and her team of researchers studied the prisoners of the war captured by the U.S. military. The research study found an astounding fact that all Japanese soldiers were ordered to kill themselves by Hideki Tojo under the name of the “Emperor” before they were captured.
All soldiers were ordered to recite “Senjin-Kun.” “Kun” means the instruction and “Senjin” means battle fields.
All the Japanese prisoners, who were captured, lost consciousness in the battlefield. They were only told to kill themselves. I would like to repeat the fact that this suicide order was made by the Japanese Military Government during the Pacific War. No Emperor ever gave such a command to soldiers. There was no such an order during either the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) or World War I (1914-1918).
The Japanese Military Government during the Pacific War did not educate the soldiers how to behave when they were captured. They were just told to kill themselves before they were captured. Therefore, quite the contrary to expectation of the researchers, those who looked cruel in the battlefield were very calm while being asked questions by the researchers. As a result, under questioning, they told everything including confidential military information. This led the U.S. Army to get all essential information of the movement of the Japanese Empire Military. At the same time, this conduct of soldiers in captivity revealed evil and foolishness of Hideki Tojo.
Ruth Benedict and her research team concluded an interesting analysis of the national character of Japanese people. They found that Japanese people are not aggressive but very obedient to orders. Later, she worked up the results of her research and wrote “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Patterns of Japanese Culture.”
As a Messenger of “Peace,” Not As a Commander
Back to the story of right after the end of Pacific War, there is a famous photo of the Supreme commander, Douglas MacArthur getting off the airplane after landing at Atsugi Base, Kanagawa, Japan, on August 30th, 1945, with no weapon on him. He wrote a memoir called “Reminiscences,” about his experience during the Pacific War. As Supreme Commander of GHQ, he wrote of his experiences in his lifetime in this memoir.
Douglas MacArthur trusted what the advisors of the Intelligence Agency provided. Even though his staff generals called his way of arrival on the land a gamble, his plane landed on Atsugi Base with a handful of staff in the midst of well-armed Japanese troops on August 30th. According to his autobiography, Reminiscences, “Years of overseas duty had schooled me well in the lessons of the Orient and, what probably more important, had taught the Far East that I was its friend.” He really was a broad-minded man.
The Supreme Commander, MacArthur and GHQ’s understanding of the main role of the Emperor was that the Emperor’s existence was the crucial factor that the United States could use to avoid internal political conflicts and meaningless battles after the Pacific War in Japan. At the same time, he had a clear intention to unify Japan making use of the existence of the Emperor as the symbol of unity, as is the case of the role of the President of the United States and made sure Tenno had no ruling authority of politics.
In spite of this fact, many Japanese journalists and researchers never point this out even now and continue writing books and journals that GHQ “occupied” and “changed” Japan. The journalists and educators have manipulated the facts and made up various stories. Teachers at school repeat the stories in the classrooms that GHQ occupied and changed Japan. They try to create an image that Douglas MacArthur was a dictator and destroyed the Japanese identity and culture.
Anyhow, the articles written by major Japanese media, such as the Asahi Newspaper (Asahi Shinbun) in those days were far more evil than you could imagine. For example, MacArthur was appalled at the article stating that the responsibility of the Pacific War was on all the Japanese public. He started censorship against media.
Democratizing Process
“Tenno” in Japanese is most often than not translated into “the Emperor” in English. The role of the Emperor in the Imperial system of the Japanese Empire had greatly resembled that of the Imperial System of the Qing Empire (1616-1912) in China, especially before Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). After the War, the Meiji Regime discarded much of the Qing Empire ruling system with the bureaucratic system, and tried to copy Prussia. Therefore, from the beginning of Meiji Regime until the end of the Pacific War, Tenno meant three Emperors. I would like you to understand the difference between the emperor in the Japanese Empire and Tenno in the traditional kingdom and present Japan.
In the first place, the Imperial system in the Meiji Era as well as the Qing Empire was based on neo-Confucianism. The original role of Tenno had never been defined under neo-Confucianism until the Meiji Restoration, when Tenno was defined as the “supreme existence,” that is to say, “the Emperor.”
Owing to the tremendous data on Japanese culture, Supreme Commander, Douglas MacArthur knew the original meaning of the role of Japanese Tenno. He considered that the existence of Tenno was crucial to Japanese society to avoid political conflicts. At the same time, he was well aware that the original role of Tenno in ancient era was to settle disputes among powerful clans. In other words, ancient Tenno’s role was the possessor of holy law to settle down the conflicts.
In the present Constitution of Japan, the Imperial Household is apart from politics and is not allowed to make political statements in public. However, what Douglas MacArthur had in mind was to unify Japan as a modernized country. His intention was not to occupy Japan and humiliate Japan as a third-world country but to modernize Japan during period of occupation. To democratize Japan, it was necessary for MacArthur to define Shinto as a religion not as moral codes. Shinto was defined differently in the course of time depending on the period in Japanese history. At the same time, Shinto rituals and customs were deeply related to people’s daily lives. I believe that Douglas MacArthur considered that Shinto was the founding principle or important value for the Japanese people.
A lot of journalists and teachers seem to misunderstand this part. Douglas MacArthur wanted to abolish the slavery condition that people had to go through during the Pacific War. This is one of the main reasons why Douglas MacArthur decided to define Shinto as a religion because Shinto was made use of as the moral codes of the Military Regime of the Japanese Empire.
Thanks to this accomplishment, Japanese politics is now free from the influence of Shinto because Shinto is a religion. At the same time, the existence of Tenno is clearly defined as a symbol of unity of the country apart from politics in the present Constitution. This means that Japan has become a politically democratized nation with the new definition of Tenno.
Shinto and Educational System
Douglas MacArthur’s main intention was to separate Shinto from education, which had led to the tragic Pacific War. A lot of journalists complain in documentary films or talk shows that Douglas MacArthur was the sole occupational dictator and he forced Shinto to be defined as a religion and separated from education. However, in my opinion, the Japanese journalists violate the ethical rules of reporting by replacing fact with convenient stories fabricated by them. Some Japanese journalists and political commentators have been twisting the facts of the GHQ policies for the purpose of increasing popularity of their selfish opinions influenced by Stalinism. The lamentable fact is that this preposterous psudoideology has been ruling Japan from the post-war era in educational field, publishing industries, and major media.
This symbolic role has been the purpose of Tenno from its inception. Tenno has prayed for the peace of this world by performing Shinto “rituals” to two groups of Japanese deities who belong to Firmament and Underworld respectively every morning. Supreme Commander, Douglas MacArthur knew this fact. That was why one of his intentions was to redefine the role of Tenno, the Emperor not as “supreme existence of Japan,” but as “the symbol of Japan.”
The original role of Tenno of Japan was not like that of Chinese Emperors during the Qing Empire