The Emperors of Modern Japan (review)

The term "emperor system" which is the subtheme of this collection of essays inevitably suggests to Westerners an autocratic system of monarchy and calls up images of German emperors or Russian tsars. The term "emperor" was adopted for the Japanese tennō or Mikado in the Meiji period to give the Japanese sovereign equal status with the emperors of China, Russia, Germany, France (of the second empire), and the British Queen Victoria who also had the title of empress of India. The word emperor, which derives from the Latin imperator, suggests a military leader. If we exclude the mythical early Japanese sovereigns, the tennō never were military leaders and although the Emperor Meiji and his son and grandson up to 1945 were nominally commanders-in-chief of the Japanese armed forces, their role was never more than nominal. Accordingly, it would be better to describe the emperor system as the Japanese hereditary monarchical system.

The implicit question posed in this volume is whether the Japanese monarchical system can survive and how it might or should change. It is argued by some of the contributors that Japan is different and special, but Japan is not unique in having its own culture and traditions. Japanese uniqueness is as much of a myth as the idea that Japanese emperors are descended from the Sun Goddess and are especially sacrosanct as a result.

It is a pity that this book does not include comparisons with other monarchical systems which still survive in Europe and Asia (such as in Thailand where the king has been much revered). Many monarchies were overthrown in the twentieth century, and it is widely believed that monarchies are an anachronism in the twenty-first century. Constitutional monarchies, where power rests with elected governments and the monarch is head of state in name only, may, however, survive for some time because the peoples of such states prefer the pomp of a monarchy to a possibly drab republican president or because monarchy avoids the difficulty of choosing a suitable head of state. But hereditary aristocracies have largely disappeared not least because talents rarely continue in the same line beyond at most three generations and because democratic countries are understandably reluctant to cede power to anyone who has achieved his position simply because he or she happened to be born into an aristocratic family. Why should monarchies remain the only hereditary institution in a country?

The book includes references to the Imperial Household Agency (formerly a ministry), but it does not discuss its current role or what should be the role of the personal entourage of monarchs. In Japan some would say that the officials in the agency have done little or nothing to promote the modernization of the imperial institution and that its conservatism has been damaging. It would also have been valuable if the book had contained a frank discussion of how far the "emperor" system would benefit from further humanizing and popularizing its role.

Even if, perhaps inevitably in a collection of essays such as this, these questions remain unanswered and not always directly confronted, this volume is a valuable and thought-provoking collection of essays. Many books have been published about recent Japanese emperors, especially about Hirohito (the Showa emperor), of which perhaps the best is that by Stephen Large, and about Mutsuhito, the Meiji emperor who was the subject of a lengthy tome by Donald Keene. Ben-Ami Shillony, the editor of this volume, is an eminent Israeli scholar and historian who has specialized in the study of the Japanese emperors. His book Enigma of the Emperors: Sacred Subservience in Japanese History (Global Oriental, 2005) analyzed most of the main themes of this book and should be read by any student interested in Japanese constitutional issues.

The ideology of kokutai (national polity), which Shillony simplifies to mean that "Japan is a family nation with the emperor as its head" (p. 5) and which has been the subject of endless discussion in Japanese and English, is central to the...