[Ed. Note: this Q&A was part of Yuki Tanaka’s lecture for the Modern Japan History Association “New Books on Japan” Lecture Series on 20 April 2025, chaired by Professor Kirsten Ziomek, Director of Asian Studies at Adelphi University in New York. See an expanded version of the article on which the talk was based here.]
Question 1: The development of the emperor’s war responsibility and critique of the emperor system in general
Kirsten Ziomek: For those of us who have followed the historiography on the debates regarding the dropping of the atomic bomb, we have pretty much read and heard every type of argument possible – traditional arguments justifying its use, revisionists arguing the importance of the bomb intimidating the Soviets, and newer points of view like from Tsuyoshi Hasegawa about the centrality of the Soviet invasion in prompting Japan’s surrender. We have seen viewpoints from Barton Bernstein, John Dower, to Sadao Asada, among others. You have managed to add a new element to this debate with your forceful condemnation of the emperor and an unequivocal assessment of his war responsibility. What is original about your argument is twofold: 1) That the US and Japan are equally complicit in the forcing the US to drop the bomb; and 2) You lay out with evidence of how and why the emperor should have been held accountable and explain how the myths about his supposed non-interference – his supposed stepped back role was created by his close advisors and endorsed/perpetuated by the US after the war. This myth was spread by Americans to protect the emperor from war responsibility.
My question to you is with regard to your critique of the emperor and the emperor system, in no uncertain terms you state that the continued existence of the emperor system prevents true democracy from taking root in Japan’s society today. First is it realistic to imagine the emperor system being removed from Japan – how could this occur? Secondly, you point out many ways that Hirohito was callous: the numerous bomb shelters that were constructed for him and the imperial family members, while Japanese subjects were instructed to stay put and fight the fires – essentially death sentences – after the war, while the emperor eats, many people are starving, the callous treatment of atomic bomb survivors, so on and so forth. My question is if you could explain to the audience how you came to frame this book as an indictment on Hirohito and the emperor system in general. Looking back at your earlier books and articles, I do not recall seeing such pointed criticism of the emperor in your previous work – maybe it was always there?
So can you explain your evolution in thinking about this? Have you thought this way about the emperor? Or was it research for this book that made you come to this conclusion? It is a chicken and egg question: did you know you wanted to make this argument – condemning Hirohito – so you wrote this book in order to present a compelling indictment? Or was it that the evidence can only lead to this conclusion?
I wonder if you could also position your opinion vis-à-vis other Japanese scholarship do you think your thesis is a widely accepted now in Japan? I think in English historiography, while there has been a shift toward holding Hirohito more accountable, the “myth” of his so called inaction still allows him to escape critical examination, in the way that your writing does.
Yuki Tanaka: First, before answering your questions, let me briefly explain the evidence that Hirohito was indeed responsible for Japan’s war of aggression in the Asia-Pacific War, the so-called 15 Years’ War (1931-1945).
As you may know, Professor Yamada Akira of Meiji University has done a great deal of research on Japanese archival documents concerning the decision-making process of various important military strategies and war-related policies, and has found that Hirohito did indeed often make the final decisions on many important strategies after receiving detailed information on each case. Therefore, it cannot be denied that Hirohito was responsible for the brutal acts committed by the Japanese Imperial Forces in various parts of the Asia-Pacific region. The problem, however, is that this fact is not widely disseminated by the Japanese media and is not mentioned at all in school textbooks. Yamada’s brilliant work is circulated only in academic circles and a limited circle of peace activists.
Interestingly, for example, the Diary of Marquis Kido Koichi contains detailed information about how the final decision to attack Pearl Harbor was made by Hirohito himself on 30 November 1941, despite opposition from six of the eight politicians who had previously served as Prime Minister, including Prince Konoe. In fact, in the Australian War Memorial Archives I found a letter written by Judge Web, who was Chief Justice of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, to General MacArthur shortly after the Tribunal began. In this letter, Web argued that Hirohito should have been indicted and referred to this part of Kido’s diary. Presumably someone translated this part of the diary into English and made it available to Web. But MacArthur virtually ignored Web’s claim, and there was nothing Web could do because the process of selecting suspected war criminals had been completed many months earlier.
