JAPAN'S EMPERORS

This research paper examines the controversial role of the Emperor Hirohito (r. 1926-1989) in Japan during the period leading up to and during the Second World War, as compared his role and that of his successor Akihito thereafter.

For more than a millennium and long before American Commodore Matthew Perry's black warships entered Tokyo Bay in 1853-1854, the Imperial Throne served as an important symbol of religious, cultural and political unity as a distinctive Japanese sense of identity emerged. However, Japanese emperors reigned more than they ruled, as others exercised power in their name. Hirohito was a grandson of the Emperor Meiji (r. 1868-1912) through whom the founders of the Meiji Restoration responded to the challenge of the West by modernizing rapidly Japan's economy and institutions. Hirohito inherited from his inept father, the Emperor Taisho (r. 1912-1926), a considerably weakened throne, a failing economy and a crumbling political center. Under his stewardship, the monarchy survived the tumultuous events of the 1930s and 1940s but was considerably tarnished by its association with domestic repression, militarism, ultranationalism and Japan's ultimately disastrous foreign wars and defeat. Hirohito was either powerless or unwilling to prevent Japan's drift toward catastrophe; and he narrowly escaped being forced to abdicate or being tried as a war criminal. He nevertheless played a key role in helping Japan to a

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the advantage of a free and open life style." However, these impulses proved short-lived as he was nearly assassinated by a radical in 1923 and had to assume the responsibility of regent in the late stages of his father's illness. The dominant political issues during the first decade of Hirohito's reign were trends in Japan toward authoritarianism, militarism and ultranationalism. The first law curtailing freedom of the media, the Peace Preservation Law, had been enacted in 1925. In the late 1920s, Japan was plagued with serious economic difficulties, including rural poverty and later a steep decline in its foreign export markets for silk and other products which deepened in the Great Depression. According to Butow, "as economic difficulties spread across the world in the late 1920s, the Japanese military gave increasing thought to 'opening a way to the future' by implementing Japan's historic mission to expand on the continent, to secure the peace of East Asia, and to save its 600,000,000 million people from imperialistic 'oppression.'" Through a series of incidents, rebellious elements of Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchuria, a coveted source of industrial raw materials, came into conflict with their civilian and military sup
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Emperor Taisho, Emperor Kyoto, Emperor Meiji, Hooblers Hirohito, Nevertheless MacArthur's, Behr Jimmu, Pearl Harbor, According Reischauer, War II, Accordingly Constitution, prime minister, world war, hirohito war, university press, war crimes, supreme commander, japanese emperor, war criminal, world war ii, war ii, late 1920s, de bary donald, theodore de bary, bary donald keene, wm theodore de,
Approximate Word count = 4471
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)