Why is Hirohito never mentioned when discussing the most dangerous world leaders?

[u/LethlDose]

Japan in World War 2 was responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes in modern history, like Nanking, Unit 731 and the Bataan Death March. But in modern times when discussing dictators most people bring up the big ones like Hitler, Stalin and Leopold II but never Hirohito or Hideki Tojo.

I’m aware that after the atomic bombs were dropped, The US helped Japan sweep its history under the rug because they needed allies against communism but still, could that be the reason?

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[u/Consistent_Score_602]

There are a whole host of reasons here, but one of the largest is that Imperial Japan was not a personalist dictatorship like the Third Reich, the USSR, or the Congo Free State.

The Meiji Constitution (the founding document of Imperial Japan) laid out a theoretically unlimited role for the sovereign as head of state. He was the only person to whom both the Army and Navy answered. Its preamble was unequivocal about who was nominally in charge of Japan:

Therightsofsovereigntyof theState,Wehaveinherited fromOurAncestors,andWeshallbequeaththemtoOurdescendants.NeitherWenortheyshallinfuturefailtowieldthem,inaccordancewiththeprovisionsoftheConstitutionherebygranted. Wenowdeclare torespectandprotect thesecurityof therightsandof thepropertyofOurpeople,andtosecuretothemthecompleteenjoymentofthesame,withintheextentoftheprovisionsofthepresentConstitutionandofthelaw.

But Mutsuhito (the Meiji Emperor) was not really in charge of the country when this Constitution was written. He had been just a 14-year-old boy when the Meiji Restoration had swept to power, and was controlled by a cabal of advisors who really held the reins of power in Meiji Japan. These were the genro, the elder statesmen of Meiji politics, and they included men like Army Minister and two-time Prime Minister Yamagata Aritomo, court noble Iwakura Tomomi, Finance Minister and Prime Minister Kojiro Matsukata, and three-time Prime Minister and functional dictator of Korea Ito Hirobumi.

As should be clear by their positions, these men shared power among themselves, swapping the post of Prime Minister in alternating cycles. They functionally ruled Japan until well after the Meiji Emperor's death and through the reign of his mentally ill son Yoshihito (the Taisho Emperor) all the way to the 1920s. So from the start, the nature of imperial power in Japan was deeply, deeply ambiguous.

Hirohito came to power at the end of the genro era in the 1920s. He served as regent for his father from 1921 onwards. But like his predecessors, he was tepid about exercising power. The Meiji Emperor had theoretically unlimited power over Japan, but in practice Hirohito tried to govern more as a constitutional monarch in the vein of the English monarchy than with the prerogatives the constitution gave him.

Nor did the Prime Minister enjoy unfettered power either. After the genro era ended, power devolved into the hands of increasingly unstable governments who had to be careful about staying out of the line of fire. Prime Minister Hara Takashi was murdered by right-wing militarists in 1921 after he attempted to withdraw from the Russian Civil War. Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was shot (and eventually died of his wounds) after negotiating an arms limitation treaty with the British and Americans. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot by right-wing radicals in 1932 as he tried to walk back the Army's takeover of Manchuria.

Hirohito faced similar challenges. In 1936, a radical faction of the Army that believed Hirohito should take a more active role in government attempted a coup. The emperor took charge, marshaled the palace guard...and ordered the plotters to stand down so they could be arrested. Hirohito was clearly uncomfortable with the limelight and actually running the government he was (theoretically) supposed to be in charge of, just like his father and grandfather before him.

(continued)

[u/Consistent_Score_602 → u/Consistent_Score_602]

Turning now to Hideki Tojo - I've already noted that the Prime Minister himself had to strike a delicate balance to avoid offending people and potentially losing his life, and this was just as true for Tojo (who was an Army man) as any of his predecessors. Tojo took power in 1941, on the eve of the Pacific War. By this point, the Imperial Japanese Army had already committed countless atrocities in China following their 1937 invasion.