In my book, I discuss in detail how MacArthur ensured that Hirohito would not be indicted by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, thus creating the myth that Hirohito was manipulated and controlled by military leaders like General Tojyo and therefore unable to intervene in the Imperial Forces’ decision making on important war policies and strategies. The Japanese government was naturally delighted by MacArthur’s action, and on 15 November 1945 the Shidehara Cabinet issued a special statement entitled “The Matter Regarding War Responsibility,” officially declaring that Hirohito was not responsible for the war at all. In part, it stated that “His Majesty made every effort to reach a peaceful compromise in negotiations with the United States of America [to avoid war],” which was completely contrary to the facts. Because of this complicity between the US and Japan, Hirohito was soon set up as a symbol of Japanese victims of the war, completely ignoring Japan’s war crimes and responsibility.
Now to your question about whether it is realistic to imagine that the emperor system could be removed from Japan, and if so, how could this be done? I think it was not really possible to remove the emperor system from Japan, even immediately after the war, given the strong determination of both the American and Japanese governments to maintain it and use it to protect Japan from possible Communist infiltration. However, it was possible to remove Hirohito for his wartime performance and replace him with one of his younger brothers until his son, Akihito, became eligible for the crown. In fact, Marcquis Kido, who had been indicted as a Class A war criminal by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, sent his letter to Hirohito from prison in 1952, recommending that Hirohito abdicate as a gesture of apology to the Japanese people who had suffered during the war. There were also some politicians like Nakasone Yasuhirro, then a young politician with great ambition, who proposed this idea. A number of politicians like Nakasone shared the same opinion, although they would never agree to the idea that Hirohito should be impeached. Hirohito himself ignored this proposal.
Now regarding your next question about how I came to frame this book as an indictment on Hirohito and the emperor system in general. As you mentioned, I did not discuss the necessity of abolishing the emperor system at all in my previous work, although I did discuss and criticize the “emperor ideology” as one of the vital factors that made the Japanese armed forces so brutal and inhuman. It was also because I did not think carefully about how the emperor system was a detrimental factor in severely distorting post-war Japanese “democracy,” and why such a flawed Japanese constitution was drafted and promulgated, and the emperor system came to be called a democratic constitutional monarchy.
As you know, the majority of Japanese still think that the Constitution, including Article 9 on the renunciation of war, is wonderful. I absolutely agree that not only Article 9 but also the Preamble of the Constitution is a jewel, and I still think that we must make sure that these two sections are not allowed to be deleted from the Constitution, and we must carry out the civil movement campaign against the Liberal Democratic Party’s increasing actions to change the Constitution back to the one like Meiji Imperial Constitution.
However, the more I studied how this constitution was drafted, the clearer it became that it was formulated to cover up Hirohito’s war crimes and war responsibility. I hope I have adequately explained this hidden political background to the so-called constitutional amendment in my book. In the end, I came to the conclusion that, as far as I know, Japan is the only nation in the world where the constitution has been changed to cover up the war crimes and war responsibility of the head of state.
I also realized this when I began to seriously study Okuzaki Kenzo’s struggle for legal action against Hirohito. It was and still is the case that Okuzaki is the only one who has argued in Japan’s courts that Chapter 1 Emperor is unconstitutional. As I discussed in details in Chapter 6 of my book, his argument is so clear and simple, and so powerful, that no one can deny it. His argument cannot be challenged because of its simplicity and clarity, but even constitutional scholars do not take it seriously and think it is crazy. Even so-called progressive constitutional scholars do not pay attention to Okuzaki’s argument. From this fact, we can understand that not only Japanese citizens in general, but also academics, are still under the strong influence of the emperor ideology. They themselves are not aware of this fact. It is really sad to see that no one pays any attention to Okuzaki’s argument because he actually went mad and died. I just hope that people don’t think I am crazy for believing that Okuzaki’s argument is not crazy, but brilliant.
