Hirohito: Emperor of Japan

by Leonard Mosley

Hirohito (4/29/01-1/7/89) was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from '26 to '89, called the Sho-wa period. Since his death he has been known as Emperor Sho-wa' in Japan, the posthumous name given him by order of the Japanese cabinet. Altho he's widely referred to as Hirohito outside of Japan, past emperors are only referred to in Japan by their posthumous names. His reign was the longest of any historical emperor.
Jacket: 'Hirohito was dominated by a military power clique bent on conquest who in the 1930s virtually seized control of Japan. While the Japanese military excused or justified their acts in the name of the Emperor, Hirohito was rarely consulted, & it was not until 1945 that he finally stopped the war. Why did he remain silent? What was this man really like? Leonard Mosley clearly defines the role of Hirohito in WWII.'
Introduction
The broken cage
Shaping of the sword
Rice cakes & hand grenades
Seeking the slot
Caught in the storm
Prelude to glory
The light of civilization
Jumping off the veranda
The divine smile
The spider & the web
Death of a dream
The naked at midnight
The new Democrats
The last lap
Repayment of a debt
The cost of freedom
The extremist threat
The fragile flowers
Appendices
Bibliography
Index

Genres: Biography, Japan, History, Nonfiction, Japanese History

381 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Leonard Oswald Mosley OBE OStJ (11 February 1913 – June 1992) was a British journalist, historian, biographer and novelist. His works include five novels and biographies of General George Marshall, Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, Orde Wingate, Walt Disney, Charles Lindbergh, Du Pont family, Eleanor Dulles, Allen Welsh Dulles, John Foster Dulles and Darryl F. Zanuck. He also worked as chief war correspondent for London's The Sunday Times.

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

No major international figure of the 20th century has been so little known to the public at large as the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito. The country was abounding in contradiction in which the ancient rituals and superstitions persisted in spite of change and froze the court of the Emperor into stifling unreality. Hirohito was at the mercy of events over which he had practically no control and was practically a prisoner of those who truly governed (the military) who acted in his divine name. To his people he was a god......to Americans after Pearl Harbor, he was the most evil of the war's villains.

The author shows us a very different person; a diffident, self-effacing man who had no control (or even knowledge) of events that the government was undertaking and was bound by ritual and isolation. We learn of his life from boyhood which was formal and distant and his reign where the common people were not allowed to look upon him or hear his voice. He was an enigma to the Western world and the blame for Pearl harbor and the ensuing Pacific war was placed solely on his shoulders.

The book has a sympathetic tone which is probably not misplaced and there is one telling quote by General MacArthur when he met with the Emperor at the end of the war. Rather than pleading with the General to be excluded as a war criminal, Hirohito stated:
"I come to you, General MacArthur, to offer myself to the judgement of the powers you represent as the one to bear sole responsibility for every political and military decision made and action taken by my people in the conduct of the war."

After that meeting, MacArthur wrote: "He was an Emperor by inherent birth, but in that instant I knew I faced the First Gentleman of Japan in this own right"

An interesting and revealing book that is well worth reading. Recommended.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dad served in both theatres during WWII, being involved in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific and being staged for the invasion of Japan at the time of the Japanese surrender. Mother having herself grown up under German occupation in Oslo, Norway, I've long had an interest in understanding the war that so impacted their lives and which shaped the world I grew up in. Additionally, I have more recently been trying to better understand East Asia.

Mosley's biography of Hirohito, intended for the general public, is, like all of his biographical work, quite readable. Unlike some of his other studies, however, this one is at a greater distance, the imperial family of Japan being shielded from scrutiny more than his other subjects. While not entirely exculpating Hirohito from responsibility for the war in the Pacific or the atrocities committed by agents of the empire, Mosley deals lightly with the emperor, giving him the benefit of the doubt when possible. More recent studies, like Behr's biography of the emperor, have been far more critical.

[Ryan Kooy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book is a little dry tbh. Presents Hirohito as a man who was very brave but not quite brave enough.

[Igmidio Galingan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was watching the Netflix series The Crown around the time I was reading this, and all I can think of the book was cliché. Not because there are similar themes running through the stories of the British throne and this Japanese one, and there is. But mainly because it feels untrue, copied; that it’s not fact when Hirohito: Emperor of Japan, especially, as biography it should be.

The common thread in those two which is more apparent in Hirohito: Emperor of Japan is that the throne is a prison as much as it is a position with which to rule. As one who has never occupied a position that can barely command the loyalty of 5, and also one whose country was ravaged by Japan during the Second World War it feels untrue. The head of an empire makes things possible; he’s no one’s prisoner.

According to the book he is to the sea. Hirohito is the type of man who quite literally would be contented spending a day at the sea collecting whatever samples that strike his fancy. He loved this so much that after the war, when he could bare this entire hobby out in the open, he’s a recognized marine biologist. Of course during the war this was discouraged because being knee deep or diving into sea collecting samples is not inspiring for dreams of conquest.