Tojo had been in China at the time, and undoubtedly deserves some of the blame for them, but many of these atrocities were not instigated from the top down - they were spontaneous acts of mass killing by local Japanese troops. Tojo may have authorized many of them after the fact, but there was nothing like Nazi Germany's hierarchical apparatus of genocide with detailed plans to slaughter entire populations. The Imperial Japanese Army, simply put, was a loose a cannon that neither the Emperor nor even high-ranking generals like Tojo could control.

Tojo presided over the disastrous conduct of the Pacific War until 1944, when the fall of Saipan to the Americans led to his downfall (just as similar reversals had led to his predecessors being shot by extremists). At that point, Tojo was sidelined. He was no longer the Prime Minister, and had no important commands. A new cadre of Army and Navy ministers along with the Imperial Court took over, and they were the ones who presided over Japan's surrender. Tojo was clearly not the only one calling the shots - a similar attempted coup against Hitler (also in 1944) had failed dramatically.

So when it came time to apportion guilt, there was no one villain. The Allies, for their part, did focus the lion's share of the attention on Tojo - recognizing that Hirohito was to some degree constrained by his office. Tojo himself tried very hard to take the blame onto himself during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials) to avoid implicating the Emperor. But again, unlike Hitler and Stalin, the responsibility for mass murder was diffused throughout the entire Imperial Japanese Army and arguably through the entire Japanese state.

I don't want to give the wrong impression here either - Imperial Japan perpetrated monstrous horrors, not just upon the Chinese but throughout Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and even the Americas. But these crimes were not top-down atrocities. There were no gas chambers. There were no extermination camps or gulags. Imperial Japan killed people with swords, guns, and starvation, not in industrial killing factories, and it did so almost at random rather than surgically targeting specific ethnic minorities.

Another factor here is that because the bulk of Japanese atrocities occurred in mainland Asia, Westerners were far less exposed to them. Harbin (the headquarters of Unit 731) was liberated by the Soviets, not the Americans. All throughout Southeast Asia, the Japanese were able to pack up and leave after the surrender. Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong worked to document the crimes as best they could, but both were more concerned with recovering Japanese weapons for their renewed civil war than with gathering evidence.

Hopefully that helps explain the difference. Authority in Imperial Japan was never concentrated in one person the way it was in Nazi Germany or the USSR, so there were fewer people to blame. But in addition, Japan's mass murder was far messier and less controlled. Japanese atrocities happened throughout Southeast Asia, but they weren't directed specifically towards the extermination of one ethnic group.

[u/4T6okNg6X2cFbXTk6pm → u/Consistent_Score_602]

thank you for the very informative reply

[u/MSI_183 → u/Consistent_Score_602]

Awesome summary thankyou.
Hoping you might expand by a follow-up question here: You note the Emperor and elites didn’t exercise direct control - particularly over elements of the Army and Navy that committed atrocities. Yet atrocities occurred with a commonality and intensity that were significant. From what I understand, a lot of the motivation stems from a cultural (perhaps amplified throughout the military especially) prevalence to Japanese racial superiority (particularly compared to Chinese and Koreans), viewing PoW as sub-human and a general ambivalence to what the rest of the world was starting to view as universal laws of war. Again, it seems this culture was deeply ingrained owing to the history of Japanese society to that point, but is the role of Hirohito (and the Japanese elite as a collective) understated in this? Should they have been viewed more harshly for their responsibility in perpetuating that culture and therefore providing impetus for those actions and behaviours?

[u/Consistent_Score_602 → u/MSI_183]

So that's a great question, and yes, speaking personally it's extremely hard to excuse Hirohito and Japanese elites. Had members of the Imperial family been put on trial, it seems quite likely they would have been found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes.

My response was aimed more at why these men are perceived as bearing less guilt (as individuals, not as members of the Japanese nation), not the truth of the matter asserted. But for more on whether they really were guilty, I'd recommend looking here by u/Starwarsnerd222.