Let me give you just one simple example of how undemocratic and unconstitutional Chapter 1 is. Article 1 defines the emperor as the symbol of the state and the unity of the people. Article 24 guarantees gender equality. However, Chapter 1 of the Imperial House Law stipulates that the Imperial Throne shall be inherited by a male descendant in the male line of the Imperial Lineage. This means that Article 1 itself is clearly unconstitutional because it violates Article 24.
If you want to know more about my thoughts on how Chapter 1 of the Japanese Constitution is undemocratic and deeply contradictory to the Constitution itself, please read the open letter I sent to Emperor Akihito on 1 May 2019, shortly before his abdication: https://apjjf.org/2018/09/tanaka
And finally, regarding your question about how widely my thesis discussed in the Japanese book, which became the basis for writing Entwined Atrocities, is accepted in Japan, I must tell you that I did not write this book as an academic book, but for the purpose of informing the people, who are now deeply involved in civic movements, about the historical background of Japan’s current social and political problems, in order to prevent Japan from becoming increasingly ultra-conservative and rapidly remilitarizing by literally violating the constitution under U.S. pressure.
So you might think that my English book, Entwined Atrocities, is not really an academic book. But for me, having retired from academia, academic discussions no longer really appeal to me. Much more important to me is how I, as a freelance historian, can contribute to the current social and political civil movements in Japan. Nevertheless, I would be happy if this book in English could be useful to Japanologists working in universities in the United States and other countries outside Japan.
When my Japanese book was published in May 2019, I was invited to give public talks in many places in Japan, including Sapporo, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe and Hiroshima, and each place had a large audience. The people who invited me were involved in various civic movements. I received no invitation from any university. My friends, academic scholars (retired progressive historians) and human rights lawyers, published reviews of my book, for example, in a nationwide book review newspaper, Dokusho Shimbun, and in newsletters and websites of various citizens’ organizations. I was very happy that almost all of them highly recommended my book. I expected major newspapers like Asahi and Mainichi Shimbun to publish reviews because some of my previous Japanese books had been widely reviewed in those newspapers. But for some reason these national newspapers completely ignored my book. Even the Hiroshima-based Chugoku Shimbun decided to ignore it, except for publishing the title of my book in the list of Hiroshima-related books published that month. Well, I hope you can guess why my book was ignored by the mainstream media. If you really want your book to sell well in Japan, you should write a book that praises the Japanese royal family, in particular Her Majesty Emperess Masako. The Japanese would love to read such books written by foreign scholars. But don’t say you wrote such a book on my recommendation!
Question 2: Finding Individual humanity in victim/aggressors of war
KZ: A large part of your book is devoted to the multiple problems with how the war is talked or not talked about, and how it is commemorated and how these commemorations can be problematic. What I liked about your critique is that you simultaneously offer in your writing and methodology in the book how to counter these problematic ways of talking or remembering the past. So your book is not just an indictment, but also a path toward a solution- a way to advance and move the conversation forward.
For example you level several critiques regarding how atomic bomb survivors have talked about the bomb and how certain institutions like the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Hiroshima city council intercede and omit parts of how survivors aim to talk about their experiences. You critique the banal testimonies of some survivors who retell their experiences and express a wish for peace and a nuclear free future, but do not embody the duality that you think Japanese should embrace – that even atomic bomb survivors should see themselves as aggressor and victim. You point to Hiroshima housing the 5th Division whose members were linked to atrocities in Nanking, Malaysia, and other places. You point out how the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has taken some survivors accounts and edited out the parts that complicate these narratives. You point out statues where mothers are shown depicting protecting their children, when in fact, a mother’s love could not and did not shield their children from the atomic blasts. In Part Three you highlight several notable people including the photographer Fukushima Kikujiro, who took photos of atomic bomb survivors, and the atomic bomb survivor, Numata Suzuko, who embraced the Maruki’s war aesthetic of not just looking at the atomic bomb but other war atrocities on both sides.
