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Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, by Herbert P. Bix
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Review
"Explosive. . . . Demolishes the stereotype of Japan's wartime emperor as a mousy and passive figurehead." -- "Los Angeles Times"A stunning portrait of the controversial Japanese emperor. . . . Bix gives a meticulous account of his subject, delivers measured judgments about his accomplishments and failures, and reveals the subtlety of the emperor's character. . . . This is political biography at its most compelling." -- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"This is the rare work of impeccable scholarship that will also be fascinating to the general reader. Nearly every page of the book offers provocative insights about the man who was previously known in the Western world mainly as a stereotype. Herbert Bix offers a more complicated and convincing picture of an active political leader who shaped his country's fate in war and peace." -- James Fallows, author of "Looking at the Sun "Drawing on the wealth of fascinating new Japanese materials that have become available since Hirohito's death, Herbert Bix has given us a riveting portrait of the engaged, intense, and complex man who stood at the very center of Japan's turbulent century of war and peace. In this excellent and incisive study, the emperor's new clothes are stunning to behold." -- John W. Dower, author of"Embracing Defeat"As Herbert Bix documents meticulously Emperor Hirohito was in every sense of the word a war-time military leader deeply involved in the merciless attacks on China and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He escaped censure because of the Cold War but the Cold War is now over. For those who want to understand history and modern events such as the relationships between China and Japan this is a must read." -- Lester C. Thurow, Lemelson Professor of Management "This remarkable study is indispensable for the understanding of Japan and its place in Asia in the past century. It provides new perspectives on a wide range of crucial issues, among them, the actual role of the Emperor, the origins and termination of the Pacific War, and the forging of the postwar Japanese polity through the interactions of the American occupation, the Emperor and his circle, and the emerging civil society. It is a truly outstanding contribution." -- Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT"This is an important and controversial book, sharply challenging the reigning view of Hirohito. Where others have described a reluctant warrior, inclined toward pacifism, committed to the constitution, and unwilling to take actions of political significance, Herbert Bix shows us a far more complex and consequential monarch. This book is must reading for all those interested in the history of the twentieth century world."-- Andrew Gordon,Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University"Reading Herbert Bix's pioneering inquiry into Emperor Hirohito's life should make Americans angry. For the past fifty-five years, senior officials of the United States government have systematically lied to the American and Japanese peoples about Hirohito's true role in public affairs during the 20th century. The overarching theme of this monumental work is Hirohito's failure to publicly acknowledge his own moral, political, and legal accountability for the long war fought in his name. The result today is Japan's continuing denial of responsibility for the war crimes it visited on its neighbors. This is one of the most important books ever written on World War II in the Pacific. It is also a major work of political philosophy."-- Chalmers Johnson, author of "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire"Bix has written the definitive account of Hirohito's extraordinary reign as emperor of Japan. His pursuit of previously unknown Japanese sources and his ability to situate Hirohito as both man and political force have given us a compelling portrait. The biography is revisionist in the best sense -- not an 'expose' but a challenge to nearly all our assumptions about the role played by Hirohito in shaping Japan's turbulent century. It will become the standard work on the subject." -- Michael Schaller, author of "Altered States: The U.S. and Japan since theOccupation"This book is a rare achievement: a work that turns established knowledge upside down. . . . Impressive."-- Foreign Affairs"A historical bombshell. . . . Compelling. . . . The most controversial book yet on Japan's previous emperor." -- The Economist"Herbert Bix's highly readable and massively researched biography is all but certain to shatter the old images. . . . Controversial and important." -- The Washington Post Book World"Myth-shattering. . . . [T]his superb biography should jog loose a few suppressed memories."-- Newsweek "Provocative and disturbing. . . . A vital contribution to an ongoing and critical debate."-- Booklist"A pathbreaking study. . . . It prompts a major reconsideration of both what happened during the war and why Japan cannot face the past."-- U.S. News & World Report"The author's virtuoso scholarship and accessible narrative invite us into Hirohito's world and change the way we think of recent history; his portrayal of a monarch rationalizing evil is superb."-- The New Yorker"Thetriumph of Mr. Bix is that of a tailor able to assemble disparate scaps of material and sew them into a seamless whole."-- The New York Times"Professor Bix has created both a fascinating biography and a brilliant encapsulation of Japan's most difficult years."-- San Diego Union Tribune"Bix succeeds . . . in demonstrating that the emperor shirked moral responsibility. . . . Offers fresh and well-documented insights."-- The Boston Globe"Nothing published since the Berlin Wall's fall quite comes up to Herbert Bix's new book. . . . It's a startling work -- awesomely ambitious, faultlessly researched, daring in its thesis, and profound in its implications."-- Business Week"Bix's invaluable book illuminates this life that helped shape the modern world."--The Oregonian"Magnificent. . . . [A]magisterial effort. . . . HIROHITO AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN is everything a political biography should be."Richmond Times-Dispatch"Fascinating. . . . . In his important and provocative new book . . . . Bix presents one of the first complete biographies of the emperor."--The New York Times BookReview"Persuasive. . . . Bix proves, in an immensely readable 800 pages, that good imperial biography is still possible."--The Times Literary Supplement"A superb biography of the emperor that fully explains his role in Japan's wars that cost some 20 million lives."--The Dallas Morning News"An incisive work of scholarship. It should put an end to the myth, contrived by Americans as well as Japanese, that Hirohito had been a peace-loving, passive puppet of the military. . . . Excellent."
