japan's fifteen year war (1931-45)

Hirohito and Japanese politics in the 1920s-1930s

Emperor Hirohito ascended to the throne under the double identity of a divine emperor and a constitutional monarch, at a time when popular politics was raging through Japan.  Against the wishes of the elite Japanese politicians, industrialization released much frustration on the part of workers and victims of the side effects of industrial revolution such as pollution.  And the formal regulations of the Meiji constitution allowed political participation.  Under such circumstances, there was a heightened conflict between the liberals and conservatives within the Japanese government.  The right wing, represented by a coalition from within the military to the civilian government, benefited from the mixed signals Hirohito sent out, who tried to balance between a constitutional monarch and a complete identification with the state, and between his desire to keep a good relationship with the West by maintaining peace in East Asia, and a military expansionist policy in China.

1. Political radicalism in the 1920s (see notes under Japanese society and politics, from Meiji to Taisho)

2. Against this background, heightened military activism. 

In the late 1920s-1930s, Emperor Hirohito intervened high handedly in the Japanese cabinet to maintain a conciliatory position with the U.S., and the West, while allowing free exercise of power of the army, which led to the paradoxical situation that although the Japanese foreign policy was pro-Western, the dissatisfaction of the army and navy over such policies went without being addressed.  And the army had a free hand in expansionist policies in China.  What was more, because Hirohito did not really want to give up expansion into China, a legacy of his grandfather Emperor Meiji, he did not really want to comply with international treaties of peace and cooperation, which prevented him from punishing Japanese troops' rampant activities in China. 1. Assassination of Zhang Zuolin(1928) Long believing that Japan could maintain its unequal treaties with China and ignore Chinese nationalism, the unification of China under the Nationalist government came as a shock. The non-compliance with Japan by Zhang Zuolin, the Manchu warlord, led to his assassination en route from Beijing to Manchuria in 1928. Instead of punishing leaders of the Kwangtung Army (named after the Chinese region of Manchuria as the army was specially to protect the lives and property of the Japanese there) Hirohito fired PM Tanaka who had initially wanted to investigate the matter but later on tried to cover it up when he found all forces were against him. This sent a message to the Japanese army in China that they could do as they wanted. 2. The London Naval Conference of 1930 On the other hand, Hirohito wanted to cooperate with the West.  Another reason for firing Tanaka was because he was not as conciliatory toward the West as Hirohito wanted him to.  PM Hamaguchi who succeeded to the job was readier to comply with the West.  The limit on the naval tonnage for Japanese ships, at a ratio of 69:100 to Anglo-American battleships, led to widespread protest in the Japanese army and navy. It also led to the fatal shooting of Prime Minister Hamaguchi, who negotiated the treaty, by a right winger, in 1930. 3. The Manchurian Incident (1931) It was a plot by the Kwantung army to take over Manchuria in the face of Manchuria’s reunification with China (1928). Minami, Army Minister privy to the plot, wanted to delay it due to Hirohito’s caution; it led to faster reaction on the part of the army in 1931 when they learned it.  It can be argued that the army's boldness in invading Manchuria was based on the belief that they could get away with it in the Japanese government.

3. Hirohito's leadership in the 1930s

The ambivalence of the emperor over following the U.S. and the West and expanding into China, which was against the international treaty of peace Japan signed in 1928 (the Kellogg-Briand pact, named after the British and French foreign ministers who initiated it, which vowed to oust war forever.) cost Japan effective leadership, not only encouraging the Japanese army to build a greater stronghold in Manchuria, but also right  wing resentment of his indecisiveness.  In the end, Hirohito failed to please either the West or the right wing in Japan.  Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 and fell into international isolation.  The right wing, unsatisfied with the situation and afraid to dump their anger on the emperor, staged coups against the more liberal elements in the government. Prime Minister Inukai of the Seiyukai Party withheld recognition of the puppet government of Manchuria propped up by the Japanese Kwangtung Army in order not to get Japan too deeply involved in expansion in China, in 1932.  For that he incurred right wing anger and was assassinated on May 15, 1932.  The assassins, instead of heavy punishment, almost all got light sentences.  Their acts were cheered as protests against corrupt party politics. The emperor's indecisiveness and tacit endorsement of the military enabled the latter and the civilian right wing to use the pretext of defending the "kokutai," meaning emperor centered politics in Japan, as a way to suppress all dissidence.  The right wing also revisited the "organ theory" by Professor Minobe Tatsukichi of the Law School of Tokyo University, proposed in 1923, the heyday of Japanese liberalism.  Although Minobe was a conservative, his organ theory deemphasized the divinity of the emperor, calling the emperor an organic part, although the most important part, of the body of Japanese polity.  The right wingers who attacked him wanted to abolish the constitutional definition of the emperor and only emphasize his divinity. Hirohito's position was somewhere between the right wing and Minobe, but he kept silence on the right wing activities because fundamentally he identified with the state and disliked popular politics. Meanwhile factional struggles were carried out within the military, between two factions: the Imperial Way and the Control factions: over how to strengthen Japan: through moral and other esoteric values (Imperial Way), especially regarding the emperor, or through technological improvement (Control).  The conflict soon spread to the Imperial Way's attack on the moderate government.  Hence the Feb.1936 coup by the Imperial Way assassinated a series of more liberal minded government officials from councilors to the emperor to members of the cabinet, including attempted assassination of PM Okada. They were hoping to have the emperor's support for an Imperial Way controlled government and full scale invasion of China.  They were surprised that the emperor was against them because he was angry with the army's usurpation of his authority.   The new cabinet formed in May 1936 was militarily aggressive.  They stationed more troops in China and set the eventual goal of colonizing the whole of China.