By telling the individual and incredibly human stories of Fukushima and one of his photographic subjects like Sugimatsu and Numata you indicate a path forward as to how we can talk about war atrocities like the atomic bomb. By humanizing these individuals and telling their stories, especially from the 1945-1955 period, when neither the Japanese government or US government provided care for survivors, the indictment of Hirohito is also reinforced. My question is I noticed you interviewed Fukushima and Numata. You do not write about the interview process in the book and I wonder if you could talk about how these interviews occurred and if what you learned changed your approach to writing the book. Did you learn things in these interviews that you did not disclose in the book? Can you share something with us? Can you give us insight about how you have thought about interviewing people as a research methodology? Especially now that these people have passed away, can you talk about what the value of these interactions are to you?
YT: In fact, interviewing gives me a really valuable opportunity to understand how this person has built his or her personality and ideas about the society we live in. However, I do not ask the person I am interviewing any questions at the beginning. I try to meet him/her several times and build up friendship and mutual trust before I start the interview. I have learnt this method from many interviews I have conducted with former prisoners of war who were brutally treated by the Japanese. In order to interview them, it was essential for me, as a Japanese, to gain their trust so that I could obtain their genuine information and feelings about their own experiences.
Kikujiro lived in a small apartment house – one room with a small kitchen and a bathroom – in a small town called Kudamatsu in Yamaguchi Prefecture. It is not very far from Hiroshima city, so I could easily visit him in less than an hour. After reading one of his books, I was so impressed that I really wanted to get to know him better. So I visited him almost every weekend for a few months. As he lived alone with a small, sweet and gentle dog, and not many visitors came, he always made me feel welcome. I sat next to the dog for a few hours and discuss with him various contemporary problems facing Japan, such as nuclear power and environmental problems, political corruption, poverty among single mothers and many others.
But we also talked about art, especially sculpture, because his hobby/side-job was making miniature sculptures of butterflies, birds and the like. He was so skillful and made beautiful sculptures and jewelries and sold them because he could not survive on documentary photography alone. While we were talking, he often continued to work on sculptures in front of me. As my mother-in-law, Ing King, was a professional modern art sculptor who produced many large-scale public works in Australia, I am also very interested in artwork. So we exchanged ideas about sculptures by many other artists. One of them was Käthe Kollwitz, whom my mother-in-law greatly admired.
At first I therefore did not ask him how he became interested in photographing atomic bomb survivors and what problems he faced in photographing these survivors living in poverty in the early post-war period. I thought I had to gain his trust before I could ask these questions. We quickly became close friends because we had so many interests in common. I even organized an exhibition of his photographic work in Hiroshima City.
I think it was almost a year and a half after my first visit when he suddenly said he wanted to give me all the negatives in the many boxes piled up in the room because he was in his late 80s and didn’t know how long he would be around (he died in September 2015 at the age of 94). In fact, it was difficult to move around the room because of the heavy and bulky boxes. I was really surprised and told him that they should be donated to the Hiroshima A-bomb Museum. He said he had proposed donating all his negatives to the museum several times, but there had been no response. It did not occur to me at the time that, because of his open and bitter criticism of the various negative attitudes of the Hiroshima city council towards some A-bomb survivors, the A-bomb Museum run by the city council was also reluctant to deal with his photographs. So I started looking for other museums or media organizations that might be interested in receiving them. Since I left Hiroshima when I retired in March 2015, I asked a young photographer, Nasu Keiko, who had learned photography from Kikujro, to take on this task. Fortunately, she found that the Japanese press company Kyodo Tsushin was willing to accept the donations. Kyodo Tsushin eventually digitized all the negatives of Kikujiro’s photographs and is now carefully storing them.
