Hirohito Death Reopens World War II Wounds

Until Emperor Hirohito’s death, a taboo prohibited any discussion here of his role in World War II and his responsibility for it.

Shinto rites that the emperor carried out as chief priest of the once-militaristic religion stirred little controversy, despite a clause in Japan’s postwar constitution that mandates separation of religion and politics.

His public appearances and occasional news conferences attracted minimal coverage in the media. Infrequent opinion polls that delved into Japanese attitudes toward Hirohito and the imperial system were in many cases not made public.

Now, as Japan prepares for a state funeral Friday, the passing of the man who ruled Japan for 62 years--longer than any of his predecessors--has touched off a controversy and reopened old wounds.

New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands have condemned Hirohito. Canada, China and South Korea pointedly have refused to send a top official to the funeral. Officials in the United States and Britain have felt compelled to defend decisions by President Bush and Prince Philip to attend.

Edward Behr, the author of a biography of China’s last monarch that formed the basis for the film “The Last Emperor,” said in a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary that Hirohito was neither “the puppet nor the pacifist his image builders made him out to be.”

In Japan, a nation that has never come to grips with its war record, criticism has suddenly erupted--criticism that was not heard while Hirohito was alive.

The Communist Party, which for years had shelved its advocacy of abolishing the imperial system, has led the attack. Socialist Party Chairwoman Takako Doi said the emperor was responsible for the war, “because it was fought in his name in accordance with the old constitution.”

Blamed by Nagasaki Mayor

Significantly, even some non-ideologues spoke out. Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima of Nagasaki, who is supported by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said he, too, believes that Hirohito was responsible for the war--and for the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to Motoshima, the emperor should have accepted advice said to have been given him in February, 1945, six months before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and sought an end to the war.

Even the torii, or Shinto temple gateway, the government plans to put up in connection with Hirohito’s funeral has become an issue.

But the flurry of controversy has shed little light on the extent of Hirohito’s wartime influence. In 1975, in one of his two news conferences for foreign reporters, the emperor said he wanted to refrain from commenting on Japan’s wartime leadership.

“There are still many people alive who were involved at the time in these affairs,” he said. “And if I said anything now, I might be criticizing the military authorities of that time.”

Japanese reporters never questioned Hirohito on this issue, and the 1975 remark to the foreign press was never reported here. Nor did the Japanese people ever hear Hirohito’s view of his role in government, which he offered only once. In his other news conference for the foreign press, he said he had intervened in government decisions only twice--and that on both occasions, he had done so only because he was forced.

The first occasion, he said, was in 1936, after an attempted coup by young army officers. “Leaders of the government were missing,” he said, and he ordered vacillating army commanders to subdue the rebels.

The second was his widely publicized decision to end the war when the government was unable to reach a decision to accept an unconditional surrender that did not guarantee Hirohito’s safety and the preservation of the imperial system.

“At the end of the war,” he said, “Prime Minister (Kantaro) Suzuki left everything to my discretion. So I had to make a decision. But that decision was taken on the responsibility of Prime Minister Suzuki. That is my interpretation.”

Therefore, he said, “I believe I have acted as a constitutional monarch during wartime and at all other times . . . in compliance with the wishes of . . . my grandfather, the Emperor Meiji.”

Those words, which also were not reported in Japan, represented the only time he declared that he consciously avoided trying to exercise power.

He Knew Military Plans

When Hirohito was asked, in 1975, how long he had known about the plan to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, he replied, “It is a fact that I received reports on military operations beforehand.”

But he said he had no role in military strategy, adding, “I only received those reports after everything, down to the most minute detail, had been decided upon by the staff.”

Although history shows that in recent centuries Japanese emperors exercised no legal power, a sacrosanct aura that successive governments have placed over the Imperial Family appears certain to ensure that no evidence will emerge to end the controversy over the emperor’s wartime role. Records of prewar and wartime meetings of the Imperial Council, although available to the public, say little about any comments Hirohito may have made when key military decisions were rubber-stamped in his presence.

Kiyoshi Matsudaira, chamberlain of the Imperial Household Agency, disclosed at a news conference for foreign correspondents in 1971 that Hirohito did “express opinions and describe his feelings in regard to reports made to him by ministers of the Cabinet.”

“What the ministers do as a result of hearing his majesty’s opinions is up to them,” he said.

This was not the picture painted by the Japanese government. Keikichi Masuhara, director of the Defense Agency in 1973, created a furor when he said that Hirohito had told him that criticism of Japan’s defense spending by opposition political parties was unjustified in view of the large military forces maintained by countries around Japan.

Masuhara also quoted Hirohito as saying he hoped that the postwar Self-Defense Forces, which were intended to prevent a resurgence of the military, would “retain the strong points of the old imperial forces and take care not to reinstate the bad points.”

Amid protests from opposition parties, Masuhara was forced to deny that Hirohito had said anything of the sort. Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was forced to declare that the emperor never offered opinions to the government.

Yet, after World War II ended, officials of the Imperial Household Agency eagerly informed the Japanese public of anti-war remarks Hirohito reportedly had made in meetings with government leaders before and during the war. Agency officials never disclosed any imperial comment sympathetic to any war action.

After Hirohito’s death Jan. 7, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita set the tone for a new portrayal of the late emperor as a peace-loving monarch. Takeshita said, without citing any evidence, that the war had broken out against Hirohito’s wishes. For the next two days the mass media enlarged on this theme.

“Hardly any attempt was made on TV to confront the issue of the emperor’s war responsibility or the imperial system itself,” Soichiro Tahara, a commentator, complained. “The issue of the emperor is indeed a taboo.”

Small bands of rightists and the ruling party have lashed out at critics like Mayor Motoshima of Nagasaki. Rightists threatened to take his life, and the ruling party stripped him of his position as a party adviser.

Crowds of a magnitude not seen before in postwar Japan have turned out to express sorrow at Hirohito’s death. More than 4 million Japanese have appeared at the gates of the Imperial Palace and at government offices throughout the country to sign books of condolence.

About 339,000 people paid their respects on the palace grounds over a three-day period.

A poll by the Kyodo News Service found that Emperor Akihito’s succession to the throne had raised public affection for him to 66% in mid-January, compared to 43% in December.

Illness and death, the poll found, raised to 69% the share of the people who felt either “friendly feelings” or “reverence” toward Hirohito. In 1987, the figure was 45%.

But the long veil of secrecy over Hirohito had clearly taken its toll. Even the Japanese people could not make up their minds about whether the emperor bore responsibility for the war.

In a poll by the Asahi newspaper published Feb. 8, 44% of the respondents said they could not decide whether he was responsible or could not answer the question, while 25% said he was responsible and 31% said he was not.

Perhaps most significantly, it was the first time the Asahi had ever asked the question in an opinion poll.