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The Age of Hirohito: In Search of Modern Japan
An insider's account of the development of a modern superpower offers a reassessment of Emperor Hirohito's incredible sixty-year reign, spanning the Depression, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the explosive recovery and growth of postwar Japan.
163 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1995
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March 27, 2026
...resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government...
It did in fact take me twenty-six years to read this volume, which stretches past 150 pages only with an Appendix of excerpts from the Constitution of Japan, the preamble of which is the source of the quote above.
I have owned this book since late 1999 when I was working on my master's thesis, which concerns the interplay of constitutional law and opposition party strength as important drivers of militarization in post-war Japan and Germany. It was in the racks of a book store in a crummy outlet mall, where my wife was spending the day bargain-hunting. It was like $2.00 and tangentially related to the thesis, so I had to have it.
I read about half before ruling it out as a source and moving on. I would pick it up every now and again as the career experiment proceeded, but always set it aside for more pressing reading: CFA exams, security exams, insurance exams, investment advisor exams, and pleasure reading that was related to none of that $#@!.
Thrown in one box after another, Hirohito moved with us from Utah to New Jersey to the UES of Manhattan to Seattle to Tokyo to Singapore to Philadelphia to London to another place in London... and now, after all of that, it has been finally, thoroughly, and pleasantly read. The book and I are at peace--our relationship concluded amicably. Tomorrow it will be set free in the wilds of an Oxfam shop to perhaps continue its explorations. さらば, old friend.
It is really quite a surprising book. Over a long career at Tokyo U, the top school in the nation, Irokawa was a relatively radical scholar--one of only a few who dared break the Chrysanthemum Taboo, which largely continues today: NO ONE CRITICIZES THE IMPERIAL 'SYSTEM'. Irokawa was a student at Todai during the war and witness to the brutalities of the domestic controls enacted in Hirohito's name, such as the 'Peace Preservation' laws enforced by layers of secret police to ethnically cleanse the country and murder dissenters, and the great sacrifices demanded of ordinary people to support a small ruling class who grew fatter as the war dragged on. Irokawa, writing a few years after the end of Hirohito's nearly 88 years of life, argues that the man, not a descendant of gods, was just as responsible for the war as the other Class A war criminals--relatively few of whom were punished (at least one later became Prime Minister).
Countering the argument that Hirohito had been a 'constitutional emperor' under the Meiji charter, Irokawa cites the Emperor's own statements and writings and the rise and fall of party democracy during Hirohito's adolescence. Irokawa argues persuasively that Japan's failure to conduct a sincere post-war self-examination--as the Germans very publicly did, FWIW--is the sufficient impediment to her neighbors, Korea and China being the strongest voices, ever accepting that Japan is governed to any degree by moral principles. And they have a point. Japan's been ruled by an ultra conservative party nearly non-stop since MacArthur was their interim* leader (only 'nearly' if you count c9 months of rule by an 'opposition' party run entirely by former conservative party leaders) -see Ending the Ldp Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan. An orgy of money and favor politics has driven all rational citizens away from participation, similar to what we've seen in the US over the last few decades.
* MacArthur eventually left to kill some other folks in the region, but the US still occupies the country and prevents any deviance on foreign policy, despite broad public support for breaking from US imperial rule.
It did in fact take me twenty-six years to read this volume, which stretches past 150 pages only with an Appendix of excerpts from the Constitution of Japan, the preamble of which is the source of the quote above.
I have owned this book since late 1999 when I was working on my master's thesis, which concerns the interplay of constitutional law and opposition party strength as important drivers of militarization in post-war Japan and Germany. It was in the racks of a book store in a crummy outlet mall, where my wife was spending the day bargain-hunting. It was like $2.00 and tangentially related to the thesis, so I had to have it.
I read about half before ruling it out as a source and moving on. I would pick it up every now and again as the career experiment proceeded, but always set it aside for more pressing reading: CFA exams, security exams, insurance exams, investment advisor exams, and pleasure reading that was related to none of that $#@!.
Thrown in one box after another, Hirohito moved with us from Utah to New Jersey to the UES of Manhattan to Seattle to Tokyo to Singapore to Philadelphia to London to another place in London... and now, after all of that, it has been finally, thoroughly, and pleasantly read. The book and I are at peace--our relationship concluded amicably. Tomorrow it will be set free in the wilds of an Oxfam shop to perhaps continue its explorations. さらば, old friend.
It is really quite a surprising book. Over a long career at Tokyo U, the top school in the nation, Irokawa was a relatively radical scholar--one of only a few who dared break the Chrysanthemum Taboo, which largely continues today: NO ONE CRITICIZES THE IMPERIAL 'SYSTEM'. Irokawa was a student at Todai during the war and witness to the brutalities of the domestic controls enacted in Hirohito's name, such as the 'Peace Preservation' laws enforced by layers of secret police to ethnically cleanse the country and murder dissenters, and the great sacrifices demanded of ordinary people to support a small ruling class who grew fatter as the war dragged on. Irokawa, writing a few years after the end of Hirohito's nearly 88 years of life, argues that the man, not a descendant of gods, was just as responsible for the war as the other Class A war criminals--relatively few of whom were punished (at least one later became Prime Minister).
Countering the argument that Hirohito had been a 'constitutional emperor' under the Meiji charter, Irokawa cites the Emperor's own statements and writings and the rise and fall of party democracy during Hirohito's adolescence. Irokawa argues persuasively that Japan's failure to conduct a sincere post-war self-examination--as the Germans very publicly did, FWIW--is the sufficient impediment to her neighbors, Korea and China being the strongest voices, ever accepting that Japan is governed to any degree by moral principles. And they have a point. Japan's been ruled by an ultra conservative party nearly non-stop since MacArthur was their interim* leader (only 'nearly' if you count c9 months of rule by an 'opposition' party run entirely by former conservative party leaders) -see Ending the Ldp Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan. An orgy of money and favor politics has driven all rational citizens away from participation, similar to what we've seen in the US over the last few decades.
* MacArthur eventually left to kill some other folks in the region, but the US still occupies the country and prevents any deviance on foreign policy, despite broad public support for breaking from US imperial rule.
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