Hirohito As Emperor and the Rise of Japanese Militarism

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HIROHITO AS EMPEROR AND THE RISE OF JAPANESE MILITARISM When Hirohito assumed the throne, a universal male suffrage law had just passed, and political parties were near the height of their prewar powers. However, a plunging economy, rising militarism and a series of political assassinations soon caused a crisis for the pro-democracy movement. Hirohito, who as emperor was the nation’s highest spiritual authority and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, essentially fired the prime minister in 1929. The next prime minister was shot and mortally wounded, and in 1932 yet another prime minister was assassinated by naval officers upset about a treaty limiting the number of Japanese warships. From then on, almost all prime ministers came from the military rather than from the political parties, which were disbanded altogether in 1940. More political violence occurred in 1935, when a lieutenant colonel slashed a general to death with a samurai sword. And in 1936, over 1,400 soldiers mutinied in Tokyo, seizing the army ministry and murdering several high-ranking politicians. Meanwhile, Japan’s conflict with China was growing. In 1931, Japanese army officers initiated the so-called Manchurian Incident by detonating a railway explosion and blaming it on Chinese bandits. They then used the event as an excuse to take over Manchuria in northeastern China and set up a puppet state there. Excursions into other areas of the country soon followed, and by 1937 war had broken out. That winter, the Japanese army massacred an estimated 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war in and around the city of Nanking. Rape is thought to have been commonplace, and women throughout Japanese-controlled regions of Asia were brought in to serve as prostitutes. Hirohito did not condone the invasion’s more repugnant aspects, but— perhaps because he worried the military would make him abdicate—he failed to punish those responsible. He also sanctioned the use of chemical warfare and the uprooting of peasants. Source: http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/hirohito.

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