I took a similar approach with Numata Suzuko. I often visited her at home and started by talking casually about whatever she wanted to talk about, such as films, music, art and so on. She was interested in many things, especially music and films, and had a wonderful breadth and depth of knowledge about many things. She was witty and had a good sense of humor. I always enjoyed talking to her. At first I did not ask her how she came up with the wonderful idea of “sharing pain” to establish peaceful relations with foreign victims of Japanese military atrocities, such as Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians and Okinawans. In her public speeches, she always emphasized that she was responsible for Japan’s war atrocities as one of the students mobilized to work in the arsenal in Hiroshima city, and vigorously showed her moral support to the Japanese soldiers, including her own fiancé who was leaving for overseas, until August 6, 1945, the day she was struck by the atomic bomb.
As her statement admitting that she was one of the perpetrators of the war clearly contradicted the self-identity of the majority members of Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers), who see themselves only as victims of the war and never as perpetrators, she was severely ostracized by Hidankyo. This may be the reason why the local newspaper, the Chugoku Shimbun, hardly reported on her wonderful international peace activities, despite her physical disability. I once asked one of the journalists at the Chigoku Shimbun why they did not report on Suzuko’s tremendous contributions to anti-war, anti-nuclear and peace education for school children, and I was astonished at the journalist’s reply. She said that “we cannot trust Suzuko’s testimony as an atomic bomb survivor because there are many contradictory stories we hear from other survivors.” I was really angry about this answer and told her, “You are not ashamed as a journalist to condemn Suzuko as a liar without even trying to find out the facts yourself, are you?”
Towards the end of her life, she had to be hospitalized many times because of her illness. So I often visited her in her hospital room and sat next to her bed and talked with her. Through these conversations over many years, I gained a lot of valuable information about her life and her ideas including her vision of peace and happiness. Shortly before she died, she asked me to give a talk to the people who would come to her memorial after her death, explaining her ideas about how to create peace and hope for the future. I feel very fortunate to have met her and happy to have finally fulfilled this promise.
Question 3: The “truth teller” and coming to terms with the past
KZ: I want to ask you about Okuzaki Kenzo, a soldier who survived the war on New Guinea – known as the abandoned battlefield – who is the subject of the documentary Yuki Yukite Shingun (The Emperor’s naked army marches on). You describe the scene when Okuzaki shoots the pachinko balls at the emperor – this is not a real assassination attempt – and it is not clear if anyone notices he has launched these pachinko balls. So Okuzaki himself has to yell out “Yamazaki shoot emperor Hirohito” to draw attention to himself, and basically makes a policeman arrest him.
This idea that no one notices Okuzaki’s subversive attack and that he has to force the police to arrest him, really resonated to me, because essentially Okuzaki’s struggle to hold the emperor responsible for the war, after his horrific experiences in the war- are seen and depicted as an aberration/deviant/ eccentric/off kilter. In fact, he is the ominous warning of what happens to the truth teller when the rest of society has been conditioned to not ask questions or a society does not know the past. That those who know the past or experienced the past are then seen as deviant. This I think has real ramifications for what is happening today. My question is at what point in the historical past do you think Japan could have gone down a different trajectory in terms of accepting their war responsibility whether it is war crimes, what happened to forced laborers, atomic bomb survivors, or comfort women? It seems to me- the answer you write in the book- is that it comes down to the critical decision by the US and Japan after the war to save Hirohito, and allow the myth of the effectiveness of the bomb in ending the war, and that Hirohito saved humanity by surrendering. Furthermore, the writing of the new “democratic constitution where emperor is a symbol of the state”- is also a turning point that changed everything. The point is the blame falls on the US as much as on the Japanese emperor, government and people. Is that a fair assessment? Do you think if the U.S. was removed from the equation if the Japanese people could have faced their own wartime past on their own?
I wonder if we can really pinpoint Japan’s current status today as not have “coming to terms with its past” as inextricably linked to American actions? That MacArthur, the occupation, the so-called democratic constitution shaped postwar narratives and myths to the extent there was no turning back? Or do you think there were other moments in the historical past after the occupation where there were missed opportunities that could have forced a real reckoning with the past?
YT: This is a very difficult question to answer, and one would have to write a book to answer it. So please allow me to answer, using a few paragraphs from the conclusion of my book, Entwined Atrocities.
