Next, in this encore booknotes for 2001 historian herbert bix discusses his biography hirohito and the making of modern japan. Professor bix portrays hirohito hirohito asher japan into the modern world. This is about an hour. Cspan herbert p. Bix, author of hirohito and the making of modern japan, could somebody who is japanese write this book and publish it through a japanese publisher in japan today . Guest i think so. I think today there has been a number of breakthroughs that have occurred over the past 20 years, and hirohito has died, died 10 years ago, so enough time has elapsed. Its possible a jaand i would expect and, in fact, i would hope that japanese historians will surpass this biography and uncover new material and that we will get critical accounts of the emperor and the role he played, both before, during and after the war. Because that man is absolutely crucial for understanding the dilemmas of 20th century japan. Cspan theres a picture in here, and you write about it in your book. Whats the importance of this picture right here . Guest General Macarthur, in his first meeting with emperor hirohito at the american embassy, where hirohito traveled to meet him, is posed as a triumphant general with his hands in his back pockets beside an emperor who is the symbol of a vanquished nation. And the japanese people, at the time that photograph was taken, when they finally got to see it, it drove home to them the reality of the new situation they confronted occupation by the foreign enemy. Cspan you say in your book that that picture wasnt published right away. What were the circumstancewhat year was it . Guest this is slate september, 1945, and the Home Ministry interdicted the picture, regarded it as lese majesty, and aaa photograph that would undermine the prestige of the throne. It must not be circulated. And so the papers were confiscated, all the newspapers that carried the picture, and this led General Macarthur to issue his famous Civil Liberties edict of october 4, i believe. At that time not only did macarthur abolish the Peace Preservation law of 1925, which, you know, sort of consolidated the restrictions on freedom of press and assembly, he released Political Prisoners from the jails. And with the threat of punishment for criticism of the emperor removed, you begin to get, in the first few weeks of october, continuing, mushrooming, as the months unfold thereafter, and exa flood of publications criticizing the war leaders. Because mind you, from the moment of japans surrender on august 15th until late september, the japanese people were prevented from criticizing their war leaders, andand the whole apparatus of repression was in place, and thought police and thought procurators, were busy maintaining the emperors rule. And i think macarthur, with that Civil Liberties edict, took the first crucial step. Of course, he had already ordered, on september 11th, a few weeks before hirohito came to the palace, the arrest of suspected class a war criminals, including the wartime prime minister, the man who had taken japan, as prime minister, into war against the us, britain and the netherlands, general tojo hideki. And this marks the beginning of a series of arrests of men who would stand trial under the terms of the potsdam declaration, which japan accepted when it capitulated, and unconditionally accepted the terms that would go into effect. Cspan couple ofii lose track of time, but john dower was here a year or so ago; he had won the National Book award on a book about japan. Here you are, just a year later, you won the Pulitzer Prize. Guest yes. I must say that john also won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes. Cspan what is it about your book, do you think, got the Pulitzer Prize judges to give you the award . Guest thats a hard question. I think that the award may be seen as acknowledgment, recognition of the fact that the effort needed to be madei had made itto find out the truth about the Showa Emperor and the role he played in the war, and that the confrontation with the past history and memory is very important for japan at this juncture, when the japanese governments, including the new Koizumi Junichiro government, insists on approving ffor use in the high schools and junior high schools textbooks that whitewash very key aspects of the asia pacific war. I think that at a time when japans leaders continue to maintain for home consumption the view of the lost war as sort of a holy war on the one hand, and a war of selfdefense, a righteous war, for selfdefense and selfpreservation, but for external consumption, they, you know, Pay Lip Service to the fact that it was a war of aggression. When you have this double standard being perpetuated in japan, its not only harmful, i think, to japans relations with its asian neighbors, but it is a burden that prevents japan from getting on with its other important tasks in the new century. So i think that thethe pulitzer award, in the background to thewhat moves the men who made and women who made that decision to give me the award is this whole context of a japan thats grappling with history and memory, andand needs all the help it can get, even if it comes from a foreigner. Cspan now you dedicate this book to toshie and my grandchildren. guest yes, to my wife and to my grandchildren. Cspan whos toshie . Guest my wife. Cspan she japanese . Guest she was ajapaneseborn, an american citizen. Cspan and the grandchildren, are they here in this country . Guest yes. My grandchildrenin fact, theyre on their way to vermont, as i speak right now, to visit their grandparents. Cspan how did you meet awell, shyou say she was born here. Guest mymy wife was japaneseborn, born in japan, and became a naturalized american citizen in the late 1960s. Cspan how did that happen . How did you meet her . Guest i met my wife when i first came to japan as a young