Hirohito: a vilian or an innocent?I was just wondering what you guys thought of the e

I was just wondering what you guys thought of the emperor's involvment in WW11? I personally think His Majesty was not into what the IJA and IJN were doing, namely because: he disapproved of the alliance with Hitler, he put down a militarist coup in his earlier career, and the militarists probably INDOCTRINATED the people into this whole "the Emperor wants this" dogma, because they were so much closer to the people than the Emperor was! I think it was pretty clear that Hirohito MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT WANT THIS!!!!

Plus, it was noted, but never quite proven, that the insignia of the red sun with shining red rays jutting outwards was the same used by the ancient queen Hitoke to worship the god of evil, Amatsu Mikaboshi! How does this help prove the Emperor's innocence, you ask? Simple: Hirohito was raised to believe he was the descendant of the sun goddess Amateresu Omikami, and whether or not that is true, she is a complete polar opposite to the Mikaboshi, therefore I suggest that Hirohito was also an enemy of evil, possibly just because of his upbringing! He must have had some reason for going along with the militarists plans, do'nt you agree? He could have gotten himself killed! And before you go all out on me by saying "but then he would'nt be a god, now would he", my answer would be "yes, he most certainly could have been", due to a certain Japanese myth: There was a food goddess, called Uke Mochi, and either Susawano or Tsukiyomi Otoko killed her! I myself prefer the Susawano version, but that is beside the point! In short not only do I think the Emperor was mostly uninvolved, I think he was practically a saint! I was also greatly annoyed that they (tried) to force him to "renounce" his divinity, because that seems to be a GROSS VIOLATION OF OUR OWN constitution, and Japan ended up gaining a constitution similar to ours, so it makes NO SENSE!!!! And besides, there was a better way of doing it: namely, force the Emperor to renounce his right for everyone to worship him, without renouncing his divinity! And besides, the Christians have comitted far more war crimes then any civilizations/religions individually, INCLUDING the Japanese, so why should'nt they be rebuked?!?! Remember the militarist coup d'e tat that was before WW2, I mentioned earlier? Well, I recently unearthed more evidence that casts another shadow of doubt upon the "the Emperor WANTED WAR" theory, and it is this: that if he had resisted, then there would be another militarist uprising, which this time would be SUCCESFUL, AND MOREOVER, WOULD MAKE AN EVEN BROADER WAR!!!!... That would be even worse!!!!

There was more good to the emperor than bad, more right than wrong! He even interrupted a meeting, reciting a poem by his grandfather, the emperor Meiji, who wrote it under similar circumstances, which advocated PEACE!!!! Now does that sound like a bad guy to you? <_<


NOTE: The "dry" emoticon was to express to you all that that question was rhetorical! DOUBLE NOTE: I forgot to mention a story I heard on a recorded version of Benjamin Hoff's "The Tao of Pooh" that was about His Majesty, or as they say in Japan "Kinjo Heika" litterally: "His Current Majesty", [then, not now], was on his way to a meeting with his attendants, and when they arrived, no-one was there! The Emperor turned to his attendants, and said something like this: "I would like to have more meetings like this!" Now, given that war involves a LOT of meetings and chaos, I would deduce that His Majesty was NOT a war-like guy, unless that was meant as a joke, or possibly both! I tend to think both, though!Pardon the double post guys, but I wanted to give you a new site that might help me make my point clearer: I was searching the web, and I came across this thread!

Also the Japanese Constitution prior WW2 was written by the people who SURROUNDED the Emperor, and NOT by the Emperor himself! The Shogunate may have been abolished, but this did not end military control of the government! I remember finding out that the Emperor could not make desicions: his cabinet did that! Although the Emperor did sometimes INFLUENCE the desicions, he could'nt always do that on every matter! In other words, the Emperor was only supreme leader in theory, but in practice, it was a whole other story!

I also want to elaborate on something that I am frankly annoyed with Macarthur (trying) to do: Check out this Wikipedia entry here! The Emperor was supposed to "renounce" his divinity, right? Well, here is some evidence to refute that! I for one am outraged that Macarthur would make such an attempt, because it 1) CLEARLY violates our OWN constitution, besides the fact that the Japanese ended up gaining a similar constitution, 2) there was a better way of doing it: to force the Emperor to renounce his privelege for everybody to bow down to him, but not renouncing, (or altering) his divinity! Third, there was a LOT MORE COLLECTIVE GUILT ON THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS, MAINLY CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM, than there was on the Japanese, so why should they not get a similar rebuking!

