In many anti-Japanese film and television dramas, we see that the Japanese emperor and the army are undoubtedly absolutely obedient to the relationship between monarchs and ministers.
But dig deeper into the history behind it, and you'll find that it's not that simple.
Yoko Kato, a professor of history at the University of Tokyo"The Emperor and the Army in Modern Japanese History".The book provides a profound and comprehensive account of the evolution of the relationship between the emperor and the military. As she revealed, Japan's modern emperor system was supported by the idea that the emperor personally led the army, emphasizing the emperor's absolute leadership over the military and the absolute loyalty of the military to the emperor.
However, after World War I, the authority of the emperor as the supreme commander was greatly shaken, and the military, which was regarded as the "supreme minister," also underwent a qualitative change. With the opening of the Pandora's box of military intervention in politics, Japan is stepping into the abyss of war.
Historical changes in the relationship between the emperor and the military have influenced Japan's national policy.
Why didn't the emperor stop the war? When did the "Emperor's Army" begin to become politicized? Why did the army "go berserk"?
Today, through this new book by Professor Yoko Kato, we will get a glimpse of what kind of dynamic historical relationship between the emperor and the military in modern Japanese history?
Text|Yoko Kato.
Excerpt from "The Sick Child: The Emperor and the Army in Modern Japanese History".
The picture of the military parade and the key word "I have a hair".
When you think of "the emperor and the army," many people will have in mind the image of the special military parade of the army in 1940 (Showa 15). On October 21 of the same year, the "2,600th Anniversary" military parade was held at the Yoyogi training ground. On that day, Emperor Showa rode the imperial horse "Shirayuki" and inspected the 43,000-strong parade composed of infantry units, more than 200 tanks, various mechanized artillery and more than 500 aircraft.
At that time, Emperor Showa read a passage of the edict and subsequently awarded it to Hideki Tojo, the prime minister of the land. At the end of the edict there is a passage that says:"You should work harder, work together, and do your duty, so as to support the infinite fortune of the world. ”
The 2,600th Anniversary (Source: Japan Archives**).
In the eyes of the people at that time, the image of the soldiers being paraded in front of the emperor's imperial horse may be the embodiment of the expression "I no humerus".
The 1940 national policy news documentary "Nippon Shimbun" included the highlights of the parade. The documentary was then shown in theaters across the country, and the images from the parade became known to audiences across the country. On October 11, 10 days before the Army parade, the Navy also held a special "2,600 Annoera Era" viewing ceremony off the coast of Yokohama.
At that time, the emperor inspected 98 ships in six columns, including the Nagato, the flagship of the Combined Fleet, aboard the Imperial Calling Ship Hiei. At the Navy's special ceremony, the emperor made a similar edict.
For the soldiers of the army and navy who participated in the military parade and the ship viewing ceremony in those years, "I have no humerus" is undoubtedly the most familiar phrase in military life.
In January 1882 (Meiji 15), the Imperial Edict on Military Personnel was issued, which listed five moral guidelines for soldiers to follow: "loyalty", "etiquette", "martial bravery", "faithfulness", and "simplicity". The full text of the "Soldier's Edict" begins with "The army of our country is under the command of the emperor for all generations", and then says in the tone of the emperor: "I am the generalissimo of your soldiers, and his relatives are especially deep. I rely on you like the humerus, and you look up to me like the head. The 1939 edition of the Soldier's Edict (1939 edition), compiled by the Department of the Superintendent of Education, explains the gist of this passage as follows:"I am the generalissimo of you soldiers, and we have a very close relationship. I regard the soldiers as brothers and sisters, and the soldiers should look up to me as their heads. ”
In addition, the "Soldier's Edict to Explain the Soldier's Message" also specifically quotes the phrase "I take you as the humerus" given to him by the emperor when Kusunoki Masanari's son Kusunoki Masayuki said goodbye to Emperor Gomurakami, and uses this historical allusion to explain the meaning of "femoral humerus" to the soldiers.
From the above, we can probably infer the specific content of the spiritual education that the active duty soldiers and conscripts who enlisted in the army received within the army.
The use of the emperor by both Japan and the United States during the end of the war
As mentioned above, a year before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the image of the emperor and the military as a celebratory form of beauty in the form of military parades and ship-watching propaganda films began to be well known to the public. Because of this, toward the end of the Pacific War, both Japan and the United States tried to use the emperor in the course of various end-of-war work.
Emperor Showa with MacArthur.
In the seventh chapter of the book, Charles B., an American intelligence agent who studied in Japan before the war and studied constitutional law under Tatsuyoshi MinobeFAHS) has proposed:Previously, the Japanese military had repeatedly used the banner of the emperor to justify its actions. We can also separate the emperor from the military and establish the emperor as a symbol of peace and reconstruction after the war.
