The World's Oldest Monarchy: How Japan's Emperors Survived 2,500 Years of War

Asia's monarchies defy history. In a modern era of democracy, worlds of tradition, mystery and ritual command fascination and respect like never before. Monarchs are symbols of continuity, living connections to the past that are often loved and loathed in equal measure. Mythology is at the heart of Asia's monarchies' remarkable survival. Nowhere is this more true than in the land of what is claimed to be the world's oldest monarchy, Japan. The world's most modern city, there's a man kept at arm's length from the people and the media. Little is known what goes on behind the closed doors of the imperial palace. The emperor of Japan has always been clouded in secrecy and myth. The monarchy's involvement in World War II is still one of the most controversial issues in modern Japan. I think he should have been hanged. Hirohito was central to the Japanese war effort. The position of the emperor is not uncontroversial. In the last 30 years, the extreme right in Japan have appropriated the emperor as the ultimate symbol of Japanese nationalism. The emperor system has been at the heart of Japanese governance for millennia. How has it survived? And as it's so controversial, what future does the monarchy have in Japan? What I do worry about is the royal family will wither on the vine. The emperor of Japan is an enigma. The Japanese claim it's the oldest monarchy in the world. The first emperor, Jimmu, is said to have ruled from 660 BC. The mythology surrounding the emperor stems from his origins. Emperor Jimmu is said to be directly descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu. Until 1945, the emperor was believed to be divine, his decisions immutable, his power absolute. To commemorate the former emperor Hirohito's speech that ended World War II, on August 15th every year, 150,000 people gather to pay their respects to the fallen soldiers at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine. It's the one place in Japan where the very ideas of the emperor and Japan's wartime past are contested. Yasukuni is a very complex issue and complex place. It's an imperial shrine. The imperial regalia are very evident there. The emperor still sends offerings that are made to the shrine. Even though the emperor renounced his divinity after World War II, there are sections of Japanese society that still believe they must live and die for what they call the son of heaven. Every year at Yasukuni, a verbal and physical battle between right and left on the issue of the emperor takes place. Many Japanese believe former emperor Hirohito should have abdicated or at least apologize for the war. So every year, the left wing hold a demonstration against the shrine, the emperor and the open celebration of Japan's wartime past. Yasukuni as a whole not only glorifies those individuals who went to fight the war, but it glorifies the whole enterprise of Japan's imperial wars during the course of an entire century. Yasukuni is a Shinto shrine, the national religion of Japan, based on ancestor worship. By enshrining the two and a half million soldiers at Yasukuni as gods, people are effectively worshipping rather than merely commemorating the fallen soldiers. And the emperor is seen as the head priest of Shinto. To the feared right wing, Yasukuni and the emperor represent the two most sacred aspects of present-day Japan. It's the celebration of the emperor myth and the open and flamboyant militarism of nationalists at Yasukuni that inflames non-nationalist feelings. Please imagine, you know, the soldiers here, the Nazis, Nazi parties, you know, wearing these uniforms and making demonstrations in the center of Berlin and celebrating Hitler was a great man. This is happening in Japan because the Japanese emperor didn't take responsibility for the war. The Japanese monarchy is a hostage to its past. Its very existence is in jeopardy because of the role Hirohito is alleged to have played in World War II. Most Japanese people don't know how, you know, especially Hirohito took a role in invading Asia-Pacific countries and revoking World War II and killing more than 20 million innocent people. To question the emperor's role of Yasukuni can lead to reprisals from the right wing who are alleged to have close associations with Japan's mafia, the Yakuza. Like in the UK, people discuss about whether we should continue the royal family or not, even the BBC broadcasts about it. But here in Japan, like NHK, the public broadcasting system and major newspapers, they don't even argue whether we should continue the royal family or not. Most historians now believe the emperor became central to the Japanese war effort. After the war, Hirohito was pardoned and permitted to stay on the throne by the American occupying forces. Ever since this moment, the continued existence of the emperor has been controversial, even as memories of the war fade. How has the emperor been able to survive in Japanese society for over 2,500 years? The answers lie deep in the past, with the creation of