naval officer in the Service Squadron attached to the 7th fleet. And one of the first things i did when i arrived in yokosuka, japan, the big naval base, was to go into tokyo. My ship was at sea at the time, id missed it, so i went into the city and i saw some very interesting sights. I met my wife shortly afterward. Cspan so what didwhat happened to your life when you married someone who was japanese . Guest well, i think it improved my life. Its civilized me, it opened my eyes. Id been interested in japan, but, you know, through my wife and her family, i came to appreciate japan in a different way. Cspan how long have your lived there in your life . Guest well, all together, i would say nearly 15 years at different times, and iithis past april, i returned to the United States after three and a half years of living in japan. Cspan have you talked to many japanese that have read your book . Guest indeed, i have, and my book came out late last august, beginning of september 2000, and books werent available at that time in japan, but i began a book tour there. Many japanese ordered it on the web and began to read the book, and i received letters and postcards, and they kept coming, for the past year. And so i would say the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I learned, as well, that there is a segment of the older generation of japanese who had visceral dislike of the Showa Emperor, hirohito, something i had not anticipated, but they considered him a moral coward for not having abdicated and taken responsibility for the war fought in his name, the lost war which he had energized and made to appear as a moral endeavor. Cspan let me read from the back of your book, and a lot of comments from different people who basically have endorsed the book, but Chalmers Johnsonwho is he, by the way . Guest Chalmers Johnson is Professor Emeritus at university of california. Hes retired, and hes the head of the japan policy research institute, and a very prolific public intellectual, very important figure, i think. Cspan he says this. Guest . In our national life. Cspan reading herbert bixs pioneering inquiry into emperor hirohitos life should make americans angry. guest yes. Cspan lets stop there. Theres more to read, but why would it make americans angry . Guest he is referring there to the postwar coverup of hirohitos role in the war and the way, i think, in which americans obstructed the japanese effort to come to terms with their lost war. This begins during the occupation. At the very outset, when General Macarthur arrived in japan, he already had made up his mind to use the emperor for his own purposes, which were to effect the terms of the potsdam declaration, democratidemildemilitarize japan, democratize it. The emperor would be his puppet, he imagined, just as in the 1930s japanese generals imagined that they could use hirohito. He was an empty vessel, and they could fill him up as they pleased. Now, of course, hirohito proved to be a survivor and as skilled in his negotiations with the americans, General Macarthur in particular, as he had been in dealing with his admirals and generals during the first half of the 1930s, when it seemed that the military was on such a rapid rise that itthe military would elude control, overall control, and i argueone of the themes of this book is that the Showa Emperors life during itsthe first 20 years of his life, from 1926 down to 1945, illustrates the tendency of military power to expand in any polity. When Democratic Institutions are absent or nonfunctioning, the voices of ordinary people are shut out of the policymaking process, andandand there is no institutional restraint on the armed forces other than a lax or indulgent chief executive. And hirohito proved quite often to be a lax and indulgent chief executive. But when i wrote those words, from the introduction to the book, i also had in mind a presentday United States, because ive been very concerned with that the fact that our own pentagon seems to be unrestrained by an executive that has the ability and the intention to curb and to restructure our armed forces. Militarism can occur in any country, and although a comparative dimension is to be found in my book, japanus comparative dimension, comparative history, its recessed into the background, but its always there. Imim thinking of the usjapan relationship because i dont consider it to be a healthy relationship, and ive felt this way for a long time. After many, many decades in japan studies, i feel that the influence of the military in shaping our policy to japan is excessive. And iin telling the story of hirohito and the rise of militarism in a nation thatwhose people had historically, for centuries, not been militaristic, and in telling the story, ii thought that there would be lessons for americans if i didnt present those lessons with a heavy hand and recess them into the book. Cspan are you still teaching . Guest yes. I am at Binghamton University. I was at Hitosubashi University in tokyo until march 31st. I came back to this country april 2nd nd in the fall, i will take up my teaching duties at Binghamton University in new york. Thats part of the State University of new york, where i once taught, and its a wonderful place. Cspan where are you from originally . Guest i was born and grew up in boston. I live in a little town near the airport called winthrop. Cspan and where did you go to school . Guest i went to school at the university of massachusetts in amherst, and upon graduation i enlisted in the navy, went to officer candidate school. Aincidentally, ii received messages, email messages, from my old boss, the chief engineer on my second ship after the book came out, i must say. Cspan howhow long did you serve in the navy . Guest four years or active duty. Cspan what years . Guest . In the reserves. Ii think its 1960was at ocs in the late fall, early