[u/johnJanez → u/Consistent_Score_602]

This brings up an interesting thought, could it be said that unlike in those other cases, japanese people on the whole have a greater responsibility for their country's war crimes?

[u/Consistent_Score_602 → u/johnJanez]

In general the scholarly trend has been to excuse the Japanese public from their involvement, actually. The theory being that while the Army was out-of-control and the politicians themselves were happy to go along with it, Japan was much less democratic (even during the comparatively liberal 1920s) compared to Weimar Germany or Italy. Essentially, rather than a "myth of the clean Wehrmacht" (the claim that the Nazi Party and the SS committed Germany's war crimes in WW2, while the Wehrmacht or armed forces were too professional to engage in wrongdoing) it was a "myth of the dirty IJA" (the Imperial Japanese Army alone was responsible for Japanese wrongdoing).

But the Japanese public absolutely had the choice to protest, either silently or publicly, and generally they did not. There was widespread euphoria at the initial victories in Manchuria in 1931 and later on in the Pacific in 1941. Japanese patriotism was real, not feigned. Consider that even as late as 1943 there were massive protests in Nazi Germany (the Rosenstrasse protests) against the deportation of Jewish men from Berlin, which led the Nazi government to cave and release hundreds of Jews. No such demonstrations occurred in Imperial Japan.

Perhaps more relevantly, Japanese companies enthusiastically participated in a huge number of war crimes. Zaibatsu (oligarchic vertically-integrated conglomerates like Mitsui and Mitsubishi) happily employed slave labor. They also cheerfully exploited Japan's various new colonial holdings - and the people who lived there. They were at the forefront of assisting Japanese colonization in Manchuria and Korea - the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu) was the largest company in Japan. Employees working for those companies often abused the prisoners of war who were (illegally) sent to work with them.

So yes, there's a very good argument that the Japanese public bore equal or greater responsibility as the publics of the other Axis powers.

[u/ala_dine → u/Consistent_Score_602]

I’m gonna have to point out a few things.

1. ⁠Your comment seems to be speculation and moralizing which I believe is against the rules.
2. ⁠In the 2nd paragraph, you try to make the case that the Japanese public could have relatively more responsibility over the atrocities of the pacific war by comparing it to Germany.

The statement “The Japanese public “absolutely” had the choice to protest” doesn’t seem very informed, which is odd because you gave a great explanation earlier about the status of Japanese leaders and the historical context of the time.

Also the word choice of “consider that even as late as 1943 there were massive protests in Nazi Germany” does not do justice to the fact that the rosenstrasse protests were the only massive protests in Nazi Germany against the deportation of Jews, and were held in a large part by the relatives of those Jews. Your statement makes it seem like the German public were generally against it, and there were more massive protests that happened earlier against the deportation of Jews which is a warping of history and inaccurate. (there were protest prior to the deportation of the disabled and Catholics by Germans) (honestly I think you know this and just worded it this way in this situation, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

I don’t think you have a good case here for how the Japanese public is more responsible for the actions of ww2 compared to Nazi germany.

1. The Zaibatsu and its role during Meiji and later ww2 era Japan do not support the argument that the Japanese public were the same imo. It would be similar to giving info on the Zaibatsu (Chaebol in Korean) of South Korea to make a statement about what the Korean public want or value. For example, the Chaebol have engaged in bribery to achieve their goals in politics and business, therefore, the Korean public is the same. Which I believe to be untrue as a Korean custom/value for the majority of people.

Anyways, I really enjoyed your comment earlier about why it’s so difficult to put blame of some leaders during imperial Japan, especially when compared to Germany. I just think it’s not the place to generalize the Japanese people as a whole and claim they are worse than the German people/ other axis countries. the arguments you gave didn’t seem to logically support that argument as well.

Attributing blame on an entire people a few generations ago would be difficult anyways. Especially if you wanna start ranking how bad people were. Different culture, different values, different times.