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About the Author
Herbert P. Bix grew up in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and earned his Ph.D. in history and Far Eastern languages from Harvard University. For the past thirty years he has written extensively on modern and contemporary Japanese history in leading journals in the United States and Japan. He has taught Japanese history at a number of American and Japanese universities, most recently at Harvard, and is currently a professor in the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.
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Product details
Paperback: 880 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 27, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780062560513
ISBN-13: 978-0062560513
ASIN: 0062560514
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 1.4 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.9 out of 5 stars
113 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#100,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I spent a little over three years in Japan in the US Air Force 1969-1972. While I was there I read many books about Japanese history as well as some of their popular fiction (translated into English) and found them to be quite fascinating. This book by Herbert P. Bix has been on my list for a while because of the topic as well as the author's credentials and I finally read it. All I can say is it was very thoroughly researched, well written, and I learned a lot about the Emperor's part in the events of WWII as well as why Japanese society is the way it is today. Once I got into the book a bit, momentum took over and it was hard to put down, not because it was like a thriller but because I just kept wanting to learn more. I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in WWII, Japanese history, or Emperor Hirohito. A lot of the mystery is dispelled and based on letters, notes, diaries, etc of those around him. It was a great read!
In the introduction to his biography of Hirohito, Bix details some of the major challenges he had to overcome as a researcher. First and foremost, the Showa emperor did not leave behind a published memoir, a publicly accessible diary (he allegedly kept one), or much in the way of written testimony about how he felt or what he thought about events and people throughout his long life. Secondly, most of his aides and people who knew him intimately have been similarly reluctant to share their personal views of him or to disclose what they observed in the way of reactions and thoughts as they interacted with the Emperor. Thus the daunting challenge before Bix – to somehow draw a portrait of a very private, almost reclusive human being by providing rich context and relying on verifiable facts to (in most cases) extrapolate Hirohito’s state of mind, or his thought process.This is one of the strongest points of this book, from a purely scholarly point of view. Bix excels at the task of teasing meaning out of oblique statements (either by Hirohito or by his aides), out of social and political context, speeches and legal documents, newspaper reports and photographs. I enjoyed intensely the reasoning of his investigative mind, the logic he brings to bear on known events, in order to construct a very plausible, if rather disturbing portrait of Hirohito, both as a private man and as a leader. Unfortunately two major drawbacks follow from this. The first is that Bix feels compelled to overwhelm the reader with detail as he marshals evidence for his statements. Speeches, newspaper reports, even writings by Japanese scholars on a variety of subjects (for example the nature of the Meiji constitution or the meaning of kokutai) are quoted at length to the detriment of the readability of this volume. Secondly, I felt that on a number of occasions, Bix – for lack of more reliable sources – tends to attribute to the Emperor or to those around him thoughts and ideas taken at face value from his (and their) public statements. As someone who studies politics and closely follows American election campaigns, I remain unconvinced that statements meant for public consumption necessarily reflect a politician’s real opinion or reveal much of anything about their state of mind.That said, Bix makes a convincing argument that contrary to the image of Hirohito as a powerless “constitutional†monarch who had to bow to the decisions made by others, the Showa emperor gradually but surely gathered in his hands most of the reigns of the state and through both action and inaction, through voicing opinions or withholding them became, over time, an almost absolutist ruler. This, of course, meant that he was personally responsible for Japan’s wars in China as well as for the decisions to join the Tripartite Pact with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and to, eventually, go to war with Britain and the United States.Moreover, Hirohito’s personal involvement made Japan’s war that much more savage through his refusal to countenance retreat thus impelling Japanese soldiers to fight bitterly to the end, through repeated urgings of his commanders