Spoiler (Highlight to read):

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Hirohito was himself outraged at the idea that the Emperor could'nt be divine or semi-divine! And plus, it was noted by critics of the popular western view, that Hirohito asked for, and recieved permission to pray to an ancestor, and then prayed to the sun goddess herself, thus re-affirming the traditional line of descent!

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I want to show you where I got all of this information: the part about the god of evil came from here as well as from here and the part about Hirohito's life came from here! You have the other urls, so I wo'nt bother with those!

Plus, do you really think someone who was obsessed with marine biology or Haiku would be a warlord type? I THHINK NOT!!!!

This can be considered as SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Potentially quite a good thread, but I would ask that you remove the massive letters. Feel free to bold/underline/italicize words to make a point, but please don't mess with the size options. Or, if you do, don't go to the largest one.

Originally Posted by GDwarf

Potentially quite a good thread, but I would ask that you remove the massive letters. Feel free to bold/underline/italicize words to make a point, but please don't mess with the size options. Or, if you do, don't go to the largest one.

I changed all of the massive letters to size 8! There, now is that better?

Sorry for the double post, guys, but I was just wondering why nobody was posting, because I thought there would be SOMEONE to add their imput?!?! Anyone have any comments???? I would LOVE to hear them!!!!

Nobody's posting because nobody has any idea what the hell you're talking about.

That and the really big letters.

I would comment but I can't read that. The huge letters are throwing off my senses. Change them to normal size please.

What Deku Prince said. I'd read this, but your post looks like a complete mess, and is putting me off reading it. If you organized it neatly into paragraphs, then I'm sure more people would read it.

Originally Posted by Twilightwolf64

What Deku Prince said. I'd read this, but your post looks like a complete mess, and is putting me off reading it. If you organozed it neatly into paragraphs, then I'm sure more people would read it.

There I organized into paragraphs, although not all are 3 to 5 sentences or more, but still, far more readable, I hope! Now, is THAT better?!?!
Is there anything else that you want me to do?!?! And you do'nt have to reply if you do'nt want to, but I was just wondering!

<_< I'm pretty sure that the three judges in the Tokyo Trial who went to the effort of writing an obiter dictum about Hirohito's role in the affair said it best -

"The Emperor then directed that the program be carried out [referring to the attack on Pearl Harbor]. . . It will remain that the men who advised the commission of a crime, if it be one, are in no worse position than the man who directs the crime be committed."

Also, if you actually look over the transcripts of the Tokyo trial, you'd realize that there are multiple occasions where people slip up in their coordinated testimony and say that they were ordered to commit the most atrocious crimes directly by the emperor. Tojo himself admitted that he and the Emperor planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and that it was done with the full backing of the ruler. Even though all parties in the Tokyo Trial (including the prosecutors) conspired to protect the Emperor, Tojo himself still said that none of the ministers (including the seven who were sentenced to death for war crimes) would have ever done anything without the Emperor's blessing.

Even the most basic of Japanese documents from the 30s and 40s would point out these glaringly obvious facts to any idiot who could read at a third grade level -

- All major campaigns, such as those of "August 13" of Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Burma, and "Ichigo" had been meticulously studied by Hirohito before he ordered them to be carried out with his blessings

- the appointment or dismissal of any commander of the smallest large combat unit must have had the approval of Emperor Hirohito and, more often than not, he would have an audience with the appointee before being announced

- any large troop movement and creation of new divisions had to have Emperor Hirohito's approval.

You can't deny that Hirohito had a large role in the Japanese military and the crimes committed against both the Chinese and US - hell, he did far more than Hitler ever did, and Hitler was a total control freak. But not only did Hirohito play a large military role, but he made sure to get his hands dirty with some good old-fashioned genocide.

Hirohito signed dozens of documents (That we still have - probably far more) detailing the creation of Unit 731 and the actions that it would perform - biological and chemical testing on Chinese prisoners. Among the most famous actions performed on humans there were live dissections without anesthesia, infecting prisoners with diseases and studying their deaths, live grenade testd (read: BLOWING PEOPLE UP), flame thrower testing (read: SETTING PEOPLE ON FIRE), live amputations and disembowelings (read: CUTTING PEOPLE UP WHILE THEY'RE STILL ALIVE), and more and more. My personal favorite, if I might say, is the experiment where people were HUNG UPSIDE DOWN AND TIMED TO SEE HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE THEM TO CHOKE TO DEATH.