The way to Pearl Harbor

In July 1937, shots were exchanged between Japanese soldiers stationed outside of Beijing (Peking) and Chinese soldiers; the Sino-Japanese War had formally begun.  In his Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins, 2001), Herbert Bix claims that Hirohito oversaw every aspect of the war, with all the military leaders reporting separately to him, implying he was responsible for the full  course of the war.  The year 1941 marked some new developments in the course of the war.  Although on the Chinese front, the war reached a stalemate--the Japanese occupied much of the eastern seaboard but was not able to penetrate into inland China, such as Sichuan Province, a valley surrounded by mountains, where the seat of the Nationalist government of China was moved, the German invasion of the Soviet Union opened up possibility for Japan to invade the USSR from the east simultaneously, and emboldened the Japanese to take over French Indochina, now that the Soviet threat to Japan was gone.  While the Japanese invasion of China led to US condemnation of Japanese military aggression, US lend-lease support to the Chinese Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek government of over $2 billion in cash and kind over the eight year period, and finally, China's seat in the UN Security Council as a permanent member, it was Japan's advancement into southeast Asia that led to US/British/Dutch economic retaliation in terms of oil embargo and freezing of Japanese assets. The Japanese hard-liners thought that so long as they went tough on the Anglo-Americans, they would get what they wanted.  After the July 1941 Japanese takeover of Indochina, which was through the peaceful negotiations with the French Vichy regime, a puppet of Hitler's,the US started economic sanctions against Japan, which fueled the right wing belief in the Japanese government and military that war with the US was inevitable. Next, the Japanese eyed the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya, rich in oil resources that the Americans were now trying to deny them.  All this contributed to heightened tension between the US and Japan, since the US also had its own plan for the Pacific Ocean, and for its possessions there, including Hawaii and the Philippines, and the total oil embargo against Japan. Some right-wingers in the army and navy, convinced that Hitler would win a quick victory against the USSR,  decided to strike south at the American/British/Dutch controlled regions before turning back to finish the USSR when it was almost dead from Hitler's pounding. From then (July) to late November, for four months, there was heated debate and divided opinion over how to deal with the Americans, which culminated in the decision for a pre-emptive strike of Pearl Harbor on Dec.8 (Japan time).

Timeline:

July 1937-Aug.1945: the Sino-Japanese war (which the Chinese call the eight-year war). June 22 1941: Hitler's invasion of the USSR. June 23-July 1941: Japanese peaceful occupation of Indochina. July-Nov.1941: US freezing of Japanese assets in the US and total embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan.  Dec.8 1941: Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor. Dec. 1941: Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya following Pearl Harbor.

Dissenting voices

Prince Konoe, who was the PM in 1941, was faced with a dilemma: he did not feel ready to go to war with the U.S., and on the other hand, he was not ready to withdraw Japanese troops from Indochina as US requested, which was his springboard to southeast Asia.  In August, he tried to organize a summit meeting with Franklin Roosevelt but FDR was in the Atlantic talking with Churchill about the outcome of the war.   Prince Konoe, who had become pro-fascist, still hoped to negotiate a friendlier U.S. attitude toward Japan. In his letter of resignation as PM on Oct.16, 1941, he cited that he could not get Japan into another war before the war in China was resolved. Toward the end of the war, he would argue for ending the war quickly for fear Soviet invasion would not only end the war but also the kokutai.

