Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
Thus, without any institutional change having occurred, the accession in 1912 of Hirohito's father became an important turning point in the conduct of state affairs. The
genr
,
especially Yamagata, began to exert stronger control over the court, checking the will of the impetuous, always unpredictable new emperor. Imperial rescripts, which until recently had carried the force of law, and which the oligarchs had long relied on to curb recalcitrant Diets and ministers of state, suddenly became an object of fierce dispute and lost some of their authority.
56
A new interpretation of the constitution emerged: Professor Minobe's “organ theory,” in which the state was viewed as supreme and even the monarch was subordinated to it as one of several “organs.” Among Diet politicians a new movement arose to “protect the constitution” from the arbitrary rule of the “Satsuma-Ch
sh
cliques” that had dominated Japan under Meiji's protection. Because the franchise had doubled after the Russo-Japanese War, many politicians also began to press for passage of a universal male suffrage law.
57
Historians mark the postâRussoâJapanese War period, culminating in the 1912 political change, as the start of Japan's “Taish
democracy” movement. By the use of this American-English term they mean a series of public campaigns, waged mainly by politicians, journalists, and intellectuals, to demand universal male suffrage, cabinet governments organized by the head of the leading political party, and politics conducted by parties in the Diet rather than by the older fief-based political cliques, which functioned apart from the Diet. After World War I, “Taish
democracy” also came to denote the transmission to Japan of American cultural and political products, lifestyles, and such ideologies as individualism.
58
The latter especially challenged the premise that the Meiji state rather than the individual had the capacity and was responsible for defining and enforcing the proper moral life.
III
The death of their grandfather was a major turning point in the lives of Hirohito and his young brothers. For Hirohito it marked the start of a new stage in his training. In order to prepare him to succeed to the position of supreme commander, he was assigned a new chamberlain and a military aide-de-camp, the latter supervised by a high-ranking official of the Imperial Household Ministry.
59
This man, former minister of education and longtime president of Tokyo Imperial University, Hamao Arata, was now known as the lord steward of the crown prince and was charged with overseeing Hirohito's education, and instructing him in the extraordinary complexities of court and social etiquette.
In addition the daily contact among the brothers declined, their educational paths separated, and their mentor paid them his last visit. On September 10, 1912, three days prior to Meiji's funeral, sixty-four-year-old General Nogi came to Hirohito's residence, already renamed the Crown Prince's Detached Palace. After informing Hirohito that he would “not be here when school
starts,” Nogi urged him to be vigilant and study hard. He then presented the prince with his two favorite history books, one by the seventeenth-century Confucian scholar and military strategist, Yamaga Soko, the other by Miyake Kanran, a founder and leading representative of the early Mito school of nationalist learning.
60
At the beginning of the Taish
period, on the day of Emperor Meiji's funeral, General Nogi and his wife closed the door to their second-floor living room and prepared to end their lives. He had removed his uniform and was clad in white undergarments; she wore black funeral attire. They bowed to portraits of Meiji and of their two sons, killed in the Russo-Japanese War. While the funeral bells tolled, they proceeded to commit ritual suicide. Mrs. Nogi acted first; he assisted, plunging a dagger into her neck, and then he disemboweled himself with a sword. The departed hero of the Russo-Japanese War left behind ten private notes and a single death poem. (The writing of
waka
death poems was another practice from Japanese antiquity that was revived in the nineteenth century.) In one note he apologized for his action to four family members, including his wife, and acknowledged having contemplated suicide ever since losing his regimental flag in the war of 1877; he also mentioned his aging and the loss of his sons. In another note, to a military doctor, he bequeathed his body to medical use.
61
Nogi also left notes for Capt. Ogasawara Naganari and Gen. Tanaka Giichi.
62
Nogi's death poem, intended for public consumption, told the nation that he was following his lord into deathâa practice known as
junshi
that even the Tokugawa shogunate had considered barbaric and outlawed “as antiquated in 1663.”
63
Conservative intellectuals Nitobe Inaz
and Miyake Setsurei, both given to decrying the collapse of traditional Japanese morality, interpreted Nogi's suicide as a signal act of samurai loyalty, pregnant with positive lessons for the nation, and for its armed forces. Nantenb
, Nogi's Zen master, was so enthralled by the majesty of his pupil's action that he sent a three-
word congratulatory telegram to the funeral: “Banzai, banzai, banzai.”
64
The
Asahi shinbun
, however, editorially criticized those who called for the establishment of a new morality by reviving
bushid
, and asserted that Nogi's harmful action could teach the nation nothing.
65
Kiry
Y
y
, a writer for the
Shinano Mainichi shinbun
, went further, not only decrying Nogi's death as “thoughtless” and “meaningless” but warning presciently that “to comprehend death as loyalty” was a mistaken ethical idea that could only “end up encouraging great crimes in international relations.”
66