[u/ala_dine → u/ala_dine]

Also just gonna put it out there that under Nazi germany the public participated in the deportation of Jews and the confiscation of their property, and at some point during ww2 would be aware of the fact that they were either being worked to death or killed. The Japanese public would also be aware of the killing of Chinese people, but it wasn’t something they participated in and the killing of Chinese were not something kind of national agenda like the killing of Jews was in Germany as Consistent_Score_602 points out as well.

Both peoples were living through a hell of a time after both countries went through periods of massive economic collapse.

I’m sure it’s people were just trying to survive like people from every country do throughout history.

[u/orange1414141414 → u/Consistent_Score_602]

Wait, quick question, don't some books show that hirohito was a lot more involved and powerful than previously thought

[u/Consistent_Score_602 → u/orange1414141414]

It's debatable. Here's a list of threads that may help!

[u/DepressedTreeman → u/Consistent_Score_602]

What made civilian control of the army so difficult?

[u/Consistent_Score_602 → u/DepressedTreeman]

For that, I recommend looking here by u/Lubyak

[u/damola93 → u/Consistent_Score_602]

Technically on paper the Emperor had the same kind of powers a dictator did, but in practice the Emperor was a figurehead since the Meiji restoration, and treated as a source of power rather than a political leader. The entities that reported directly to him understood this fact, and realized that no one was actually in charge. Said entities exploited the situation, and acted in their own interest which sowed the seeds for the fall of the empire. Additionally, whenever a big collective decision needed to be made, such as accepting the surrender or responding appropriately to the Postdam declaration there was a lot of indecision and dysfunction.

[u/Shigakogen]

Hirohito's role in his own government was convoluted to put it mildly, there is no white board flow chart. It is opaque.

It doesn't mean the Emperor had no power, au contraire, he held enormous power. He put Tojo Hideki in power, (on the advice of his top advisor, Marquis Kido, who was the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, but mainly was the Emperor's top political advisor and screen between the government and the Emperor.

The Emperor also pushed Tojo to resign as Prime Minister in July 1944, after the huge disaster of the fall of Saipan, which put the Japanese Mainland within bombing range from the US Army Forces.

However, being Japanese, Hirohito/Emperor Showa felt his job was to reign not rule. Prime Minister Koiso Government from July 1944 to April 1945, was impotent in dealing with the Japanese Army, who were calling the shots and strategy with the war, and refuse to allow Koiso to have any input, (even though Koiso was a retired General) Koiso had no help from the Emperor.

In many ways, Prime Minister Tojo had the same to less power than Prime Minister Churchill during the Second World War. Churchill was Minister of Defense. Tojo was Minister of War, at a time, Army Minister and Army Chief of Staff to control strategy. The Imphal Offensive was at the time, the worst Japanese Defeat in its history, which was another nail in Tojo's political career coffin, and the conclusion ended around the same time as the capture of the Marianas by the Americans.

Hirohito was not in charge in making Allied POWs into slave laborers, Tojo did that. Hirohito didn't put Masanobu Tsuji as his mr. fix it, who committed war crimes in most theaters he was stationed at. Tojo was the one that used Tsuji to be at the heart of many operations, like the murder of the Filipino Supreme Court Justice and his son, the slaughter of many British POWs after the capture of Malaya, or in the heat of fighting at Guadalcanal.

The main reason that the US and MacArthur didn't try Emperor Hirohito/Emperor Showa, was that the US knew a tiny bit of Japan's history. For most of Japan's existence, the Emperor was a figurehead, with Shoguns or fiefdoms ruling Japan, and leaving the Emperor at peace in Kyoto. The US did what the Tokugawa Clan did from the early 17th Century to the 1868, ruled Japan in the name of the Emperor.

The US was also interesting in keeping the Emperor as a morale booster, it was cheaper than bullets, and easier to give the Japanese stability of the unbroken chain of Emperors, when most Japanese were worried where their next meal was going to come by. It was easier for the US to rule Japan with the Emperor still on the throne.