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Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. By Herbert P. Bix. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. 800 pages. $35.00. Reviewed by Richard Halloran, formerly with The New York Times as a foreign correspondent in Asia and a military correspondent.
In Tokyo on a gray November afternoon in 1971, Emperor Hirohito of Japan sat before foreign correspondents in the splendor of an audience room in the Fukiage Palace and defended his role as a constitutional monarch throughout his reign. Noting that his grandfather, the Emperor Meiji, had established a constitutional monarchy in the late 19th century, Emperor Hirohito asserted, "I acted that way during wartime and at all other times."
When an American correspondent rose from the semicircle facing the emperor to ask whether His Majesty had not stepped out of that constitutional role in deciding to end Japan's fighting in World War II, the emperor caught the thrust of the question as it was translated into Japanese. The usually shy monarch sat bolt upright and looked directly into the eyes of the questioner, his body language exclaiming, "Yes, there's something I want to say about that."
In this first ever press conference for foreign correspondents, the emperor reached back to 26 February 1936, when young army officers rebelled against the government. "Some of the leaders of the government were missing," he said. "Therefore, I had to take decisive action on my own." Turning to August 1945, when Japan's political and military leaders...