Scapegoat or Instigator of Japanese Aggression? Inoue Kiyoshi's Case against the Emperor

Abstract

Since the war, some changes are discernible in Japanese attitudes towards the Emperor and the Imperial institution. When asked, those expressing support for the maintenance of the institution still comprise a stable and vast majority of the people (84 percent in 1973), but there has clearly been an increase in indifference, especially among the young. The other change is the recent emergence, after a long period of relative dormancy, of an emotional reaction on the part of a small minority against both the institution and the Emperor for their involvement in the per-1945 establishment. in the pre-1945 establishment. Bitter criticisms and attacks have dominated the intellectual journals and have spilled over into the mass media. There are strong emotional currents on both sides of the issue. One emotion, becoming more vocal, is iconoclastic; the other, not much represented in the mass media, is protective. In the immediate postwar period, the Emperor and the Imperial institution were associated in the minds of many Japanese, especially among those of left-wing persuasion, with repression, war and defeat. The problem of the ‘Emperor system,’ as the Communists called it, not yet decided by a new Constitution, became a political issue for a short period when Communists released from prison in 1945 mounted an attack on the Emperor as well as on the ‘Emperor system.’ But between 1946 and 1971, it was not of great importance as a political issue.