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Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan: A Political Biography. By STEPHEN S. LARGE. London: Routledge, I992. Pp. Xii + 249. $18.95 (paper).
The questions surrounding the role of Japanese emperor Hirohito in the rise of Japanese militarism in the I93os and Japanese participation in World War II have resounded from the immediate end of the war to this day. Part of the problem with this debate is that it has posed as opposites issues that in reality have rested more easily together. The dichotomy between rational Western political liberalism and "irrational" Eastern political nationalism and authoritarianism is one of the bases for the accusation that the Showa emperor is to blame for Japanese fascism and war. According to this distinction, the absolute ruler of Japan, Hirohito, governed as an evil autocrat, unhindered by liberal political impulses. Stephen Large, in Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, puts this mistaken assumption to rest by showing that Emperor Hirohito became committed to constitutional monarchy in Japan even before he took the throne. He was to reign, not to rule, as a limited, not an absolute, monarch. But this dichotomy poses a deeper problem: what if intense nationalism and liberalism are more compatible than scholars have assumed? Then the debate over the emperor's role and Japan in the I93os and I940s cannot be boiled down to a choice between liberal democracy or fascist aberration, but can be seen as part of the basic patterns of nationalism in the modern world.
Under this new framework, one can no...