winter of 1960, graduated beginning of 61, and i got out of the navy in, i guess, february of 1964, and i entered Harvard Graduate School several months later, that fall. Cspan what exwhat impact did your exyour experience in the United States navy have on the way you feel about the military here and the military in japan . Guest well, i had good experiences in the navy. You know, i look back on those years when i was very young. But thebeing in the navy alerted me to the security relationship with japan, the usjapan security treaty, which went into effect in 1952, you know, right after the San Francisco peace treaty, and it was renewed, against much popular opposition, in 1960, and thereafter, it was rerenewed automatically. The most recent revision to the treaty are the guidelines, japanus guidelines. Butbut my point here is that our security relationship with the us has been dominated by the pentagon and we have an implantation of 100,000, maybe close to that, troops, military personnel, in the far east, and in oon the island of okinawa, mowhere most of them arethey arent generally welcomed by the people of okinawa. So we have serious adjustments to make in our relationship with japan, but they can only be made by a chief executive who is not selfindulgent, not lax and is very committed to restructuring American Armed forces. So i hope that readers of my book, who will understand from it, what japanese militarism was all about, andand what happens when a nation eschews militarism and the benefits to be gained from doing so. I hope that some readers, many readers, will pick this up. Cspan how long did it take you to do your book . Guest i spent 10 years on the book, and i continued the research until january of 2000 because of the kindness of my publisher. Cspan where did you do most of the research . Guest i did most of the research in japan, although there were long periods when i would be home in winthrop, and i would be working at the haharvard university libraries. But for the most part, the research was doneif i was not at the National Archives in washington, i was working in cambridge, and then i was in japan, initially onas a Fulbright Research scholar in 199091, i believe, and then i did extensive rewriting of the manuscript over the past three and a half years while at Hitosubashi University in tokyo. Cspan do you speak japanese . Guest yes, i do. Cspan and you read it. Guest yes, i do. Cspan what advantage do you have in doing your research, because you read it and speak it . Guest well, you can interact with people and you can read the documents and mustover 95 percent of all the sources cited in the end notes are japanese sources. And thats one reason why, up to now, even the right wing, the nationalist japanese press, has been circumspect and careful in reviewing my book. Cspan because . Guest its not so easy to criticize when most of the sources are japanese sources. I excavated and built on the basis of the fruits of half a century of japanese scholarship it was out there, most of the material was out there. Itits true, after hirohito died in january, 1989, there was a vast outpouring of new materials, diaries, memoirs of people who had worked with him andand had some sense of the man, and iincluding his brother. One of his brothers, prince takamatsu, and i used these diaries and mommemoirs as they came out. So thethe book reflects on the life of aan individual who was absolutely key to una key, absolutely a key, to understanding the dynamics of Japanese Military and political politics during the 20th century. Cspan whats new in your book thats never been published before . What are the conclusions . Guest welloh, well, in every chapter there are some things that are new, except to a tiny handful of japanese scholars who specialize in this area. But what is new in the book, generally speaking, is i offer a hiroemperor hirohito, who was not a passive puppet of the militarists, not aa bystander, a silent bystander of events unfolding around him, and an individual who was also not a normal constitutional monarch in any conceivable western sense of the term. The emperor i describe is a dynamic activist, handson, interventionist, individual, struggling to ensure that his role in policymaking gets registered. But, of course, from beginning to end, i stress he is not a dictator. He is not a hitler or a mussolini, nor must he ever be compared to them inin that sense. Nor did the army, or the military, ever establish a dictatorship in japan, but hirohito was an active participant, who, in 1941, very late in the day, enters into a de Facto Alliance with the hardliners in the army and navy, and its that de Facto Alliance that allows himallows japan to go to war, to attack pearl harbor and the british termalaya at cotabato. Cspan whats different between what you found and what others have found up to this point . Guest well, a great deal. The emperor i present is an individual who has been given a military education, hes striving at the same time to perform as a benevolent monarch in the confucian sense. He is an individual torn by tensions of all sorts. Hes a nervous, highstrung man, something of a martinet, and hes a stubborn man, and yet he has a capacity for adjusting and for tolerating institutional change. He overturns all sorts of precedents established by his grandfather, emperor meiji, the man who helped lead japan into the modern era. And hirohito turns meijis image on its head. Cspan who was meiji . Guest meiji was his grandfather, who as a young boy in 186768 ascended the throne, and it was in his name that the modern japanese state was constructed by individuals like ito hirobumi. Cspan is this meiji up topin the top picture up there . Guest yes. Yes, whom youre pointing to, thats. Cspan and whos below here . Guest below there we see little hirohito and his brother, prince chichibu, i bel