a mythology that directly connected the emperor to the birth of Japan. The emperor was given a divine ancestry, and with it, his place as head priest of Shinto. The story goes that the gods Isanagi and Isanami created Japan by dipping their swords into the oceans. The drips formed the islands of Japan. Isanagi encountered the thunder gods, and to cleanse himself, he bathed and created smaller gods with the water. A moon god from his right eye, a sun goddess was born from his left eye, and an ocean god from his nose. These new gods were given control of the universe. Of these gods, it is the sun goddess Amaterasu who was most revered in the land of the rising sun. Legend has it that she got into a fearsome argument with her brother, the ocean god, and retreated into a cave, thereby plunging the world into darkness. Before the six emperors, Amaterasu and Omikami, like the sun, shined everything equally. When she hid, the other gods held a festival outside the cave, and enticed Amaterasu out with their dancing. Shinto is the belief of Amaterasu and Omikami. It is the belief of Amaterasu and Omikami that Amaterasu and Omikami should come out. The same is true of Emperor Jinbu. The Emperor Jinbu has continued the festival of Amaterasu and Omikami. It's claimed that the first emperor of Japan, Jinbu, was born here in Takachiho Gorge as a direct descendant of Amaterasu. In Shinto, only the emperor and his direct descendants can carry out the most important rituals that originate from the story of Amaterasu, bringing light back into the world. The emperor was therefore seen as divine and the head priest of Shinto, an animist cult that has no scripture or single god, but worships nature and ancestors, believing gods inhabit the animals, the rocks and rivers. However, there are 125 current emperors, so if we go back in time, we can see that we have ancestors. I think that there are people who were born in the first place. Jinbu almost certainly did exist, and was the first king-like figure to unify the country under one ruler. There is a lot of myth around the whole idea of the imperial lineage. That's perfectly clear. And to actually wipe away those myths is made more difficult by the fact that the imperial household won't allow these excavations to take place in ancient imperial tombs. So some people are saying, well, perhaps the Japanese royal family might have originated from Korea in the beginning. Without the access to those imperial tombs, it's extremely difficult to understand the prehistory. Successive emperors after Jinbu were more closely associated with Buddhism as it began to take hold in the country. But it was their association with the rituals of Shinto and their supposed divine origins that ensured their special role within Japanese society. The emperors ruled Japan until the 12th century, when the country was taken over by Shogun warlords, descended from powerful clans, who ruled the country as de facto monarchs for the next 700 years. The emperor was regularly forced into hiding. During the Edo period, there weren't many people who knew about the emperor. He was in Kyoto, so people around Kyoto probably knew about him. But people in other areas didn't know about the emperor. He didn't leave Kyoto, so they never saw him. People in Edo knew about the Shogun, but they didn't know about the emperor. In Kyoto, the emperor continued as the head priest of Shinto, whilst military strongmen dominated the country. The emperor is still providing legitimacy for the Shogun. The Shogun requires the fact that they are approved by the emperor. Now, that may be, in a sense, merely symbolic, because the emperor hasn't got any power, but to actually move against the emperor and to dislodge the emperor as a figure altogether would possibly arouse opposition. It was a brutal period in Japanese history. From the 13th to the 16th century, Japan was almost constantly at war as rival clans battled for control. In the 19th century, Japan was ravaged by famine and economic desperation, a result of both mismanagement by the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a deep mistrust of other countries, thereby isolating Japan from international trade. In 1853, American commander Matthew Perry arrived in Japan, threatening war unless the shoguns opened diplomatic and trade relations with the U.S. Through contact with other empire-building countries, often demanding to see the emperor, the shoguns learned how important monarchs were in foreign lands. The shogun's opponents overthrew the Tokugawa elite and then had to decide how the country would be governed. They decided to use the emperor as a symbol, bearing in mind that Japan has often been ruled by people behind the scenes. You don't have to be the nominal ruler to be the real power. The powers behind the throne decided to reinvent the emperor using the ancient stories of his divine origins. In that era, scientists began studying the shogunate and discovered that the existence of the emperor was a major factor in Japan. In 1867, Prince Mutoshito, supposedly the 122nd direct