Wow, this was a tough one. It wasn't a bad book by any means - it was well-researched and informative and certainly illuminating. But it was a tough read anyway.

Bix had a very important purpose in writing this book other than simply writing a biography. He wanted to look at Hirohito's true role in the wars of Asian aggression and World War 2. One of the most enduring myths of modern Japanese history is that Hirohito was a passive ruler, manipulated by his advisers and the military. He pretty much sat by, helpless, and his only true act of leadership was in ending the war.

Not so, Bix says, and spends 288 pages explaining why.

He looks all the way back to Hirohito's childhood, when he was groomed almost from birth to be an effective emperor. His grandfather, the emperor Meiji, had been handed control of a chaotic state back in the 1860s, and pulled it all together through sheer force of will. He was an impressive man who had natural leadership ability, which is a very good thing for Japan. If it had been otherwise, the country probably never would have made it into the 20th century intact. His son, however, was not so lucky. Yoshihito was sickly, weak-willed and generally useless as a leader. Even from his youth, the Imperial court knew that this was not the man who would be able to lead Japan in the manner of the great Emperor Meiji. And so they turned to Yoshihito's son, Hirohito.

From the day he was born, Hirohito was surrounded by teachers and instructors who were preparing him to take his father's place as the supreme ruler of the Japanese Empire. Every lesson they taught him was focused on one very important fact: he was the descendant of an unbroken line of living gods, and the survival of Japan was inextricably bound to the Emperor. He was taught to revere the memory of his grandfather, to love the military, and to follow the "Yamato Spirit" which had made Japan great in the past. But, and this was important, to make sure that the imperial line was never extinguished.

The war in East Asia was an incremental one, and, according to Bix, had Hirohito's marks all over it. The Army had been sent out into Manchuria to "keep the peace," but also to expand territory wherever it could. It was given free rein to do so, too - abuses such as the well-known "Rape of Nanking" and the sanko policy of "kill all, steal all, burn all" went unpunished and unchecked, despite the many, many chances that the Emperor had to keep the army under his control. At every step, the Emperor either explicitly sanctioned or permitted by silence the actions of the Imperial Army and Navy.

The biggest problem with this book, which Bix states right out, is that there's so very little information available from Hirohito's own hand. He wasn't a prolific diary-keeper, and the Imperial Household Agency wouldn't let such information out in public anyway. The only way to figure out what the Emperor did and didn't know, say or do is either by secondary sources - the diaries of his ministers and advisers for example - or through inference.

Still, the evidence for Hirohito's war responsibility is pretty damning. Bix concludes that not only did Hirohito actively participate in the planning of the war, but he was more involved in the delay of the war's end than in the ending of the war, contrary to popular belief. As before, he had every opportunity to put an end to the war and the deaths of thousands of people, but he delayed out of pride and arrogance and a disbelief that any force could stand against the sheer willpower and devotion of the Japanese military. He had been trained in the idea that it was not strategy that won a war, but passion and desire, and his Imperial Army was his tool. As far as he was concerned, they were an extension of his will, and for the army to surrender would reflect not only on Japan, but on him.

And when the war did end, when two cities were laid waste, he did everything in his power - with the happy assistance of the United States - to appear blameless. Together with MacArthur and GHQ, the supreme commander of the Japanese armed forces and the embodiment of the nation itself was reduced to an impotent puppet. He was stripped of his power and humanized. But he survived, and he remained the Emperor. He'd held power without responsibility, and suffered no consequences for his actions. So is it any wonder that Japan has a hard time dealing with its past? If the Emperor, the person who was supposed to have been the very embodiment of the nation, the one for whose benefit the people of Japan existed cannot accept his part in the Greater East Asian War, how can the rest of the country?

It's an interesting book, once you can get through it. There was a lot of minutia that kind of bogged the story down, which is very good in a history book, not so good in a page-turning account of a historical figure's life. But it was essential to proving Bix's point - Emperor Hirohito was complicit in the wars of aggression in Asia-Pacific, and completely escaped responsibility.