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Evidence for wartime culpability

Historians have stated that Hirohito was directly responsible for the atrocities committed by the imperial forces in the Second Sino-Japanese War and in World War II. They have said that he and some members of the imperial family, such as his brother Prince Chichibu, his cousins the princes Takeda and Fushimi, and his uncles the princes Kan'in, Asaka, and Higashikuni, should have been tried for war crimes. In a study published in 1996, historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta said that the Three Alls policy (Sankō Sakusen), a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China and sanctioned by Emperor Hirohito himself, was both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. His works and those of Akira Fujiwara about the details of the operation were commented by Herbert P. Bix in his Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, who wrote that the Sankō Sakusen far surpassed Nanking Massacre not only in terms of numbers, but in brutality as well as "These military operations caused death and suffering on a scale incomparably greater than the totally unplanned orgy of killing in Nanking, which later came to symbolize the war". While the Nanking Massacre was unplanned, Bix said "Hirohito knew of and approved annihilation campaigns in China that included burning villages thought to harbor guerrillas." Top U.S. government officials understood the emperor's intimate role during the war.

Deeply engaged in military operations, Hirohito commissioned a war room beneath the Tokyo Imperial Palace to closely monitor Japan's military activities. The extensive resources required for regular updates to the Emperor often drew complaints from military officials. To celebrate significant military victories, he rode his white horse in parades in front of the Imperial Palace.

Poison gas weapons, such as phosgene, were produced by Unit 731 and authorized by specific orders given by Hirohito himself, transmitted by the chief of staff of the army. Hirohito authorized the use of toxic gas 375 times during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938. He rewarded Shiro Ishii, who was the head of the medical experimentation unit and Unit 731, with a special service medal.

Prince Mikasa, the younger brother of Hirohito, informed the Yomiuri Shimbun that during 1944, he compiled a thorough report detailing the wartime atrocities perpetrated by Japanese soldiers in China. He clarified that he didn't directly discuss the report with Hirohito;however, he added that "when I met with him, I did report on the China situation in bits and pieces." Additionally, he recalled showing Hirohito a Chinese-produced film depicting Japanese atrocities.

Officially, the imperial constitution, adopted under Emperor Meiji, gave full power to the Emperor. Article 4 prescribed that, "The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution." Likewise, according to article 6, "The Emperor gives sanction to laws and orders them to be promulgated and executed," and article 11, "The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and the Navy." The Emperor was thus the leader of the Imperial General Headquarters.

According to Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi of York University, Hirohito's authority up to 1945 depended on three elements:

First, he was a constitutional monarch subject to legal restrictions and binding conventions, as he has so often stressed. Second, he was supreme commander of Japanese armed forces, though his orders were often ignored and sometimes defied. Third, he wielded absolute moral authority in Japan by granting imperial honors that conveyed incontestable prestige and by issuing imperial rescripts that had coercive power greater than law.

The last two elements of Hirohito's power were the strongest, while the first element was the weakest. Hirohito had the ultimate authority to shape the country's policies by either agreeing or disagreeing with it. He even used his authority to disagree with policies shaped by the army. Hirohito was the supreme military commander in Imperial Japan, and pursued armed expansionist policies against weaker Asian neighbors. He never opposed war or expansion, but he opposed war with the US and Britain because of his fear that Japan would lose.

Wakabayashi further adds:

Also as a matter of course, he wanted to keep what his generals conquered -- though he was less greedy than some of them. None of this should surprise us. Hirohito would be no more have granted independence Korea independence or returned Manchuria to China than Roosevelt would have granted Hawaii independence or returned Texas to Mexico.

Historians such as Herbert Bix, Akira Fujiwara, Peter Wetzler, and Akira Yamada assert that post-war arguments favoring the view that Hirohito was a mere figurehead overlook the importance of numerous "behind the chrysanthemum curtain" meetings where the real decisions were made between the Emperor, his chiefs of staff, and the cabinet. Using primary sources and the monumental work of Shirō Hara as a basis, Fujiwara and Wetzler have produced evidence suggesting that the Emperor worked through intermediaries to exercise a great deal of control over the military and was neither bellicose nor a pacifist but an opportunist who governed in a pluralistic decision-making process. American historian Herbert P. Bix said that Emperor Hirohito might have been the prime mover behind most of Japan's military aggression during the Shōwa era.

The view promoted by the Imperial Palace and American occupation forces immediately after World War II portrayed Emperor Hirohito as a purely ceremonial figure who behaved strictly according to protocol while remaining at a distance from the decision-making processes. This view was endorsed by Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita in a speech on the day of Hirohito's death in which Takeshita asserted that the war "had broken out against wishes." Takeshita's statement provoked outrage in nations in East Asia and Commonwealth nations such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. According to historian Fujiwara, "The thesis that the Emperor, as an organ of responsibility, could not reverse cabinet decision is a myth fabricated after the war."

According to Yinan He, associate professor of international relations at Lehigh University, in the aftermath of the war, conservative Japanese elites created self-whitewashing, self-glorifying national myths that minimized the scope of Japan's war responsibility, which included presenting the emperor as a peace-seeking diplomat and a narrative that separated him from the militarists, whom they described as people who hijacked the Japanese government and led the country into war, shifting the responsibility from the ruling class to only a few military leaders. This narrative also narrowly focuses on the U.S.–Japan conflict, completely ignores the wars Japan waged in Asia, and disregards the atrocities committed by Japanese troops during the war. Japanese elites created the narrative in an attempt to avoid tarnishing the national image and regain the international acceptance of the country.

Kentarō Awaya said that post-war Japanese public opinion supporting protection of the Emperor was influenced by U.S. propaganda promoting the view that the Emperor together with the Japanese people had been fooled by the military.

In the years immediately after Hirohito's death, scholars who spoke out against the emperor were threatened and attacked by right-wing extremists. Susan Chira reported, "Scholars who have spoken out against the late Emperor have received threatening phone calls from Japan's extremist right wing." One example of actual violence occurred in 1990 when the mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, was shot and critically wounded by a member of the ultranationalist group, Seikijuku. A year before, in 1989, Motoshima had broken what was characterized as "one of most sensitive taboos" by asserting that Emperor Hirohito bore responsibility for World War II.

Regarding Hirohito's exemption from trial before the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, opinions were not unanimous. Sir William Webb, the president of the tribunal, declared: "This immunity of the Emperor is contrasted with the part he played in launching the war in the Pacific, is, I think, a matter which the tribunal should take into consideration in imposing the sentences." Likewise, the French judge, Henri Bernard, wrote about Hirohito's accountability that the declaration of war by Japan "had a principal author who escaped all prosecution and of whom in any case the present defendants could only be considered accomplices."

An account from the Vice Interior Minister in 1941, Michio Yuzawa, asserts that Hirohito was "at ease" with the attack on Pearl Harbor "once he had made a decision."

Since his death in 1989, historians have discovered evidence that prove Hirohito's culpability for the war, and that he was not a passive figurehead manipulated by those around him.