Not only was Unit 731 operated by some of the Emperor's most trusted ministers, but the emperor's own brother went to check out how the unit's experiments were coming along on multiple occasions and reported this information back to the Emperor, and all of this again met with the Emperor's blessing.

The only reason, and I mean the ONLY reason that Hirohito wasn't hung upside-down himself and left to die was because of his position in Japanese society - he was the Emperor, a living god, the object of worship of millions. In a country where you couldn't even see the Emperor in person before without meeting death, where millions of men had just fought to the bitter death on little piece-of-**** islands because the emperor asked them to, and where they only stopped fighting after two of the largest cities got completely leveled and tens of thousands of people were incinerated, how do you think they would have handled it if they had taken their leader and god and given him a public execution? :O

Seriously, man, there's a reason that Hirohito couldn't be executed, and it's none of this crap you're spewing out. The man was an absolute monster and should have been killed, but he literally had an entire country willing to fight to the death to protect him from getting so much as a sunburn. That's the only reason that MacArthur didn't allow him to be prosecuted at the Tokyo Trial, and the main reason that seven other men died solely for following his orders.

Seriously, how you could even think to defend a man like Hirohito is entirely beyond me... And how you could think that your arguments would ever offer any defense at all against such obvious evidence just kind of makes me laugh. :o

Originally Posted by andi

<_< I'm pretty sure that the three judges in the Tokyo Trial who went to the effort of writing an obiter dictum about Hirohito's role in the affair said it best -

"The Emperor then directed that the program be carried out [referring to the attack on Pearl Harbor]. . . It will remain that the men who advised the commission of a crime, if it be one, are in no worse position than the man who directs the crime be committed."

Also, if you actually look over the transcripts of the Tokyo trial, you'd realize that there are multiple occasions where people slip up in their coordinated testimony and say that they were ordered to commit the most atrocious crimes directly by the emperor. Tojo himself admitted that he and the Emperor planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and that it was done with the full backing of the ruler. Even though all parties in the Tokyo Trial (including the prosecutors) conspired to protect the Emperor, Tojo himself still said that none of the ministers (including the seven who were sentenced to death for war crimes) would have ever done anything without the Emperor's blessing.

Even the most basic of Japanese documents from the 30s and 40s would point out these glaringly obvious facts to any idiot who could read at a third grade level -

- All major campaigns, such as those of "August 13" of Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Burma, and "Ichigo" had been meticulously studied by Hirohito before he ordered them to be carried out with his blessings

- the appointment or dismissal of any commander of the smallest large combat unit must have had the approval of Emperor Hirohito and, more often than not, he would have an audience with the appointee before being announced

- any large troop movement and creation of new divisions had to have Emperor Hirohito's approval.

You can't deny that Hirohito had a large role in the Japanese military and the crimes committed against both the Chinese and US - hell, he did far more than Hitler ever did, and Hitler was a total control freak. But not only did Hirohito play a large military role, but he made sure to get his hands dirty with some good old-fashioned genocide.

Hirohito signed dozens of documents (That we still have - probably far more) detailing the creation of Unit 731 and the actions that it would perform - biological and chemical testing on Chinese prisoners. Among the most famous actions performed on humans there were live dissections without anesthesia, infecting prisoners with diseases and studying their deaths, live grenade testd (read: BLOWING PEOPLE UP), flame thrower testing (read: SETTING PEOPLE ON FIRE), live amputations and disembowelings (read: CUTTING PEOPLE UP WHILE THEY'RE STILL ALIVE), and more and more. My personal favorite, if I might say, is the experiment where people were HUNG UPSIDE DOWN AND TIMED TO SEE HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE THEM TO CHOKE TO DEATH.

Not only was Unit 731 operated by some of the Emperor's most trusted ministers, but the emperor's own brother went to check out how the unit's experiments were coming along on multiple occasions and reported this information back to the Emperor, and all of this again met with the Emperor's blessing.

The only reason, and I mean the ONLY reason that Hirohito wasn't hung upside-down himself and left to die was because of his position in Japanese society - he was the Emperor, a living god, the object of worship of millions. In a country where you couldn't even see the Emperor in person before without meeting death, where millions of men had just fought to the bitter death on little piece-of-**** islands because the emperor asked them to, and where they only stopped fighting after two of the largest cities got completely leveled and tens of thousands of people were incinerated, how do you think they would have handled it if they had taken their leader and god and given him a public execution? :O

Seriously, man, there's a reason that Hirohito couldn't be executed, and it's none of this crap you're spewing out. The man was an absolute monster and should have been killed, but he literally had an entire country willing to fight to the death to protect him from getting so much as a sunburn. That's the only reason that MacArthur didn't allow him to be prosecuted at the Tokyo Trial, and the main reason that seven other men died solely for following his orders.