descendant of Emperor Jimmu, was made the Meiji Emperor. The imperial court moved from Kyoto to Tokyo and in the space of just a few years, Meiji was transformed, shedding his traditional Shinto robes and adopting the regalia of his western peers. If Japan's going to have a strong sense of national identity, and it needs it, because after all what we're dealing with is a country that in some ways is similar to Italy and Germany, it's going through a process of national unification. So it needs a strong national identity and the Meiji elite clearly believed that can be located in the figure of the emperor. The idea that the emperor was divine, descended from Amaterasu, and only they could undertake important Shinto rituals began to take hold once again. In 1869, after just one year in power, the Meiji Emperor opened the Yasukuni Shrine. It was a powerfully symbolic moment in Japanese history. The Yasukuni Shrine is important because again it's linked to the idea of national identity. I mean here you have a Shinto shrine being opened in the imperial capital, Tokyo, where those who die in the war to achieve the Meiji restoration are honoured. And then, from that point on, the war dead are honoured. Japan prospered under the Meiji Emperor, and by the end of the 19th century, the Japanese decided to demonstrate their new confidence in military power. Japan stunned the world by defeating China in 1895, but a much bigger victory was on the horizon. Japan then established itself as a major power when it defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. So Japan had, by the beginning of the First World War, was a major power in the world. It had achieved that situation, and the appetite grew in eating. China ceded Taiwan to Japan, and an era of Asian expansion in the name of the Emperor began that was to last for the next 50 years. With its military successes, Emperor worship was at its height at the beginning of the 20th century. However, in 1912, the Meiji Emperor had become critically ill with stomach cancer, and on July 30th, a shocked and distraught nation was told of his death. Through propaganda and grandstanding, Meiji and the powerful figures behind the throne had established the Emperor as once again the spiritual soul of the nation and had created the beginnings of an Asian empire. This would lead inexorably to World War II and his grandson Hirohito's alleged controversial involvement in the nationalist war effort. Before he died, Meiji had established the Imperial Household Law, which introduced the rule of primogeniture. Only the firstborn son of the Emperor could succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne. It would prove a real stumbling block to future generations who could not produce a son. As Meiji only had one son, the Imperial Court was left no choice but to make Crown Prince Yoshihito the Taisho Emperor. His reign was to last just 14 years. As a child, it's thought he contracted meningitis, and this caused brain damage as he grew to adulthood. With the Meiji Emperor, you did have a sense that at least there was a figure at the centre of Japanese government who had long experience of office, who could perhaps provide advice or be a figure to consult on important issues, which you don't have in the Taisho period. Here you have a man who is incapable of holding that role. By 1916, his behaviour and health had become so erratic that royal officials began to think about his succession. Taisho could never live up to the reputation of his father. But in one way, he outdid him, producing four healthy sons, the eldest of which, Hirohito, was being groomed for power. The Taisho Emperor was very weak. Not only was he weak, but he also had a brain disease, which made it impossible for him to perform his official duties. This was a major crisis for the Taisho Emperor, which was recognized by politicians at the time. So how did he resolve this? He summoned Hirohito, who was the Taisho Emperor's successor, to be his successor. In other words, he was going to be the new Emperor. The imperial household decided to let Prince Hirohito tour Europe to parade this healthy future emperor to their Western imperial rivals, a tour which changed Hirohito's outlook dramatically. For a young impressionable man who's been brought up in extremely sheltered surroundings in Japan, to go on a trip that takes him to Western Europe would certainly be an eye-opener. And certainly he refers to this later on in his life, the importance that this had for him in creating his view of the world and his role within the Japanese political system. Hirohito was also encouraged to tour his own country. In 1925, after a long illness, Emperor Taisho finally died, and the young Hirohito acceded formally to the Chrysanthemum Throne. Hirohito took the name Showa, meaning enlightened peace, a dreadful irony as Japan was to embark on the most terrible period of warfare it had ever known. The Japanese military began an aggressive period of expansion, turning Manchuria from a protectorate into a fully-fledged colony and moving into