A Prosecutor's Address to the Jury

The stumbling steps that Japan took between 1931 and 1941, and then throughout the Pacific War, has been the subject of many books. The record of decisions taken or not taken is well known. Herbert P. Bix’s methodical review of the record is as complete as you will find anywhere. From the point of view of tracing that chronology this book is important.

But Bix is not content to lay out the facts. His mission is to indict Hirohito personally as being one of the persons principally responsible for Japan’s entry first into the war in China, and later with the US, the UK, and the Netherlands. His method is that of a prosecutor interpreting all the facts to suit his argument, rather than that of a judge following the evidence to see where it will go. Readers will have to decide whether they find his argument persuasive. I did not.

The foundation of Bix’s argument is the number of national policy documents that bore Hirohito’s seal. This tells us nothing. In the UK, enactments bear the Queen’s signature, yet they do not represent her personal choices. Bix relies on a mountain of military orders that also bear Hirohito’s seal. Again, that tells us nothing. The question to be answered is whether the militarists in government, and in the army and navy, led Hirohito or vice versa. The fact that Hirohito signed military orders could serve both interpretations. Were they his own orders, or orders placed before him for his signature?

Therefore, while I was interested in the bare facts of the chronology, I had to grit my teeth for many hours because of Bix’s interpretations. When army officers go rogue, or are insubordinate, or are unwise, and Hirohito fails to punish or chastise, Bix interprets this as tacit approval. Another observer might conclude that the frequency and magnitude of insubordination is evidence that no one took Hirohito’s approval as important – certainly not necessary. When Hirohito does criticize (“scold” in Bix’s term), but does nothing more, Bix interprets this as hypocrisy. Hirohito really approves the action he is criticizing, and could have reversed it if he wanted to. Another observer might conclude that criticism and scolding marked the limit of Hirohito’s authority. Bix refers time and again to the Meiji constitution that named the emperor as the supreme commander of the armed forces. But for six hundred years at least, the Japanese state was controlled by men who were nominally subordinate to an emperor or Shogun, but actually exercised supreme command. The Meiji emperor, who Hirohito supposedly emanated, was one such. No one can say today how much, if any, real power Meiji exercised. Indeed, Meiji was put into power not because anyone wanted him to exercise power, but because it was expected he would be easily manipulated.

Bix’s focus on Hirohito is odd, because he often notes that the real fault with Japan’s political system was that too many independent actors – the navy and army (two institutions, not one), elder statesmen, the cabinet, the palace functionaries – all scheming and manipulating, many with the ability to nudge or shove events in one direction or another, independent of the others, and independent of any ultimate central authority. Bix’s mission is to paint Hirohito as the central authority with actual power to decide and correct, but at many points he observes that in fact there was no central authority. This too was the real way the Meiji constitution worked. Meiji himself was a nominal emperor, but controlled by loose and undefined networks of oligarchs. What does Bix say changed that to put Hirohito in actual command and control?

I see Hirohito as being one among many people with input into policy decisions, and by no means the most important or authoritative. When one considers his enforced isolation from ordinary social interaction from the moment of his birth (very well told by Bix), it is hard to hold him accountable as one might a person who had an ordinary upbringing and adult relationships. However, as I have said, listeners and readers will have to decide for themselves.

The narrator was not really suitable. His ordinary reading voice sounds like someone from the Beverly Hillbillies (if anyone remembers that show). When reading quotations, he adopts a mild and irritating falsetto. I know many narrators think they have to use funny voices for reading quotations, but with the better narrators it is clear when they are reading the main text, and when they are reading quotations.

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