The emperor himself will never cut a sympathetic figure in Western eyes. Hirohito presided over a society which had brought misery upon many nations. If he was not a prime mover, throughout the war his preoccupation with the preservation of the imperial house caused him to treat Japan’s militarists as honourable men and legitimate arbiters of power, to applaud their successes and acquiesce in their excesses. Yet there was a redemptive quality about his conduct in those last days. Albeit belatedly, he displayed a courage and conviction which saved hundreds of thousands of lives. To a man of
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