View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE 【論文】 Kumazawa Agonistes: The Right of Conquest and the Rise of Democratic Ideology (Part One) Jason M. Morgan Introduction:TheKumazawaCase TO: General MacARTHUR. A very curious letter came across Douglas MacArthurʼs FROM: KUMAZAWA, Hiromichi (熊沢寛道) desk on August 11, 1947. It was hardly the only letter to arrive KYOTO To, SAKYO ku, TANAKA KITAHARUNA – 1. that day, to be sure. MacArthur was the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers—SCAP—and essentially the de facto DATE: (No date.) shogun of Japan. Since Japanʼs defeat in the Greater East Asia War, MacArthur had reigned as head of General Headquarters, The writer states that during the period when the Imperial GHQ, and, in effect, as the benevolent dictator of the entire throne was divided between the Northern and Southern archipelago. Dynasties, Emperor GOKOMATSU (後小松) of the The SCAP archives, housed in the National Diet Library Northern Dynasty killed Prince JITSUHITO (実仁), son in Nagatachō, contain boxes and boxes of microfiched letters and heir of Emperor GOKAMEYAMA (後亀山) of the to the power behind the Chrysanthemum Throne. Summarized Southern Dynasty, thus putting an end to the Southern and also mimeographed from the originals, the letters touch Dynasty. The Northern Dynasty then became sole on every conceivable subject, from complaints about the black claimant to the Imperial throne. market and concerns about building practices to denunciations of individuals and organizations for reasons both public- The writer has conducted extensive research throughout minded and personal, profound and petty. NARA, MIE, FUKUSHIMA, and AICHI prefectures But one letter stands out. Here is how the English and has discovered the continuance of the lineage of summary of an August, 1947 missive reads: the Southern Dynasty. He submits 25 photographs of old documents, tombstones, treasures of the Southern Doc No 33528 JRB/GI/SN Dynasty, Imperial Seals, etc. This evidence allegedly supports the writerʼs claim to the Imperial Throne as the GENERAL HEADQUARTERS direct descendant of the Southern Dynasty. SUPREME COMMANDER FOR THE ALLIED POWERS The writer further states that the present emperor, who led MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SECTION, GENERAL JAPAN into war and disastrous defeat, is now touring the STAFF nation, expending huge sums of the tax payers [sic] and is ALLIED TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER unconcerned about his responsibility for the war. SECTION There follow copies of the envelope, the original NOTE: Translation directed by Commander-in-Chief letter (running to eleven mimeographed pages), and the aforementioned twenty-five photographs, each duly annotated Received ATIS: 11 Aug 47. in the letterʼs text. Whoever Kumazawa was, this was not a letter done lightly. Even if the arguments of the letter were DIGEST OF LETTER false—that is, if Kumazawa Hiromichi, a shopkeeper from －28－ Kumazawa Agonistes: The Right of Conquest and the Rise of Democratic Ideology (Part One)（Jason M. Morgan） Nagoya, was not really the legitimate heir of the Southern What makes Kumazawaʼs case noteworthy, in part, is its Dynasty, or, even if he was, if the Southern Dynasty was prominence. He was by far the most famous, or infamous, not the legitimate claimant to the Chrysanthemum Throne— person in living memory to attack the legitimacy of the Kumazawa seemed to be convinced of the legitimacy of his reigning sovereign by claiming to be the real Emperor himself. claim.1 But this prominence had an equally noteworthy reaction, Indeed, shortly after sending the letter to Gen. MacArthur, for Kumazawa, although the object of curiosity among Kumazawa visited Niigata, where he repeated the gist of what many people in Japan, was also subjected to intense scorn. he had conveyed to GHQ. This was part of a nationwide tour Kumazawa was an amusing sideshow for some, but overall his on which Kumazawa was embarked, timed to coincide with appeal to the man and woman in the street fell disastrously flat. the tour of the Shōwa Emperor organized by the Occupation In stark contrast to Kumazawa, the real Emperor was really authorities to help buttress his popular standing and thereby and truly popular, a fact that played into MacArthurʼs plans to cement MacArthurʼs dual decision to maintain the imperial use him to build political stability in the country MacArthur system while also democratizing Japan. The Kumazawa was ruling. Kumazawa failed to enlist even a fraction of that shadow-tour was also part of Hiromichiʼs ongoing fight kind of popular regard. to have his claims recognized and himself installed on the Many could not contain their contempt for Kumazawa Chrysanthemum Throne, a fight which would culminate in a and took to the papers to vent it. For example, SCAP archives lawsuit