Introduction
A Japanese history textbook for junior high school students, created by the members of the ‘Atarashii rekishi kyokasho o tsukuru kai’ (hereafter referred to as ‘Tsukurukai’; Society for History Textbook Reform)1 and approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in spring 2001 (we shall use the edition published for the general public), depicted the Showa Emperor over two pages at the end of its ‘Personality Columns’. The first part of this column, entitled ‘The Showa Emperor – a life lived with the Japanese people’, reads:
‘On the day of the demise of the Showa Emperor’
On the morning of 7 January 1989 (the 64th year of Showa), when the Showa Emperor (124th Emperor: 1901–1989) passed away, many people assembled in front of the Imperial Palace on hearing the news. An old lady of sixty-eight years old who had been exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima and was then living in Tokyo said, ‘I have a feeling that I have always been sharing hardships with the Showa Emperor’. Just like this old lady, in front of the Palace as well as in all parts of the country, various kinds of people including youths, elderly people, housewives and salaried workers quietly pondered over the true meaning of the era of the Showa Emperor. (p. 306)
A photograph of the Imperial Palace Plaza with the caption ‘The day of the Emperor’s demise’ is placed at the right-hand side of the text. After the above passage, the episode of the Emperor on his return from Kagoshima in a naval vessel is recounted. Standing alone, he gave a military salute to the bonfire that was lit by the people seeing him off. With the episode, the authors aimed to impress upon readers that the Emperor had ‘a very sincere and truthful character’. It continues with a subtitle, ‘The Showa Emperor’s era’, thereby continuing the myth of the Emperor that has been spun incessantly since the end of the Pacific War. The passage argues: ‘When the Showa Emperor was enthroned, Japan was about to face a great crisis. He wished for friendship and goodwill with every country but history took a different course.’ Soon after the words ‘the Showa Emperor’s era’ were written, it seemed as if they suddenly lost their significance and the ‘era’ was not ‘the Showa Emperor’s’ any longer; at the same time, the Emperor was portrayed as a mere victim of the ‘era’ and of the course of history. The authors continue: ‘Understanding his position well that, as a constitutional monarch, government or military decisions should not be interfered with, the Emperor sometimes agreed to accept them against his will. However, there occurred two instances when he resolutely expressed his will and resolved the crisis.’ The passage suggests that the Supreme Commander, the Showa Emperor, enjoyed only two exceptional instances of influence over the manoeuvres of his own military forces, i.e. the Imperial Japanese Army.
The two exceptional cases, according to the textbook, are, first, the ‘February 26 Incident’, when on that date in 1936, junior army officers led an attempted coup and called for a ‘Showa Restoration’ and, second, ‘the Acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration’ in 1945. His ‘imperial decision’ to ‘end the war’ is mythologized by quoting an ‘imperial poem’: ‘I thought of my people dying in the air raids and decided to stop the war; I do not care whatever awaits my destiny’. This image of self-sacrifice in order to secure the happiness of his people is confirmed by quoting lines from a well-known passage from the Memoirs of General MacArthur.
The radiation-exposed (hibakusha) old lady and the Emperor
What image does this textbook aim to impose on the imagination of high-school students who innocently read the passage quoted at the beginning of this article? And what does it aim to achieve by gradually weaving the historical memory of a whole generation through repetition of these images? There are few examples that highlight so effectively the way the aim of the politics of historical memory and oblivion – ubiquitous ‘politics’ – is accomplished. The use of the word demise (hogyo) and the statement that he was the ‘124th’ Emperor both stem from the Emperor-centred view of history (kokoku shikan) which is the backbone of the textbook. For the authors, who cannot avoid repeating the myth of the Eastern Conquest by the Emperor Jinmu by including a map in the textbook, the Showa Emperor must naturally be the 124th Imperial Ruler in an unbroken line of emperors since the Emperor Jinmu. The expressions are restrained: the passage emphasizes that the Emperor is not ‘a power’ but ‘an authority’, ‘a symbol of the State and of the unity of the people’. Yet, precisely because of this, high-school students would read the text without a sense of incongruity, and the image of the Emperor as the centre of the existence called ‘Japan’ would ‘naturally’ be imprinted in their minds.
Here, I should like to draw special attention again to the comments of that particular ‘old lady aged sixty-eight’ who was ‘exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima and was then living in Tokyo’ on ‘the day of the Emperor’s demise’ – because I observe a cunning artifice of formation and eradication of ‘the memory of war’. At least three kinds of formation and eradication of ‘the memory of war’ are recognizable here.
