Fourteen years after the death of the Showa Emperor Hirohito in 1989, scholarly interest in his life and times has rekindled. By contrast, popular support for the imperial house has continued slowly to weaken. This historical departure from traditional popular loyalty to the throne, is occurring in an atmosphere of rising internal nationalism, as seen in the education policy that Japanâ??s ruling elites are seeking to nurture. Today, as emotional identification with the monarchy declines, it is easy to see how many Japanese may feel freer than ever before to accept a critical historical assessment of Hirohito. And now that the world is again at war and undergoing revolutionary changes, the period of Hirohitoâ??s wartime reign has never seemed so close, or so much in need of reassessment.
In this context, the Japanese translation of my book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (Kodansha, 2002) may be contributing not only to a reappraisal of Hirohitoâ??s reputation but also to a better awareness of the nature of decision-making for imperial war. The overwhelming majority of Japanese readers have responded positively to its complex, multisided narrative, depicting the emperor as at once a product and an active agent of Japanâ??s modern historical process. Concurrently, the book has stirred a debate, waged in scholarly forums and newspaper columns, which is likely to continue while the Japanese reassess their country's past and current role in the international community in a time of war.
