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Abstract
This essay introduces readers to the recent discovery of the personal papers of Grand Steward Tajima Michiji. These documents capture the post-surrender reflections of Hirohito, Japan’s Shōwa Emperor, and record him speaking on such issues as his war responsibility, as well as the culpability of prewar politicians such as Konoe Fumimaro and General Tōjō Hideki. In August 2019, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) (nhk) announced that it had gained privileged access to the papers. Acting on advice from scholars, it then released extracts from Tajima’s audience records. Drawing not on the Tajima papers themselves, but on what the nhk has made available, the documents demonstrate that Hirohito, after Japan’s surrender, experienced anguish and over the war and its outcome. He continued as emperor because he accepted “moral responsibility” for the war that required him to help his nation and its people endure occupation and reconstruction. This article also describes Hirohito’s postwar reflections on several issues, such as Japanese field officers and subordinates in the 1930s initiating without authorization acts of aggression, the Rape of Nanjing, and Japan’s postwar rearmament. While the Tajima papers will not resolve the ongoing debate over the emperor’s responsibility for Japan’s path of aggression before 1945, they do provide valuable insights about his role in and reaction to events before, during, and after World War ii.
Editor:
This book is based on the recent discovery of the personal papers of Kichisaburo Nomura – Japanese admiral, one-time foreign minister, pre-Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, and “spiritual godfather” of postwar Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force. The volume reproduces Nomura’s occupation-era correspondence with his American friends and associates, including Navy Secretary Daniel Kimball, SCAP Political Advisor William Sebald, former ambassadors William Castle and Joseph Grew, Army and Navy Journal owner John Callan O’Laughlin, as well as Admirals William Pratt, Arleigh Burke, Charles Turner Joy, Ralph Oftsie, and Harold Martin. The correspondence is extraordinarily revealing, and provides rich insights into domestic conditions in occupied Japan, U.S. policies toward occupied Japan, the Cold War in Asia, and Japan’s eventual rearmament. In this way, the book enables readers to confront for themselves a hitherto largely neglected attempt at defining and cementing the post-WWII Japanese-U.S. partnership.
Editor:
This book is based on the recent discovery of the personal papers of Kichisaburo Nomura – Japanese admiral, one-time foreign minister, pre-Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, and “spiritual godfather” of postwar Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force. The volume reproduces Nomura’s occupation-era correspondence with his American friends and associates, including Navy Secretary Daniel Kimball, SCAP Political Advisor William Sebald, former ambassadors William Castle and Joseph Grew, Army and Navy Journal owner John Callan O’Laughlin, as well as Admirals William Pratt, Arleigh Burke, Charles Turner Joy, Ralph Oftsie, and Harold Martin. The correspondence is extraordinarily revealing, and provides rich insights into domestic conditions in occupied Japan, U.S. policies toward occupied Japan, the Cold War in Asia, and Japan’s eventual rearmament. In this way, the book enables readers to confront for themselves a hitherto largely neglected attempt at defining and cementing the post-WWII Japanese-U.S. partnership.