He’s a god. Hirohito does not deal with people very much perhaps because by custom everyone should bow so low at his presence that meaningful conversation is impossible. This is why he envied the British monarchs in a way. It also makes him unable to cope with the people around him.

Then there’s the system that sounds like a shogunate; the emperor controlled by a military dictator but now only it’s always the militarists, no dictator. Certain personalities come up during the years prior to World War II – prime minister, minister of war, council of elders – but no single one jumps out as the mind behind it all manipulating the system to war. I suppose you can call whoever was stuck on top when war broke out as red handed but where is the shogun? Is Leonard Mosley saying the system just went wild without an instigator?

In fact he only ventured near the term shogun when Douglas McArthur came in as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP). Always just the militarists.

Hirohito was spared becoming the biggest scalp on a war crimes trial in part out of necessity. The book quotes McArthur as having admired the emperor for even offering his scalp to which the SCAP refused. His survival and that of the system he represents was the only thing Japan wanted out of unconditional surrender.

The book makes thesis that Hirohito being a docile marine biologist that he is was always antiwar. He just didn’t have the chops to stop the war to near comedic effect. There are chapters that say that the war had almost last minute chances of never even starting if only someone talked.

To say a king or an emperor is simply just a puppet or a conqueror (like Alexander the Great) is overly simplistic. High ground (the throne) indeed takes control but the high ground can also mean surrounded and under siege. It’s a day to day struggle this business of ruling. In the end Hirohito’s word was god’s; war is over.

Was he always a puppet? Was he always a god?

[Anne Doyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much insight into the Japanese mindset during the war.

[The Overflowing Inkwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mosley makes really uncomfortable comparisons.
• The Japanese government felt it must wait to be approached formally concerning the Potsdam Proclamation, so Mosley says: "It was rather like a young lady demanding an introduction to her rescuer before allowing him to save her from drowning" (pg 310).
• Pearl Harbor was heavily foreshadowed, and everyone should have known it was coming, so Mosley says: "The dastardly Japanese villain made lots of warning noises before he broke into the American maiden's bedroom, and there was really no excuse for her having left her chastity belt undone" (pgs 252-253).
• Discussing Japan's more widespread adoption of Western clothes, Mosley just has to get a jab in: "[western clothes] were much more practical, but, especially on women, were much less attractive, for most Japanese female legs are not made for short skirts." (pg 117)

Apart from these odd quips that brought me to a halt (and yes, this book was published in the sixties), I overall enjoyed the writing style. So many history books rapidly devolve into lists of people, places, events, with precious little else to add, and I felt that his writing style warded that off. I didn't get confused or frustrated at a constant barrage of new names and places, though it does tend more toward that once the Cabinet starts becoming a revolving door through which anyone and everyone tends to come through at least twice, and that was a really pleasant change to the usual history book.

This really is a book just about Hirohito - maybe not so much specifically him, and his thoughts, as they can never really be known, but just about his movements, the scenes where he is involved. For that reason, a great deal of the wars are left out because Hirohito wasn't doing anything. Motivations and decisions made by generals and armies aren't explored or even mentioned a great deal of the time. The annexation of Korea and all that that awful section of history entailed is condensed to a single line - "It needs to be mentioned at this point that Korea...was in 1923 a protectorate of Japan who inhabitants received short shrift from their masters." (pg 81) 1923. Fully 13 years into it, Japan's invasion of Korea is finally mentioned, and it's only to explain why there are ghettoes of poverty-stricken Koreans available to behead in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake.

While Mosley tactfully states that he will not cover the Rape of Nanjing, and that readers wanting to learn more about it will need to go elsewhere, the fact that Japan invaded and held onto Korea from 1910 until the end of the war in 1945 is never discussed, not even in passing. What did Hirohito think of it? He is upheld as a great lover of peace throughout, so did how Japan treated Korea for so long bother him? Or was he as unaware of it as he was everything else, learning of it only after the fact?

The end of the book was the hardest for that it shows how differently things should have gone, demonstrating how much all the Allies knew. The atom bombs were absolutely unnecessary. Deliberately involving the Soviet Union was absolutely unnecessary. Japan - somehow - got out of being divided, but thanks to America's decision to tempt the USSR into the battle, Korea was. The bungling, ineptitude, outright stupidity, and shortsightedness from so many players made the end of the war an absolute mess. You spend the last couple of chapters thinking what if - what if that cable had gotten through? What if it had been a day when the censors only held cables for six hours? What if the Emperor had been able to recall the ships? What if Hull hadn't been himself for two whole seconds? What if we'd waited?

It's frustrating as all hell to look back and see what could have been done differently, better, sooner.

This book is an easy read, the writing style makes it quite pleasant read but for the definitely not PC comments about the Japanese littered liberally throughout, and you can finish the book quite quickly. But it definitely is only a very small piece of the puzzle in the entirety of Japan's involvement in the war, and would only make sense when paired with a good many other books on the other, major, players and events that defined this period in the Pacific.