (‘Five Decisions by Emperor Sho¯wa’) in order to
conform with the emperor’s posthumous name, and with a new
introduction, but the text continued to use the name Hirohito.
Professor Hata commented on an early draft of the translation,
but he has not seen this final version or the substantive notes.
Citations and specific references are from the original book by the
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Hirohito: The Sho¯wa Emperor in War and Peace
author, but substantive notes that help to place the material in
historical and historiographic contexts have been added by the
editor. The basic translation was done by David S. Noble, then at
Princeton University, with financial support from the Sasakawa
Peace Foundation of Tokyo. I have edited freely, re-grouping some
of the material in Chapter 3, and providing the English original for
quotations the author supplied in Japanese.
MARIUS B. JANSEN
Princeton, 1995
* Today, Ikuhiko Hata is Emeritus Professor of History at Nihon University
JAPANESE NAMES
This book follows the Japanese convention of putting family name
first, followed by the given name, except in the case of the author,
which follows Western convention to facilitate general reference,
including bibliographic databases.
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