Among the aims of the Potsdam Declaration that Japan accepted in August 1945 were the following:
[to establish] freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights … [and to] eliminate for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.
However, the U.S. occupation forces together with the Japanese government failed to eliminate the most responsible person, namely Emperor Hirohito, for deceiving and misleading “the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.” Therefore, the emperor continued to exercise his symbolic power of authority over the Japanese, although his political prerogatives were stripped away. On the other hand, the Japanese people were granted basic human rights such as “freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.” But, as in the early Meiji period and despite the dramatic change in Japan’s socio-political structure immediately after the war, a significant gap remained between the newly introduced codified law based on the principle of “democracy” and the everyday understanding of lawful and moral conduct as practiced by the populace.
The people’s normal thinking and practice of lawful and moral conduct is still under the invisible influence of the emperor ideology. This involves obedience and conformity to authority, duty to superiors and to various organizations, and duty to the nation-state. The traditional value system based on emperor ideology brings out xenophobia and racial discrimination against foreigners – in particular against Koreans and Chinese living in Japan, foreign workers and refugees – as well as male chauvinism, intense sexual discrimination against women and misogyny. These problems cannot be solved by educating alone, because they are inextricably linked to Japanese culture as a whole.
On 2 September 1946, the first anniversary of the signing of the Japanese surrender agreement on the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, General MacArthur stated: “A spiritual revolution ensued which almost overnight tore asunder a theory and practice of life built upon two thousand years of history and tradition and legend.” However, because of the U.S. decision to acquit Hirohito of war crimes and retain the emperor system, as well as the way MacArthur instructed the Japanese government to revise the constitution, a spiritual revolution in its true sense never actually happened.
To achieve “a spiritual revolution,” we need to change our culture as a whole – a kind of cultural revolution. Until the end of the Asia-Pacific War, Japan had been under the emperor system and emperor ideology for 77 years from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. During these 77 years, Japan went through a series of wars – the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and then the long and bloody 15 Years War. During this period, the emperor’s ideology created strong racism among the entire population against Koreans, Chinese and other Asians. Thus, we failed to develop the culture of humane moral imagination as a national culture. The so-called “democratization of Japan” with the help of the US after the war also failed to develop such a humane culture because of the continued influence of the emperor’s ideology on daily life and various social and political aspects. Racism against Koreans, Chinese and other Asians among us is still rampant. In addition, we have been virtually under the military control of the United States, which is truly contradictory to our peace constitution. We have been living in this inhuman and contradictory culture for 80 years and are still incapable of taking responsibility for war.
Many of the problems facing Japan today stem from the fact that Japan and the US began their post-war relationship with an implicit pact to deny their respective war crimes and responsibilities, which are deeply intertwined. Japan’s so-called postwar “democracy” requires subordination to U.S. military and political control, covering up the war crimes and responsibility of Emperor Hirohito and many other political leaders such as Class A war crimes suspect, Kishi Nobusuke, who was Minister of War Industries in the wartime Tojo Cabinet, and Prime Minster from 1957 to 1960.
The complexity of Japan’s socio-political situation makes it difficult to radically change the current repressive, undemocratic conditions in order to become a truly peaceful and democratic nation. However, if the Japanese people genuinely wish “to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth” as clearly proclaimed in the Preamble of their constitution, they must work hard to fortify the constitutional philosophy of non-violence, peace and democracy. This seems to be the only way in which the Japanese people can weaken and eventually paralyze both the principle of U.S. hegemony and the principle of the continuity of imperial Japan.
In order to achieve this goal, they need to effectively expand their civil movements to increase the political awareness of the Japanese populace and, at the same time, to promote solidarity with many other people, in particular those in the Asia-Pacific region including the U.S., China and Korea. The Japanese also need to cultivate profound humanity by establishing a new culture of remembrance instead of the present culture of oblivion. Undoubtedly these are tasks requiring a great deal of time and effort. However, here I recall the epigraph by Maya Angelou: “History, despite wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