mainland China. Some historians believe that the emperor was powerless to stop this expansion. His role, as set out in the Meiji Constitution, was not to be involved in political or military matters. This remains one of the most hotly contested topics up to the present day. Some believe it was Prime Minister Tojo who was responsible for pushing Japan towards the war. There's no doubt that there were rogue elements in the Japanese military who were pushing for an empire throughout Asia, and they were impossible to control. The emperor was supposed to abide by the Constitution and accept the advice that was given to him. That was his interpretation. Whether that was the... Whether somebody more courageous, more independent-minded might have taken a decision, a different decision, I don't know. But he interpreted his role as, if you like it, a yes man. By 1941, Japan had expanded into most of Southeast Asia, and the year ended with the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. The question is, did the emperor know or approve of the attack? Many people in Japan say, oh, the emperor is also a victim of Japanese militarism. I don't think so. You can see when the Japanese army took over Singapore, which was a very key stone in Southeast Asia, in the world map, you can see he was riding on a white horse in front of the Imperial Palace among millions of people, celebrating. There was excitement when we landed in Singapore. I still can't forget that excitement. That's why we were determined to win again, until 1945, until the Okinawa War. That was one of the reasons why Japan was so happy. The Americans invaded the Japanese mainland. Two atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima proved decisive in ending the Japanese war effort. I think there is a moral responsibility. As I said, the emperor's determination to continue the war is something to be surprised about. Even if he lost the Okinawa War, he was still determined to win. On the other hand, the Japanese military told him that he couldn't do that. The military told him that he couldn't do that. My mother was very determined. Even in 1945, she still didn't doubt her victory. My son was afraid of my mother. He didn't know what to do. Clearly the situation had become untenable after the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At that point, they didn't know what to do. How could these generals and admirals and advisers take a decision which they couldn't take? Somebody else had to take the responsibility. Push it up! On August 15, 1945, Hirohito announced to his subjects by radio the surrender of the Japanese forces. The war was decided by the Tojo Cabinet and I, Hirohito, was the one who made the decision. I said in court that I was not responsible for the war. I said that I was not responsible for the war. I said that I would be the best person to take the responsibility. There's a famous story about how the emperor delivered a speech on August 15 by radio, but it was not a live broadcast. It was recorded the day before, several days before, and it was smuggled out of the emperor's residence in a basket of women's underwear that was being sent out to the laundry because the militarists were still resisting the idea of surrender. Under General MacArthur, the Americans occupied Japan and decided to retain the emperor as an institution people could rally behind and, controversially, to make him immune from prosecution. Many people in Japan say, oh, the emperor is also a victim of Japanese militarism, but I don't think so. He is the first criminal, first most important war criminal in the early World War II and also 50 years of invasion to Asia, Pacific countries. General MacArthur summoned Hirohito to meet him to discuss the future organization of Japan and his role in it. Some believed that he already knew that the Americans would spare him, others that he feared for his life. The Americans certainly did have an opportunity in 1945 to get rid of the monarchy. They didn't. They had very good reasons for not doing so. They, or at least General MacArthur, was strongly of the opinion that if the reforms that the Americans wanted to introduce were going to stick, they needed a legitimizing tool. They needed the emperor, just as the Meiji elite had needed the Meiji emperor in the 1870s. There are scars that still fester in Japan from World War II. The decision to grant Hirohito immunity from prosecution makes the emperor a controversial figure, even today. It's hard to imagine any other country in the world where 64 years after a war ends that these issues still remain unresolved. I think one of the major reasons that those issues remain unresolved is because the emperor's role and responsibility for the war was never clarified. It was left vague, and intentionally left vague. If you don't openly acknowledge that he led the country into a devastating, tremendously destructive, meaningless war, then where do you go? Where do you go from there? How do you even start that conversation? You don't start that conversation. Just seven people were