filed in 1951 in Tokyo District Court seeking to have contain an English translation of a letter sent by a certain the Shōwa Emperor de-recognized as the legitimate sovereign Izumo Asahi5 to the Jiji Shimpo newspaper, apparently in early of Japan.2 September of 1947 (right after Kumazawa sent his letter to Kumazawa was not alone in his criticism of the Emperor. GHQ), which began: In a famous incident from May of 1946, a Communist named Matsushima Matsutarō (1915-2001) had appeared in a crowd A person named Emperor KUMAZAWA came to Niigata in Tokyo with a sign on which were written, front and back, City on the 22nd [of August, 1947?] and stated the so- messages mocking the Emperor and criticizing him for eating called ʻlegitimacy of the Southern Dynastyʼ. He said, ʻI well while regular people starved to death. Matsushima was have not renounced the throne but leave the judgement brought up on charges of lèse-majesté, but SCAP officials to the peopleʼs free will,ʼ or ʻI do not have any personal forced the reformulation of the charge to defamation on the feelings toward Hirohito but I may allow him just to see grounds that the Emperor should not receive special legal me.ʼ How audacious he is! treatment.3 Nor was Kumazawa alone in claiming to be the legitimate emperor—as many as eighteen other men claimed “The people are laughing at you,” Mr. Izumo declared during the early postwar years to be the real heir to the throne.4 in his missive to the Jiji Shimpo. His opinion was widely 1 The debate over the legitimacy of the current Northern Dynasty line has largely gone into abatement in recent decades, but it remains substantially unresolved. See, e.g., Shimura Kunihiro, ed., Tennō kōzoku rekishi densetsu daijiten (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2008), Nitta Ichirō, Taiheiki no jidai (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001), Fujii Jōji and Yoshioka Masayuki, eds., Go-Daigo tennō jitsuroku, vols. 1 & 2 (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2009), Fujimaki Kazuho, Wagahai wa tennō nari: Kumazawa tennō jiken (Tokyo: Gakushū Kenkyūsha, 2007), Yamaji Yūichirō, Gonanchō saihakkutsu (Tokyo: Soubunsha, 2003), Yamaji Yūichirō, Nanchō: saigo no shōgen (Tokyo: Choeisha, 2008), and Murata Masashi, Nanbokuchōron (Tokyo: Shibundō, 1959). Murata comes down hard on Yoshida Chōzō, Kumazawaʼs shadowy champion (and possible communist provocateur), agreeing with his mentor Watanabe Yosuke (1874-1957) that the Kumazawa genealogy Yoshida had produced was “utterly baseless, and predicated upon a mistaken reading” of other documents. (Murata, Nanbokuchōron, op. cit., 260-61, citing Watanabe Yosuke, “Keizu no gisaku ni tsuite: Kumazawa tennō, Sakamoto tennō ryō keifu no bakugeki,” Nihon Rekishi, no. 35 (April, 1951). Undaunted, Yoshida published the next year Kiku no kāten wo hiraku: Shin tennōron (Tokyo: Chiyoda Shoin, 1952), which contains two photographs: “Kumazawa tennō” and his family, as well as a photograph of the Imperial Family, to the leader of which Yoshida refers as the “Ashikaga tennō”. George Sansom writes, “Viewed in the light of subsequent events, the struggle between the two Courts [i.e., Northern and Southern] failed to decide the issue of legitimacy. It has never been settled.” A History of Japan, 1334-1615 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 118. 2 The lawsuit was dismissed, both on first instance and on appeal, on the grounds that the constitution of Japan does not provide for conducting trials of the Emperor. 3 See Yokosaka Kenji, “Tennō to fukeizai,” in Kenpō hanrei hyakusen II, no. 5 (Yuhikaku, 2007). 4 See Hosaka Masayasu, Tennō ga jūkunin ita: samazama naru sengo (Kadokawa Bunko, 1995). 5 The handwriting of this name is not entirely clear in the original. －29－ 麗澤レヴュー 第 25 巻 2019 年 9 月 shared. As the realities of postwar life, and the return to power shift back and forth from active to passive rule, and it is one geopolitics with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, such shift in particular that forms the basis of Kumazawaʼs set in, Kumazawaʼs odd star faded rapidly from view. He is claims, and which puzzles us today as to the real nature of now almost completely forgotten, only rarely appearing in legitimate government. scholarly monographs as, at most, a footnote in a section on But in order to get a proper understanding of Kumazawaʼs postwar Japanese legal history.6 plaint, we must first go back to a time before this shift occurred. During the Heian Period, the Japanese emperors, TheRightofConquestandthePre-Modern formerly compelled by an elaborate network of taboos to JapanesePast abandon capitals and establish new bases of government whenever a reigning emperor died, settled into a fixed capital Setting aside the question of whether Kumazawa really city, Heian-kyō (todayʼs Kyoto), where they oversaw a cultural was the