Notes For complete author names, titles, and publication data for works cited here in short form, see the Works Cited list at the back of the book. Introduction 1. It is problematic to use the term “emperor” to describe the monarch throughout most of Japanese history. As Joan R. Piggott reminds us in The Emergence of Japanese Kingship, “The term empire is strongly associated with a martial political formation founded on conquest” (8). For most of Japanese history, Japanese monarchs did not preside over empires. The monarchs of Imperial Japan (1890–1945)did rule over an empire that came to include numerous overseas possessions, however. In the case of Hirohito (r. 1926–89), he ascended to the throne as the sovereign of an empire, and thus the term “emperor” is an appropriate title for him for the period from 1926 to 1945. Strictly speaking, the term “emperor” does not describe Japan’s monarch since 1945, for Japan no longer has an empire and the monarch does not even remain sovereign. In the end, however, I decided to use the term “emperor” (as well as terms such as “monarch”) for the postwar period in part because it seemed confusing to switch back and forth between “emperor” for the prewar period and, say, “king” for the postwar period, and also because it served to highlight one of the most important transwar continuities regarding the Japanese throne: Hirohito, who ascended to the throne with the mindset of a sovereign emperor, remained on the throne even as the Japanese empire collapsed and the politico-legal system defining his position underwent sweeping reform. 2. Mori followed this remark with another gaffe a few weeks later when he accused the Japan Communist Party of being incapable of protecting Japan’s kokutai. In prewar Japan this word, unknown to many Japanese today (as evidenced by the extensive explanatory commentary that accompanied mass media coverage of the prime minister’s remark), was used to describe the national polity centered on imperial sovereignty. 3. The bill passed by the Diet not only made the Kimigayo the national anthem but formally made the Hinomaru (the “Rising Sun”), the same flag used in modern Japan from 1870 until 1945, the official national flag. The decision regarding the flag was more controversial on the international stage (for some Asians, in particular, the Hinomaru symbolizes Japan’s brutal imperialism and wars of aggression), but domestically the adop- tion of the Kimigayo was seen as equally if not more significant, for students now will be made to sing lines about the eternal reign of the imperial house. For information, see Tanaka Nobumasa, Hinomaru Kimigayo no sengoshi. Kenneth J. Ruoff - 9781684176168 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:59:11PM via free access 356 notes 4. On the phenomenon of “self-restraint” (jishuku), see Watanabe Osamu, “The Sociology of Jishuku and Kicho.” In contrast to Watanabe’s stress on the extent of “self-re- straint,” many other commentators noted the number of Japanese citizens who refrained from self-restraint during the period of the emperor’s illness. 5. The mass media reported comments from members of village youth groups indi- cating that young adults believed that the crown prince’s marriage would help them overcome parental resistance to love matches. See Matsushita Keiichi, “Zoku-taishū tennōseiron,” 115–16. 6. English-language scholarship about the postwar monarchy that focuses mainly on the Occupation era includes Dower, Embracing Defeat; Bix, “Inventing the ‘Symbol Monarchy’ in Japan, 1945–52”; Bix, “The Showa Emperor’s ‘Monologue’ and the Problem of War Responsibility”; Titus, “The Making of the ‘Symbol Emperor System’ in Postwar Japan” (Titus addresses the post-Occupation decade to some extent as well); Nakamura Masanori, The Japanese Monarchy; Watanabe Osamu, “The Emperor as a ‘Symbol’ in Postwar Japan”; and K. Takeda, The Dual-Image of the Japanese Emperor. For biographies of Hirohito, see Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan; D. Irokawa, The Age of Hirohito; and Large, Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan. Works that address aspects of the post-Occupation monarchy include Lebra, “Self and Other in Esteemed Status”; Titus, “Accessing the World”; T. Fujitani, “Electronic Pageantry and Japan’s ‘Symbolic Emperor’”; and Field, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. I began research for this book in 1993 and prepared my manuscript at the same time that Bix was studying Emperor Hirohito’s political role. I read and profited from his works as they came out. However, with the exception of those points at which I cite his work directly, to the extent that our interpretations overlap in the first section of Chapter 4 of this book is a reflection of my independent reading of some of the same sources. Our main concerns differ, for Bix traced Emperor Hirohito’s political role whereas I analyze the remaking of the postwar monarchy as an institution. 7. These messages were reprinted in Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Government Section, Political Reorientation of Japan, 2: 414–15. 