executed for leading the Japanese war effort, including the prime minister, Hideki Tojo, here being slapped on the head in a moment of bizarre gallows humor during the trial. But was Tojo really to blame? During the war, kamikaze pilots sacrificed themselves for the emperor, and soldiers fought and died in the name of the emperor. It was for the sake of the nation of Japan. It was written in the Kojiki, the Japanese Kojiki, that the emperor of Japan was ordered by the Shinkai to come down to earth and become the king of Japan. I want to continue that. I will always oppose anyone who hinders that. In perhaps the most important development in the 2,500-year history of the emperor, the Americans persuaded Hirohito to renounce his divinity and embrace democracy. On January 1, 1946, a shocked Japanese population were told that their monarch was a mere man and not a god. We are moving forward steadily towards the goal of building a culture-nation based on Japanese ideology. The very foundations of the emperor myth as a son of heaven were eradicated in an instant. The emperor and emperor system in Japan are very unique because I think that in the human history, only Hirohito said, I am a human being. I think the Americans had correctly anticipated that this was what Japan needed. Something that would reduce the awe with which the emperor was held in the country would help to undermine the nationalism that had led to war. Japan had to be rebuilt from scratch, so the American occupiers set about creating a new constitution in 1946 based around the emperor and a new national legislature and in Article 9, a declaration against the idea of war. Japan has a constitution that renounces war. It's one of the few countries in the world that has a constitution like that and it's maintained that constitution, that idea, that principle of not being involved in wars of aggression for 64 years since the end of World War II. And the reason it has, I believe, is because the Japanese recognized not only that the war was wrong but that they had a moral responsibility for perpetrating a war that caused so much damage and devastation throughout Asia and throughout the world. The constitution promised democracy and the emperor would continue as the living symbol of nationhood but with no significant powers. Importantly, though, the emperor was to remain head priest of Shinto. As a young man, Hirohito called himself a bird in a gilded cage because of the stifling influence of the body that controls the royal family, the imperial household agency. Now the emperor experienced a degree of freedom unthinkable before the war although these public appearances were tightly stage-managed. Hirohito remained as emperor for the next 43 years as a symbol of continuity and nationhood whilst his subjects set about rebuilding the country. But the issues of the war and his involvement in it were never dealt with. There is no process of truth and reconciliation in the early post-war period. It gets delayed and seeps out little by little so then we start hearing stories about the rape of Nanking, we start hearing stories about chemical warfare in China, we start hearing stories about the comfort women. Japan's war crimes and the lack of justice for the victims remains as controversial as Hirohito's alleged involvement in the war. My view would be that the best thing for the imperial institution would have been for him to abdicate at the time. I think that probably would have been a useful cleansing moment for Japan. You can see that for him, that perhaps would be to cast doubt on the imperial institution as a whole. Any abdication would be too much of an admission of guilt, it wouldn't just be personal guilt, it would be guilt for the institution as a whole. I think that's why they didn't bite the bullet but I think it probably would have been better to have bitten the bullet. Given that Hirohito was tainted by the war effort, Japan needed to look beyond him to the future emperor, Crown Prince Akihito. He was brought up during the war and like his father feared for his life during the American invasion, it was to make him a lifelong pacifist. In Japan's post-war period, the royal family were rarely seen except for state visits and they seemed to like spending time alone in Tokyo's imperial palace with its enormous gardens, an oasis of calm in a hectic city of 15 million inhabitants. Towards the end of his reign, one event had a lasting impact on Hirohito. In 1978, it's thought Yasukuni independently enshrined as gods the class A war criminals executed during the Tokyo trials. Emperor Yasukuni had a negative attitude towards the class A war criminals There was a contradiction between the emperor and the class A war criminals who were executed during the Tokyo trials and the class A war criminals who were executed. When Japan's neighbors in the U.S. found out about this, there was outrage and in response, Hirohito, who had made annual pilgrimages since he was a boy, decided to no longer visit Yasukuni. In 1989, after 67 years on the throne, Hirohito died, leaving