After March 1945, a group of professors, led by Shigeru Minamihara, dean of law at Tokyo Imperial University, realized that the only way to end the war as soon as possible was to negotiate directly with the United States through the palace forces and the top of the navy. Against this backdrop, Minamihara and others began to conceive of ending the war by promulgating an edict from the emperor himself, and even drafted the text of the edict for the end of the war. Minamihara and others believed that the emperor was the only one who could stop the military from putting up senseless resistance when the decisive battle on home was approaching. Therefore, it is necessary to use the authority of the emperor to end the war as soon as possible, while Britain and the United States still believe that the emperor is still useful. At the end of the war, there were still 7 million troops stationed on the Japanese mainland, almost unscathed, and the emperor was the only one who could order these soldiers to lay down and stop resisting. Therefore, at the end of the war, both Japan and the United States invariably set their sights on the emperor.
Emperor Showa's death imperial system
The relationship between the emperor and the military was shown above in the 1940 "2,600th Anniversary" military parade and ship-viewing ceremony, as well as the plan to use the emperor in 1945, at the end of the war, by both Japan and the United States in order to avoid a decisive battle on their homeland. If we consider the two points in time in 1940 and 1945 in parallel, it seems that once the emperor issued a military order or an armistice order, these orders could be immediately implemented in the military. But is that really the case? From the following episode of Emperor Showa's later years, we seem to see a different landscape.
In the autumn of 1988, a few months before Emperor Showa's death, the emperor himself was still working on eight washa songs he had written on the occasion of the end of the war. At that time, Emperor Showa approached Hirohiko Okano, a special employee of the Imperial Household Agency who was in charge of affairs related to waka, and asked Okano to choose one of the eight wakas as the official final battle imperial system. Okano selected a song from "Thinking of the People's Suffering, and You Can Give Up Your Fighting Body". According to Okano's later recollections, he vaguely felt that Emperor Showa might have wanted to choose a sentence for his death. In the modern state established after the Meiji Restoration, the emperor played a central role as a military leader in the Meiji Revolution. As the third and last emperor under the constitutional system of the Empire of Japan, the death of Emperor Showa was centered on the word "cessation of war", which in itself has extraordinary significance.
Behind the various actions of Emperor Showa at the end of the war, there is actually a series of sinister and abnormal historical backgrounds. This dangerous situation was fostered by the Imperial Council and the Ministers' Symposium held in July 1945 to discuss whether or not to accept the Potsdam Proclamation.
The Japanese emperor announced his acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation and surrendered to the allies (Source: Internet).
At that time, there was a fierce confrontation between the radical resistance faction, with the army as the core, and the faction, led by Foreign Minister Shigetoku Togo and Mitsumasa Yonechi, who advocated the acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation as the only condition for the preservation of the national system.
The radical resistance faction believed that once the Japanese army accepted the conditions of the Allies and disarmed, it would be difficult to guarantee the maintenance of the imperial system, the so-called national system. On August 10, Hideki Tojo, who attended the meeting of important ministers as a former prime minister, based on the "Divine Edict of the Infinite World" (the mythical edict given by the god Amaterasu to the heavenly grandson).It is advocated that only with the backing of military strength can the support of the national system be realized。Of course, the so-called "divine edict" itself does not have any content to demonstrate the inseparable relationship between the protection of the state and the maintenance of armaments. However, Tojo compared the army to the shell of a conch at the Ministers' Meeting, saying that once the shell is lost, it will be difficult for the conch itself (i.e., the emperor system) to survive.
In short, emphasizing the inseparability of the military from the emperor and between armaments and the state system was the core proposition of the Radical Resistance faction led by Tojo.
The antagonistic relationship between the state system with the emperor as the apex
In the pre-Showa War, whenever there was an attempt by the political and military forces to fundamentally change the relationship between the emperor and the military (military), the "shogunate" style of opposition immediately appeared in the political space, and the energy for change cooled down instantly.
There have been a number of excellent studies that have focused on this period, describing the tension between the emperor and the military (military). However, these writings tend to focus only on Emperor Showa's belief in international coordination, and analyze the relationship between the emperor and the military, which wanted to break the existing international order and pursued aggressive expansion policies on the mainland without hesitation.
However, the background to the formation of an unreasonably strong relationship between the emperor and the military (military) is not fully discussed. The antagonistic relationship between the emperor and the military (military) has deep roots. This relationship is not only a confrontation over the proper shape of the state system with the emperor as the apex, but also a confrontation over the question of how to solve the various shortcomings of the political and economic system that have emerged in Japan as Japan has been engaged in modernization from the Meiji Restoration to the early Showa period.
According to the diary of Yahachi Kawai, who served as the deputy chief of the chamberlain in the early Showa period, in 1931, when the "918" incident broke out, the forces in the palace were forced to consider changing the relationship between the emperor (the palace) and the people.
Source: Internet).
On March 25, 1931, Kawai wrote in his diary that he had read reports from all over the country on the impoverished living conditions of the peasants and the outbreak of the tenant farmers' struggles in various parts of the country, which had been handed over to Minister Nobuken Makino from all over the country.