8. Ibid., 413. 9. The text of this debate, “Tennōsei shiji ka, hitei ka,” was reprinted inGendai no esupuri, no. 45 (Oct. 1970). 10. The other participants were promonarchist Kiyose Ichirō (1884–1967), and liberal Makino Ryōzō (1885–1961), who also supported the monarchy. 11. The acronym SCAP refers to the chief executive of the Allied Occupation (General Douglas MacArthur, 1945–51; General Matthew B. Ridgway, 1951–52) or, more broadly, to the Occupation bureaucracy or administration. 12. Dower, Empire and Aftermath, 319. 13. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Government Section, Political Reorientation of Japan, 2: 657. 14. The new constitution was promulgated on 3 November, birthday of Emperor Meiji and a prewar holiday. The Japanese government chose this day to stress continuity. 15. Fellers submitted various memoranda to MacArthur urging the retention of the throne and Hirohito. As Herbert Bix has shown, Fellers’s view of the throne and Hirohito as impediments to communization was evident in a conversation that he had with former prime minister Yonai Mitsumasa (1880–1948) in March 1946. Fellers argued: “The Kenneth J. Ruoff - 9781684176168 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:59:11PM via free access notes 357 national policy of the Soviet Union in particular aims to bring about communization of the entire world. Consequently, the Japanese emperor system and the presence here of MacArthur have become major obstacles for them.” See Bix, “Inventing the ‘Symbol Monarchy’ in Japan, 1945–52,” 343. 16. See Nachmani, “Civil War and Foreign Intervention in Greece, 1946–1949.” 17. In 1946, Minister of State Kanamori Tokujirō (1886–1959), speaking for the government during an interpellation in the Diet about the reign-name system, insisted that the 1868 edict establishing the practice that an era would correspond to one emperor’s reign provided the legal basis for continued use of the system. This interpretation was questionable, however. In 1950, for example, Okuno Ken’ichi (1898–1984), director of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, denied that the 1868 edict was still in effect under the Postwar Constitution. He also voiced the opinion that since there was no legal mecha- nism for establishing a new reign name, when the present emperor died the reign-name system would die with him. For Kanamori’s interpretation, see Daikyūjūkai teikoku kizokuin kōshitsu tenpan tokubetsu iinkai sokkiroku, 6. For Okuno’s interpretation, see Sangiin jimukyoku, Dainanakai kokkai sangiin monbu iinkai kaigiroku, no. 6, 2–3. 18. Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan chōsa rippō kōsakyoku, Kigensetsu mondai ni kansuru shiryōshū, 23. 19. Kigensetsu hōshukukai, Kigensetsu hōshukukai koshi, 9–10. See also Woodard, The Allied Occupation of Japan 1945–1952 and Japanese Religions, 143–47. 20. One of the most comprehensive descriptions of postwar values was provided by the immensely popular cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori in his biting critique of these very values; see his Shin gomanizumu sengen supesharu sensōron. Chapter 1 1. Webb, The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Tokugawa Period, 1–64. 2. I have borrowed the phrase “officiant in the rice harvest rituals” from Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “The Emperor of Japan as Deity (Kami),” 199. 3. Curiously, during the Meiji era (1868–1912), even as a descendant of the Northern Dynasty held the throne, the government elevated fourteenth-century supporters of Emperor Go-Daigo’s Southern Dynasty into national heroes. 4. Webb, The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Tokugawa Period, ix. 5. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan, 149. 6. Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai tennōsei no bunkashiteki kenkyū, 267. 7. Takagi Hiroshi, “Kindai ni okeru shinwateki kodai no sōzō,” 24–25. 8. Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” 1. 9. The Japanese term for this system is issei ichigensei. This system, too, was borrowed from China, where beginning in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) a system of one emperor, one reign name was employed. 10. See Togashi Junji, Nihon no kunshō, esp. 91–105, 202. Until 1940, recipients of the Order of the Golden Kite enjoyed a pension for life. After 1940 recipients were awarded a lump-sum payment. By the time the Order of the Golden Kite was abolished in 1946, more than 108,000 individuals had received this award linking them to Emperor Jimmu’s military exploits. 11. T. Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, 12. Kenneth J. Ruoff - 9781684176168 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:59:11PM via free access 358 notes 12. Kokuritsu kokkai toshokan chōsa rippō kōsakyoku, Kigensetsu mondai ni kansuru shiryōshū, 4. 13. N. Hozumi, Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law, 81. 14. Iwamoto Tsutomu, “Goshin’ei” ni junjita kyōshitachi. 15. For the construction of State Shinto during the Meiji period, see Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868–1988.