First, let us touch upon the war accountability of the Showa Emperor. What exactly does it mean to have ‘an old lady of sixty-eight’ who was ‘exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima’ remark ‘I have a feeling that I have always been sharing hardships with the Showa Emperor’?
The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is generally thought to be representative of the war atrocities inflicted on Japan. This view is reiterated a number of times in this textbook. The ‘Tsukurukai’ devotees, who flatly ignore the views of international law concerning the atrocities committed by the former Japanese Imperial Army, suddenly turn back to the international law of humanity and portray the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as ‘crimes against humanity’. For them, the hibakusha, the radiation-exposed victims, are equivalent to the dead of Auschwitz: both are victims of ‘absolute evil’. Moreover, this particular victim is a female – ‘an old lady of sixty-eight’ – a clear attempt to amplify, even more, the image of ‘innocent victim’.
By having the elderly female hibakusha from Hiroshima remark ‘I have always been sharing hardships with the Showa Emperor’, an image is created as if the Showa Emperor himself also endured the same ordeal. In the minds of highschool student readers, the female hibakusha and the Emperor will be identified as one. The female hibakusha is a war victim; the female hibakusha and the Showa Emperor are identified as the same being. In this way, the Showa Emperor also becomes a war victim. Thus, this one passage will have the effect of creating ‘a war memory’ in which the Showa Emperor was a war victim like the woman exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima. It is an act of creating historical memory and, moreover, it is a fabricated creation. The impact of identifying the female hibakusha with the Showa Emperor is infinitely huge – and leads on to the second and third effects induced by this passage.
The second result is that, by identifying the female hibakusha with the Showa Emperor, all Japanese nationals become war victims after the war – because the war experience of any Japanese national can be imagined as positioned somewhere between that of the Emperor and of the hibakusha. The Showa Emperor was the most protected existence during the war, as he possessed a ‘sacred body’ (gyokutai) and his being was conceived to survive even after the ‘honourable deaths of all Japanese nationals’ (ichioku gyokusai). The hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are victims of ‘absolute evil’ and this particular female hibakusha is conceived of as the gravest victim among Japanese nationals. The war experience of other Japanese nationals would be placed somewhere between these two extremes. Therefore, if the Showa Emperor and the female hibakusha are both war victims, then all Japanese nationals would also become war victims. In this way the well-known ‘victim consciousness of Japanese nationals’ is transmitted to a new generation. The war memory – the sense that ‘everybody suffered’ – is thus renewed.
Third, as a counter-effect of the first and second types of memory formation, war damage in other nations and areas, especially in Asia where enormous sacrifice of lives and property resulted from the Japanese invasion, is wiped away. More precisely, Asia’s war damage is excluded from the authors’ consideration from the outset. The war memory produced on the basis of a sense of shared identity between the female Japanese hibakusha and the Showa Emperor cannot accommodate the war memories of Asian war victims. If all Japanese nationals, including the Showa Emperor, become victims, there exists no assailant against the Asian people. Where there is no assailant, there is no victim. Consequently, the existence of Asian victims is completely concealed.
The Showa Emperor standing at ground zero
We have examined the implication raised by the ‘Tsukurukai’ article, that all Japanese nationals, including the Showa Emperor, became victims, as a result of which the national ‘war memory’ was re-formed and the concept of the Asian victim was eradicated. However, such skilful political manoeuvring of memory and oblivion by the ‘Tsukurukai’ cannot be dismissed merely as an extremist ideological manipulation by a faction of ultra-nationalists. Still less, doubting the authenticity of the comments by that ‘old lady of sixty-eight’ who had been exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima does nothing to ameliorate the situation: the fact remains that, regardless of its veracity, her statement was a comment that might well have been offered.
This reconfiguration of the national ‘war memory’ by the ‘Tsukurukai’ is not a fabrication or an arbitrary ‘distortion’ of the reality of the ‘war memory’ of the post-war Japanese. It is indeed a ‘distortion’; however, it is a distortion in conformity with the actual ‘war memory’ of an overwhelming majority of post-war ‘Japanese nationals’. Seen thus, the ‘war memory’ of the post-war Japanese nation itself already represented a ‘distortion’. The ‘Tsukurukai’ authors adroitly exploit the distortion and weakness of the ‘war memory’ of post-war Japan.