On the evening of May 20, Kawai read Yukichi Fukuzawa's "Treatise on the Imperial Family" again. On May 27, Emperor Showa also expressed his intention to cut the Imperial Family's expenses in view of the terrible harvest failures in rural areas across the country and the impact of the global economic crisis. The emperor was informed of the emperor's idea and consulted with him.
The form of the "Soldier's Edict" and its ending in the Showa era
Youpeng of Shanxian County revised the draft of the Western Zhou Dynasty and added the following paragraph to the virtue of "Xinyi"."Those who are military personnel should not be detained by party affiliation. Don't talk about politics in vain, and abide by your own discipline. It is often thought that the righteousness is heavier than the mountains and the death is lighter than the dust."
It is this emphasis"Death is lighter than dust".The text,Later, many Japanese soldiers were encouraged to embark on the road to death.
Later, after the polishing of Genichiro Fukuchi (Sakura), the expression of this text was modified"Those who are soldiers should ignore the changes in party affiliation and political ism. Weisi adheres to the duty of loyalty, and establishes the consciousness that righteousness is more important than the mountains and death is lighter than the feathers." At the same time, the blessed land included this content under the newly established "Loyalty Festival" virtue. In addition, he also revised the expression "inheriting the order of the organ, which is no different from inheriting the life of the person" in the "order" of the Western Zhou draft, to "it is necessary to know that inheriting the order of the official is to inherit the life of the person", and changed it to be included under the "etiquette" virtue. After the revision of the blessed land, the five virtues of "loyalty", "etiquette", "martial bravery", "simplicity" and "faithfulness" in the "Soldier's Edict" were finally determined.
There are friends in Shan County. The county attaches great importance to the promulgation of the "Soldier's Edict". On December 27, 1881, in a letter to Minister Minori Sanjo, he stated: "The main content of the edict issued to the army and navy is that His Majesty the Emperor himself will instruct the officers and men and declare that His Majesty will personally command the army and navy. Stylistically, therefore, this edict should not be promulgated in the form of the previous imperial officials, but should be given directly to the army after His Majesty has signed it himself. The formalities for the downward movement of this edict shall be in the form of His Majesty personally conferring the Secretary of State of the Army and the Navy. After that, the Secretary of the Army and Navy will send it down to the grassroots level of the army. ”
It can be seen from this letter that at that time, Shan County tried to make the "Soldier's Edict" an edict that could shake the hearts of the majority of soldiers. Traditionally, the Emperor's edict is countersigned by the Minister in Charge, who is politically responsible for the edict in place of the Emperor. However, Yamaguchi, who paid special attention to the form in which the Imperial Decree was promulgated, insisted on breaking this practice and issuing the Imperial Decree directly to the Army and Navy in the name of the Emperor.
At the insistence of Yama Prefecture, the "Soldier's Edict" eventually became a special political document signed only by the emperor and countersigned by the minister in charge.
Many years later, the promulgation of the "Military Edict" caused major problems in Japan, and even completely because of this problem in Japan for a time. On March 8, 1935, at the meeting of the House of Nobles, Kiyojun Inoue (a graduate of the Naval Academy and a reserve officer) asked Prime Minister Keisuke Okada and Hayashi Mijuro to question the discrepancy between the core spirit of the Soldier's Edict and the Emperor's Constitution. To this, Hayashi replied bluntly that the Emperor's organ of Minobu said that it was indeed different from the constitutional concepts taught in military education since the founding of the army. From the perspective of historical development, it can be said that the promulgation form of the "Soldier's Edict" conceived by Yamaguchi Aritomo eventually led to a series of unfortunate historical endings in the Showa era.
In his parliamentary defense on the same day, Hayashi also said: "The Army believes that the series of constitutional theories and theories published by Dr. Minobe over the years are indeed inconsistent with the traditional spirit of the military, that is, the spirit of the most respected military personnel. As a result, for decades, the Army did not adopt Dr. Minobe's teachings in military education. ”
After learning of this, Emperor Showa specially came to the Diet through the chief military attaché Honjo Shigeru to personally confirm Hayashi Luxiang's speech. After that, on March 11, the emperor called Honjo Shigeru again and said to him:"Regardless of the throne, there should be no difference between me and you physically. However, at present, some people want to turn me into a person who cannot act on his own in order to reject the emperor's organs. This is very troublesome for me, both physically and mentally. ”
Under the Meiji constitutional system, the emperor's auxiliary responsibilities in the field of state affairs were largely assumed by the ministers of each country. However, in fact, there are still some areas of exception that are not the responsibility of the Minister of State, and according to Minobe's summary, there are three main types of so-called exception areas: the responsibility related to the affairs of the palace that are separated from ** (the so-called "difference between the palace and the government"); the responsibilities related to the affairs of the army and the army, which are separated from ** (the so-called "distinction between the commanders of state"); Responsibility for matters related to the sacrifice.
After the enactment of the constitution and the introduction of a constitutional monarchy in modern Japan, the political stability of the emperor depended to a large extent on the specific situation of the relationship between the emperor and the emperor in these exceptional areas. In other words,The relationship between the palace and the emperor and the military and the emperor was the basis for maintaining national stability at that time.