to re-take lost territory even when that was patently unrealistic, through, ultimately, sanctioning a whole philosophy of warfare based on suicide (kamikaze) attacks.One of the most sordid aspects of Hirohito’s personality emerged as World War II drew to an end and the issue of Japanese surrender became more and more urgent. Even as thousands upon thousands of Japanese fighting men continued to die in what, at that point, had become an obviously lost war, even as the US dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki causing untold destruction, death and suffering, and even as the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, the major sticking point for declaring capitulation remained, for Hirohito and the loyal sycophants around him, the preservation of the monarchy as an institution and of Hirohito as Emperor.One of Bix’s most significant contributions is to demonstrate that by clearing Hirohito of war crimes in the belief that retaining him as the Emperor will counteract a spread of Communism (this was the main idea though General MacArthur had other reasons as well), the United States prevented a thorough soul-searching of Japanese elites and the Japanese people in general on the issues of war responsibility and war guilt. Bix claims that, to a significant extent, this stunted Japanese democracy at its very inception and that it has prevented its unfettered development and expansion.Most of these arguments I found convincing and I believe Bix’s contribution to understanding Japanese history is really significant.Before I conclude, I will lay out two of the main problems I have with the book. First, despite much effort by Bix, I find Hirohito’s persona still largely unresolved in my mind. I am not sure what kind of person he was, how he treated his family, or his friends (if he had any). I remain uncertain whether the grandiose motives attributed to him by Bix (for example, trying to live up to the legacy of his grandfather, Emperor Meiji) are really valid, or if he was motivated throughout his life by nothing more than a lust for power and some sort of Napoleon complex (given his slight stature and squeaky voice). The context Bix has provides is, indeed, rich. But at its center, the Showa emperor remains largely elusive, largely a blank. Secondly, because this is meant to be a study of Hirohito, the focus on him and on the imperial institution necessarily detracts from a fuller understanding of the overall institutional context of Imperial Japan. We do not learn much about elections, or the main political parties, or anything in the way of how the Imperial Diet functioned day-to-day. We learn nothing about how the Army and Navy were constituted and how or why an institutional conflict emerged between them. In short, the figure of the Emperor is used like a lantern – it illuminates only those who came in contact with him. This makes for a rather bewildering – and unsystematic – array of personalities whom Bix introduces, but whose exact prerogatives and institutional roles remain largely irrelevant to the main narrative. In itself, that is not necessarily a problem. But given that Bix’s main thesis – that Hirohito in essence overwhelmed all other institutional constructs created by the Meiji constitution and ended up as a near absolute monarch – an examination of the institutional context of the monarchy would have been, I think, warranted.I come away from this book with a much deeper and much improved understanding of a crucial period of Japanese history. Bix has convinced me on many points of his argument and has certainly illuminated the ways in which the Showa emperor was personally responsible for much of the suffering inflicted on Asia and on his own people between 1931 and the end of the Second World War. An enthusiastic four stars!
I was born in 1938 and have good recollections of our nation at war. In 1964 I was the medical officer on a Navy ship in Guam, and the following year my wife and I spent three weeks in Japan. I didn't know that in 1963 Herbet Bix was an American Naval officer stationed in Yakusuka, where he met a Japanese girl, married her, then became a university professor, teaching in both Japan and in the USA.I had read a lot about our "Naval War in the Pacific" and Guam still had many war scars, and at least one Japanese holdout in the "boonies".I had also read that allowing Hirohito to remain emperor in Japan was tandamount to allowing Hitler to remain chancellor in Germany after the war.But this is the first book I've read written which describes the Japanese view of the war. Hirohito was a fascist dictator just like Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini, but due to the "pragmatic" views of MacArthur and the other allies, he was allowed to spread the notion he had always been a pacifist, and that he, like the Japanese people at large, were only passive victims of the "militarists".Hirohito is now long dead, but the issue of "war guilt" is still very much alive. We live in rapidly changing times, and this book is an excellent preparation for seeing what will happen next.
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