真相：裕仁天皇与侵华战争

• heidrich

  2017-09-19
  Tanaka was the first prime minister to discover that a strong-willed emperor capable of playing a determining role in politics could make like absolutely miserable for the leader of a political party. Almost from the moment Tanaka became prime minister, Hirohito and the court group took a keen interest in his performance and soon found themselves at odds with most of his policies. They disapproved of the way the Seiyukai Party had expanded its power through an aggressive policy of personnel appointments. With his Confucian and bushido education, Hirohito wanted officials appointed solely on the basis of ability, not political criteria or affiliation.
• heidrich

  2017-09-17
  …Thus, rather than blindly putting his seal to the revised national defense plan, he approved it "only after he had fully understood it." This insistence on withholding his assent until he had been made fully informed was his standard operating procedure after he became emperor in his own right.
• heidrich

  2017-09-17
  By the time Hirohito became emperor, he had grasped the utilitarian value of myths and clung to them as to other notions of statecraft. Whenever convenient he used such myths to rationalize his own behavior, to buttress the power of the imperial court vis-à-vis other elites in the ruling bloc, and to position himself outside political and secular responsibility. At the same time the more Hirohito lived the role of "sacred and direct" monarch, the more he came to rely on religious belief as a mechanism of power as well as a source of strength under trying conditions.
• heidrich

  2017-07-31
  In 1915 Shimizu became an Imperial Household Ministry official and took up his duties at the Ogakumonjo. There, and later at court, he instructed Hirohito on the two dominant accounts of the Meiji constitution that defined the parameters of constitutional government. One, the direct imperial rule theory of Hozumi Yatsuka and Uesugi Shinkichi, affirmed imperial absolutism and taught that the emperor had responsibility for arranging the various organs of state and directly exercising his power to appoint and dismiss his officials. This was the view favored by many army officers (with the notable exception of General Ugaki), and by navy officers such as Fleet Admiral Tōgō and Captain Ogasawara. The other interpretation was the liberal "emperor organ theory" of Minobe, who sought to rein in th...