Hirohito’s road to Pearl Harbor

Hirohito's thoughts obviously underwent several stages between January and November 1941.  He was unwilling to wage a  war against the US for various reasons.  On the other hand, he was committed to the agenda of a "Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Zone" including China and southeast Asia that would provide self-sufficiency for Japanese economy (in energy, food, raw materials, etc.), which would invariably lead him into a collision with the US.  Hirohito had the option up to Oct.1941 to back out of Indochina and avoid a collision with the US, but he opted not to do so.  Not willing to make the imperial house too obvious an aggravator for war, after Prince Konoe's resignation in October 1941, Hirohito rejected the nomination of Prince Higashikuni, Emperor Hirohito's uncle from his wife's side, as the next PM, but instead nominated General Tojo who  was consistently for the  war in southeast Asia, as the PM. He seemed to be reconciled with the Army and Navy's suggestions that if Japan was to go to war with the US, it had better do so quickly before its resources ran too low because of the US oil blockade of Japan. From then on, although peace negotiations continued between the US and Japan, Hirohito was fully prepared for war.  Japan's conditions for negotiations were equal treatment of Japan for trade every where in the world, and Japanese troops in Indochina until after the China war was over.  The American response by Cordell Hull, secretary of state, although ready to compromise on China, would not do so on Indochina.  This was interpreted as an ultimatum by General Tojo Hideki and Minister for Greater East Asia Togo Shigeroni, hence the eventual decision for war. After so much war preparedness, for Hirohito and the rest, instead of waiting for a vague answer from the US, the more certain alternative was aggressively strike out and gamble for its future in Asia.

Miscalculations of the  war

Once the war started, Hirohito realized it differed from his plans.  For him and most of his generals, their major concern had been the USSR, and not the US.  Nor did they foresee jungle fighting on the Pacific islands.  Throughout the war in southeast Asia, Hirohito believed the major battlegrounds continued to be in China and Burma. Despite rapid Japanese success in the early phase of the war in SE Asia, they did not have a plan to stop but kept pushing south, stretching their line too thin, as they did in China.  Not known to Hirohito at the time, the Battle of the Midway Islands (June 1942) proved to be a decisive point in the war against the US.  by the time of the battle of Guadacanal (Aug.1942), the US began its offensive.  Despite the weakness of the Japanese troops, Hirohito allowed the war on Guadacanal to last till the end of the year before abandoning the project.  similarly he had the Japanese soldiers fight to the end on the Solomon Islands. Hirohito's main focus was to recapture the islands at all costs.  And even with the loss of the wars, Hirohito failed to contract his forces in the Pacific.  To the Japanese, it was a war of attrition, of warships, transports, air squadrons, and veteran pilots.  It had to come to an end. (Pacific War Maps) Finally, in Sept.1943, the cabinet agreed to be on the defensive. Meanwhile, to change policy, Prince Konoe and Admiral Okada tried to get PM Tojo out of office.  Since Japan lost almost all the southern Pacific Islands, the Tojo cabinet fell in July 1944. But the succeeding Koiso cabinet did not end war.  And Hirohito still hoped for victory. The heavy losses of the Japanese navy and air force led to the use of kamikaze pilots and makeshift planes in 1944. In the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945, Hirohito still held on to a hope of victory even by May 1945, and called for a protracted war in both cases.

Japanese Surrender and American Occupation

By June 1945, with the Japanese defeat in Okinawa, it was obvious the end of the war would be just a matter of time.  But according to Bix in chap.13, the Japanese preoccupation, especially the thought of Prince Konoe, was how to prevent Soviet pressure on a defeated Japan to turn Communist, thereby destroying the emperor centered kokutai.  Negotiations with the Soviets began in April 1945 to ask the Soviets to guarantee the emperor and the Japanese monarchy after the war, which the Soviets refused.  August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.  Meanwhile, in July 1945, in Postdam, a town outside of Berlin, the British, Americans, and Soviets drew up the Postdam Declaration, part of which addressed Japan, calling for unconditional surrender.  Despite the misgivings from US Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew that the Japanese would fight to keep their emperor, the unconditional phrase was not dropped.  Since Japan did not surrender, on Aug.6 and 9, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and  Nagasaki, killing 200,000 and 40,000 people respectively.  The emperor announced Japanese unconditional surrender on Aug.15 over the national radio.  The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces (SCAP) Douglas MacArthur, surprisingly, concurred with former ambassador Grew and kept the emperor.  Almost repeating a scene from the 1868 Meiji Restoration, MacArthur kept the emperor to maintain a degree of continuity when he introduced enormous changes into the Japanese society.  This, however, would eventually create a host of problems on their own, most serious of which was the question of who was guilty of starting the war.   Bix, Herbert 2001. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Harper.