the issues of World War II and his alleged responsibility for it unresolved. His son Akihito acceded to the throne in 1990, becoming the Heisei Emperor and has spent a lifetime preaching peace. Akihito sees his role, in a sense, it appears as if he's making amends for the crimes that his father committed. He has made an extraordinary effort to go overseas and to be the public face of Japan in a contrite way, apologizing, not apologizing outright, but making statements that recognize and acknowledge the pain and suffering that were caused by Japan during World War II. At home, the movements and behavior of the monarchy are still to a large extent controlled by the Imperial Household Agency, the government body appointed to look after the royal family. And just as with his father Hirohito before him, the IHA often restricts the freedom of Emperor Akihito. However, the IHA has come to symbolize a secretive undemocratic regime When Akihito's daughter-in-law failed to produce a son to continue the dynasty, the pressure from the IHA on her to conceive became unbearable. The future of the monarchy hung in the balance. Naruhito was Oxford educated and his wife Masako a Harvard graduate. Both had little time for the traditions of the Imperial Court. They had a baby girl, but to make her empress would break the male line that was said to have lasted 2,500 years and would be against the constitution. Masako, previously a successful career diplomat, fell into a long and severe depression. In 2004, her husband let his feelings known that his wife's depression was the responsibility of people outside their marriage. The IHA and the media were trying to respond to various requests regarding the birth of a child, but I think the depression was accumulating. I think the pressure on the Yotsugi issue was also increasing. We are fully aware of the importance of the Yotsugi issue, so we hope to be able to live quietly At the very least, the executives of the IHA have a duty to repeatedly request that the Yotsugi successor be made at the IHA's inauguration. If not, the emperor will cease to exist. I don't know if the IHA announced this pressure or if it was something else. I don't know. When it became clear that Masako, in her fragile condition, might never have a son, politicians started to discuss whether her daughter could accede to the throne, or more poignantly, whether the emperor system should be wound up altogether. If we don't do it now, we will never be able to do it again. I think that's what the politicians decided to do. However, when we tried it, we saw that the people's resistance was stronger than the IHA's resistance, and the public opinion was split in two. When I saw that, I think the emperor was very hurt. As soon as the prince was born, such discussions were blown away. Thanks to Naruhito's brother, the succession crisis was solved, but the Meiji emperor's rule of primogeniture will be broken when Prince Hisahito becomes emperor. I think it is very regrettable that the Japanese constitution was not, the Japanese imperial succession law was not changed to enable a princess to perform the role of empress. So what is the future of the Chrysanthemum Throne? Is it doomed to irrelevance, or will it continue as the symbol of the nation? It's an issue that divides modern Japanese society. We have to make Japan as a republic as soon as possible, not in 100 years. We have to, because the emperor system is so dangerous. I think the role of the emperor is getting bigger, or I think there are more and more people Even if there is a confrontation of various opinions about politics and the economy, it is a symbol that everyone is united Today the imperial institution does in some ways look like an anachronism. You can't imagine that it's very relevant to the ordinary lives of Japanese people. And yet it's still there as this symbol of continuity. It's the emperor's position as the high priest of Shinto which gives it such a unique place in society, akin to the pope in Catholic countries, and which may prove to be the institution's saving grace. As long as Shinto remains the national religion, the emperor should feel he has a function to fulfill. State Shintoism is not a religion. It's a cult. I'm saying Shintoism, Yasukuni, they are a cult. So the emperor is the head of the cult. I think it's an issue which faces all royalty. How does royalty fit in with modern life, with modern concepts? I think royalty fits in with the country of Japan, with the people of Japan. In the end, they all go to the same place. It's about which way the country goes. And the emperor becomes one of the factors. The emperor of the world's oldest monarchy has become more than anything else a symbol. A symbol of the nation, but also of the past. A past that is very much part of the soul of Japan. Recently, nationalists have appropriated the emperor to remind Japan of its history before the nation surrendered. But so much has changed since 1945. Japan can never turn back. The emperor's position as the spiritual heart of Japan appears, for the moment, secure.