Seriously, how you could even think to defend a man like Hirohito is entirely beyond me... And how you could think that your arguments would ever offer any defense at all against such obvious evidence just kind of makes me laugh.

I think he wanted to avoid a potentially wider war, because: do you REALLY THINK THAT A MAN WHO PUT DOWN A MILLITARIST REBBELION EARLIER IN HIS CAREER, WOULD HAVE COMPLETE :moodswing, AND CHANGE HORSES OUT OF WHIM?!?! NO, he was forced too, by a millitarist coup that would have 1) overthrown the Imperial family, which is, admmitedly, a bit selfish, and 2) possibly create an even bigger problem than what it turned out to be, which is a good reason for him going along with it! Do you treat ALL Japanese Emperors this way? They were usually completely powerless, even AFTER the Shogunate, the military still ruled the country THROUGH THE EMPEROR, and WW2 was NOT an exeption! Although the Meiji Constitution APPEARS to give the Emperor full power over the government, this is decieving in most cases, although the Emperor COULD SOMETIMES INFLUENCE what was being done at the time! In other words, the Emperor was supreme leader in appearance ONLY, and I emphasize the finality of that word! And the Meiji Emperor (Mutsuhito) wrote VERY sentimental poems, that evoke a peace-lover, if not a pacifist, and the Showa Emperor (Hirohito) quoted one of these poems, called Gyosai, to demonstrate the need for peace! That sounds more like a guy who was FORCED into doing something evil, rather than doing it WILLINGLY!!!! For now, I rest my case!!!!

Originally Posted by Tuf Pic

I think he wanted to avoid a potentially wider war, because: do you REALLY THINK THAT A MAN WHO PUT DOWN A MILLITARIST REBBELION EARLIER IN HIS CAREER, WOULD HAVE COMPLETE :moodswing, AND CHANGE HORSES OUT OF WHIM?!?! NO, he was forced too, by a millitarist coup that would have 1) overthrown the Imperial family, which is, admmitedly, a bit selfish, and 2) possibly create an even bigger problem than what it turned out to be, which is a good reason for him going along with it! Do you treat ALL Japanese Emperors this way? They were usually completely powerless, even AFTER the Shogunate, the military still ruled the country THROUGH THE EMPEROR, and WW2 was NOT an exeption!

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you are referring to the February 26th incident with this. And yes, insofar as there was an attempted coup this is correct - however, you have every single particular of the incident incorrect. I don't even need to go read over any of my books again for this except to get the sequence of events correct.
On February 26th a number of junior army officers of the "kodoha/kodo-ha" faction, which was an organization similar to that of the Kemalist Turks within the Ottoman Empire in their background. However, the goal was in no way to "overthrow" any imperial anything. Their complaint, rather, was that the Prime Minister and the constitutional democracy formed within Japan (the nature of which I'll explain momentarily) had gained too much power. Their reasoning was that the Imperial Japanese Army was occupying both Korea (strangely, the Japanese seemed of the opinion that Korea was, in fact, part of Japan - despite a rather sea and completely different language and people they encountered upon crossing this obvious obstacle) and the unrecognized area of Manchuria they had grabbed at the collapse of the Chinese republic (the Japanese called this area Manchukuo and considered it "independent" - not to be confused with the later "Mengukuo" or Inner Mongolia territory built after they crossed into the rest of China), yet the Japanese Navy was receiving most of the military funding for the creation of the untested and wildly expensive aircraft carriers. Somewhere in there was also a complaint (later found to be true) that the IJN intelligence corps and the equivalent of the Japanese State Department were riddled with Comintern moles and sympathizers taking orders from Moscow. Naturally, being Japanese citizens loyal to the Emperor and believing he was unaware of this they intended to overthrow the elements they determined were disloyal and install system more akin to Italian Fascism than the Meiji model of German (pre-World War One) authoritarian democracy.
To this end, the demands they issued after capturing most of central Tokyo and nearly killing then-Prime Minister Okada Keisuke were as follows:

• Dissolution of present government cabinet
• Replacement of Prime Minister's post with that of a general heading the cabinet
• Temporary suspension of democracy to allow the Emperor and Cabinet to assist the flagging Japanese economy
• A statement to the effect that Emperor, state, people and land were indivisible and united
• Granting Hirohito powers similar to those of the "Fuhrer" in Germany
• Aknowledgement of the greatest threat to Japan in the form of the Soviet Union (They get this one in the form of the Anti-Comintern pact with Germany and Italy)