The identification of the female hibakusha with the Showa Emperor, or rather the identification by the female hibakusha – it would have been the same for a male hibakusha – with the Showa Emperor was not an inconceivable event. Her comment calls to mind a flickering video image of Japan just after the war. After the so-called ‘Declaration of Humanity’, the Showa Emperor embarked upon an imperial tour. In the famous portrayal, he is surrounded by a crowd on a platform in a public square. As the Emperor salutes by lifting his hat, the crowd hails ‘Banzai!’. If you look closely you can see clearly the Atomic Bomb Dome in the background. It is an image filmed in Hiroshima.
How should we interpret this image? In Hiroshima, where memory of the atomic bomb explosion still remained fresh, and, of all the places, right in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, people who had recently been exposed to radiation are acclaiming the Emperor! What are they pleased about? Are they pleased that the ‘national polity’ (kokutai) has been ‘retained’? Pleased, in spite of Japan’s defeat, that they were able to survive the war together with the Showa Emperor? Whatever, this picture demonstrates precisely the identification of the radiationexposed Hiroshima people with the Showa Emperor – or, rather, the identification by the radiation-exposed Hiroshima people with the Showa Emperor.
Of course, if the background of the Atomic Bomb Dome is removed, this would have been a scene repeated around the nation to the point of saturation. According to records, the Emperor was also greeted by hails of ‘Banzai’ and hinomaru flags in a public square in Nagasaki that overlooked the remains of Urakami Church, also destroyed by the atomic bomb.
In cities, such as Tokyo, that were bombarded by indiscriminate air raids, similar scenes were repeated. These bombings, including the Great Tokyo Air Raid, are depicted in the ‘Tsukurukai’ history textbook as ‘Japanese war damage’ along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As evidenced by a few negative slogans that did appear – including the one that read, ‘The national polity is retained. I, the Emperor, am eating sumptuously. You subjects die of hunger. (Imperial sign and seal)’ – there was a slim possibility that a critical movement against the Emperor system would be born from within the Japanese grassroots. However, apart from in Okinawa, whose residents suffered the unique experience of being assailed by the Japanese Imperial Army on Japanese territory, identification with the Emperor by an overwhelming majority of the Japanese populace apparently prevailed. In other words, a mutual conciliation between the Emperor and the people seems to have dominated. It was as if the people and the Emperor forgave each other: the people forgave the Supreme Commander who dragged them into all-out warfare and the Emperor forgave the incompetence of his ‘beloved children’ who allowed ‘the glory of the Imperial State’ to be ruined. Thus, the people and the Emperor were reconciled to each other – and formed a community of ‘victim consciousness’ while driving all others to complete oblivion. The ‘Emperor column’ in the ‘Tsukurukai’ textbook continues with a stereotypical quote from The Memoirs of General MacArthur that influenced the formation of the myth of the Showa Emperor, before closing with the following:
After defeat in the War, the Emperor made imperial tours throughout Japan to converse freely with the people and to provide encouragement and consolation to those who were busy restoring the nation. Frequently the Emperor replied with a simple ‘ah, so’; but the people felt sincerity in his artlessness. He was sometimes greeted with inadvertent cries of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ This was how the Showa Emperor led his life with the people throughout the dramatic Showa era. (ibid.: 307)
The original last sentence in the so-called ‘blank-cover textbook’ edition prior to inspection and approval by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology read: ‘the Showa Emperor lived as the veritable symbol of the Japanese State and of the unity of the Japanese people in the dramatic Showa era’ (p. 313, pre-inspection edition). Responding to this sentence, the Inspection Committee commented that ‘this expression could be misconstrued as suggesting that the Showa Emperor lived his entire life as the symbol of Japan as stated in the Constitution of Japan’. In consequence, such terms as ‘symbol’ were deleted. In any case, here again, it should be noted that this description is not an arbitrary, groundless ‘distortion’. Quite apart from the repulsive beautification of the Showa Emperor, the description roughly coincides with what was happening in front of the Atomic Bomb (genbaku) Dome. Confronted with the cries of ‘Banzai’ in front of the Dome, the Showa Emperor went through a metamorphosis – from Supreme Commander to the ‘symbol of the State and of the unity of the Japanese people’. It is as if he survived by ‘living two lives with a single body’. Japan’s post-war symbolic emperor system that continues to this day was created by a fraud identical in nature to that which inspired the ‘Emperor column’ of the ‘Tsukurukai’ history book. Therefore, Japan’s symbolic emperor system is nothing but revisionism.
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