BIX: The Japanese never want to go back to the old system, but the
feeling of the old guard elite, who we supported, and the moderates, was that
it was the Emperor who needed to control the people. He was needed as a
symbol of identification between the people and their state and their
government. And I think that, as a result of MacArthur's reforms, after the
passage of a decade, the Emperor becomes irrelevant to the national identity of
the Japanese people and superfluous in their lives.
I think that this had been the trend before the thirties--already Japan was
moving in the direction in which this all-embracing throne, an imperial
institution which couldn't be penned in by the Constitution, in which the
Emperor was the teacher of the nation and an absolute moral value -- that this
system was being eroded by the natural, social, the development of social
forces making Japan a modern industrial society. What happened in the thirties
was the pumping up of this artificial ideology. The Emperor came on the scene
and he contained, to some extent, the worst extremism. But on the other hand,
he did play a very active role, and aided the expansion of the Japanese empire
at every turn. And he did lead the nation into disaster. His reign, during
the first twenty years, was a disaster for the Japanese people.
I think MacArthur understood that the Emperor ideology had been bad for
the Japanese people, that the institution needed to be reformed, and that the
Emperor was radioactive and had to be handled with care. He dealt with it
adroitly. He reformed it, and he went beyond what American policy makers had
envisioned, by stripping the Emperor of everything. And his constitution,
codifying his reforms, was the great American achievement of the occupation.
And the thing is that by exempting the Emperor totally, shielding him from the
tribunal, and then intervening in the process whereby the Japanese sought to
come to terms with the war, fostering the notion that the people had been
deceived, that they were victims --well, many Japanese people then drew the
conclusion that the war that we fought had been just what the Japanese
propaganda had said it was, a war for self-preservation and self-defense.
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