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Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War Paperback – November 2, 2015

by Noriko Kawamura (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
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This reexamination of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War gives particular attention to the question: If the emperor could not stop Japan from going to war with the Allied Powers in 1941, why was he able to play a crucial role in ending the war in 1945? Drawing on previously unavailable primary sources, Noriko Kawamura traces Hirohito's actions from the late 1920s to the end of the war, analyzing the role Hirohito played in Japan's expansion. Emperor Hirohito emerges as a conflicted man who struggled throughout the war to deal with the undefined powers bestowed upon him as a monarch, often juggling the contradictory positions and irreconcilable differences advocated by his subordinates. Kawamura shows that he was by no means a pacifist, but neither did he favor the reckless wars advocated by Japan's military leaders.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    248 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Washington Press
  4. Publication date
    November 2, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.62 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780295742731
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0295742731
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an eye-opening book. . . . Kawamura's research reveals the real Hirohito."―Geoffrey Wawro, History Book Club

"Noriko Kawamura's Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War provides a convincing reappraisal of Japan's Hirohito few Westerners would recognize whenever they are reminded of Pearl Harbor and the Pacific conflict."―Norm Haskett, The Daily Chronicles of World War II

"A well-balanced analysis of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War, drawing on previously unavailable primary sources. . . . Kawamura does a fine job of describing Emperor Hirohito's complex positions and his historical situation."―Takeshi Suzuki, Pacific Affairs

"This is a strong book. It sets out in careful detail the maneuvering in and about the emperor on the key issues of the war, and it comes to considered judgments."―Richard Minear, University of Massachusetts Amherst

"Kawamura offers a novel perspective on the role of Emperor Hirohito in the Pacific War and in the years which preceded it. Based on new and reappraised sources, she draws a human portrait of him, different from the caricatures that have been presented until now."―Ben-Ami Shillony, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

About the Author

Noriko Kawamura is associate professor of history at Washington State University. She is the author of Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese-U.S. Relations during World War I.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0295742739
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Washington Press; Reprint edition (November 2, 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780295742731
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0295742731
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.62 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Michael R. Broschat
5.0 out of 5 stars The tricky question of responsibility
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2016
Verified Purchase
Kawamura's Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War is an important new look at some not so distant history. She examines the contention that if the Japanese emperor was seemingly able to stop the Pacific War then was he responsible for starting it?

She looks at how Hirohito grew up and the values that were important to him as he did so. Foremost among them was a belief in "international accommodation." But at the same time, a militaristic jingoism flourished in Japan, and as so often happens with agressiveness, its presence became increasingly apparent within the governing circles of Japan. No small part of this movement was assassination. By the time the decision was made to involve the United States in Japanese military aggression, the vast majority of ruling voices belonged to militarists, opposing voices having retired or been assassinated. The emperor became a rubber stamp for actions taken by the governing council.

But when it became clearer and clearer that Japan was on the way to ruin, even some in the militaristic camp began to look for a way out. The emperor was that way.

Assassination continued right up to the end. A movement to steal the recording of the emperor surrendering was made before that famous broadcast, but an officer of the Imperial Guard betrayed the effort, and the rebels were contained.

The emperor spoke only to a couple close associates after the war, and their notes are as close as the world ever got to hearing what Hirohito the man had to say about the role of emperor during the period of Japanese aggression. Kawamura uses this, too, among the many resources she consulted for this fine study.
6 people found this helpful
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Phillip Goodnight
4.0 out of 5 stars The good emperor
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
Shows the emperor in a new light using new primary sources. Debunks the theories of Box and others who portray the emperor in a negative light
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Mike C
5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced account of Hirohito' s role in WW II
Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2017
Verified Purchase
The authors are able to use original documentation written in Japanese to show Hirohito was a pacifist who opposed all wars. He was of course also the head of state of a country that was led into war by internal militaristic forces (only nominally under his control) and as such had an obligation to fully support the troops that fought in his name and he of course did just that. This conflict between his innate pacifist personality and his official position as emperor of an empire at war created an almost impossible situation for him. The authors point out that while he was theoretically an absolute monarch he himself preferred to govern as a constitutional monarch and actually did most of the time. Even his famous final edict that ended the war was not something he was easily able to proclaim and it was almost blocked by the military. Many historians have recently decided that Hirohito was a war criminal who should have been punished. I've read several such accounts but I am convinced after reading this book that rather than a war criminal he was as General MacArthur called him, "the finest gentleman in Japan."
2 people found this helpful
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Nancy Shinno
4.0 out of 5 stars Nuanced situation
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2016
Verified Purchase
Fascinating. I had read Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II, which implied that Hirohito should have been tried for war crimes, but was saved by MacArthur. This book gave a very nuanced presentation of Hirohito;s involvement with the war. He was in a very delicate situation, more than a figurehead,but with real limitations in his power. I really enjoyed the book.
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Michael Griffith
5.0 out of 5 stars A Truly Eye-Opening, Informative Book
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2019
I am tempted to say that a person cannot fully understand Emperor Hirohito's role in the Pacific War unless they read this book. This book has markedly changed my opinion of Hirohito. The author makes a compelling case that Hirohito was nothing like the war monger and war criminal that so many books portray him as being. He was quite the opposite.

I am also tempted to say that a person cannot fully understand the workings of the Japanese government and those who led it from 1931 to 1946 without reading this book. When you read this book, you will see that comparing Imperial Japan to Nazi Germany is unfounded.

When you understand the struggle that was going on between Japan's moderates and hardliners in the months leading up to the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you will realize that the Truman administration's policy toward Japan was horribly mistaken, if not immoral.

As an American who loves my country and who is proud of our founding, I am embarrassed that Truman dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima without warning and without exploring clear openings to achieve an acceptable surrender via diplomacy. I am also embarrassed that Truman dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki, just three days after nuking Hiroshima, while Japan's leaders were still trying to digest what had had happened to Hiroshima and while they were moving toward surrendering. The nuking of Nagasaki was not only unnecessary and barbaric, but it had no impact on Japan's decision to surrender. When Japan's leaders first heard about the Nagasaki nuking, they were led to believe that the damage had been minimal because the report about it came from a city official in Nagasaki who had not seen most of the damage when he relayed his report.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Lewisham Guy
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Study of Emperor Hirohito
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 18, 2018
Verified Purchase
Hirohito is often portrayed as decisively leading Japan into the Pacific War and directing its conduct of the war. Accordingly, he is held responsible for the war and for the atrocities Japan committed in his name. But this image of Hirohito, however appealing to his critics of various political persuasions, is not supported convincingly by hard evidence in the Japanese primary sources from the 1930s and 1940s. Yes, as a theoretically powerful emperor and supreme commander, Hirohito sanctioned many government policies leading to war but as Professor Noriko Kawamura shows in this book, the real driving force to war was the Japanese military, not Hirohito. I welcome her book because many of her interpretations echo my own, in Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan: A Political Biography (1992). But Kawamura, using Japanese sources that have come to light more recently, and carefully criticising more polemical works on Hirohito, takes the debate about him to a much higher level and in may view, gets us closer to the real Hirohito. Hirohito was not a pacifist, but rather a nationalist who sought to hold the conflicting elites who ruled in his name together while trying to avoid war with the Western powers in Asia. Once the Pacific War began with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, he naturally wanted Japan to prevail. The story of how and why he was able to end it 1945 when he had failed to prevent it in 1941 is a complex, fascinating, one, which Kawamura tells judiciously in detail. I recommend her book highly as the best book we have on this topic so far.
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