They also supported a major buildup of the army for a future preemptive strike against the Soviet Union and world communism, even going so far as to suggest some manner of alliance with the United States and offering concessions over China. They were also opposed to the existence of zaibatsu, believing they drained the money from hardworking lower-class Japanese men.
Late in the day of the 26th Hirohito ordered the opposing army camp, known as the Toseiha to retake Tokyo. His grounds were not that he was frightened, but that the appearance of the officers operating without his express authority reduced his standing among the people and military. His statement regarding them was the following (note the lack of substantive disagreement): "Without Our orders, Our troops have been willfully moved. Whatever they are called, they are not Our troops." Hideki Tojo, later directly appointed by the Emperor to the position of Prime Minister on the stated grounds (by Hirohito) that "a member of the imperial family should not have to eventually carry the responsibility for a war against the Occident," came out against the rebellion although he was an army officer and substantially in agreement with the movements goals and motives. His posting occured on 18 October 1941, by the way, long after the decision for war with the United States over China was agreed upon.
By the 29th the rebellion had still not been put down by force and the soldiers, being informed of the Emperor's disapproval, simply returned to their barracks. Two officers committed seppuku and 19 instigators of the revolution were executed. Prime Minister Okada was forced to step down, the army got its budget requests, the economy was put under more centralized Imperial control, and the Emperor wound up with more power than before. Martial Law remained in effect within Tokyo until July of that year.

Although the Meiji Constitution APPEARS to give the Emperor full power over the government, this is decieving in most cases, although the Emperor COULD SOMETIMES INFLUENCE what was being done at the time! In other words, the Emperor was supreme leader in appearance ONLY, and I emphasize the finality of that word! And the Meiji Emperor (Mutsuhito) wrote VERY sentimental poems, that evoke a peace-lover, if not a pacifist, and the Showa Emperor (Hirohito) quoted one of these poems, called Gyosai, to demonstrate the need for peace! That sounds more like a guy who was FORCED into doing something evil, rather than doing it WILLINGLY!!!!

I would go into a detailed explanation of why the above is nonsense, but suffice it to say that the Meiji Constitution in regards to political organization is almost identical to the pre-World War One model of Bismarckian government found here. The most pertinent sections are about the Emperor and the power of the parliament being significantly weakened by the Emperors ability to do whatever he damn well pleased and ignore whatever they did he found annoying. This model was adopted, almost in whole, by the Japanese at the time of the Meiji Constitution.
The differences and similarities of the two are the following, in regards to Imperial power (this is specific to the Emperor in Japan): 'Article 3 declares him to be "sacred and inviolable", a formula which was construed by hard-line monarchists to mean that he retained the right to withdraw the constitution, or to ignore its provisions. Article 55, however, confirmed that the Emperor’s commands (including Imperial Ordinance, Edicts, Rescripts, etc.) had no legal force within themselves, but required the signature of a “Minister of State”. On the other hand, these “Ministers of State” were appointed by (and could be dismissed by), the Emperor alone, and not by the Prime Minister or the Diet.' As you can see this notion of the "weak" figurehead Emperor is utter nonsense, just as the notion would be scoffed at if stated about Imperial Germany - despite having near to the same Constitution in this regard you would likely find one true and the other you would almost certainly consider false. What rubbish.

Here's some evidence that will back up my claims: The Emperor not only stopped visiting Yasukuni shrine, he DISAPPROVED OF INCLUDING WAR CRIMINALS THERE!!!! Here are some sites to back up my claims:

Click Here,

and
Click Here!!!!

I think I'll let the sites do the talking!!!! Back to the Meiji Emperor: The Genro kept the Meiji Emperor locked up until the laws were firmly entrenched, and when he was let out, he could'nt do MUCH OF ANYTHING, AT LEAST NOT POLITICALLY, ABOUT IT!!!! The Genro were Samurai after all, so the millitary was STILL in control of the government, and all of the talk about the Emperor being in "complete control" was just empty words!!!! The Emperor Meiji even wrote poems, that evoked the feelings of a pascifist/semi-pascifist: Click Here It shows that the Meiji Emperor was not only just a figurehead, he was a rather sensitive man, as evidenced by his poems: Gyosai, one of which Hirohito quoted: “ Methinks all the people of the world are brethren, then.
Why are the waves and the wind so unsettled nowadays? ” I think I've made my point!!!!