Should Japanese emperor hirohito have been held responsible for japan's world war 2 actions?

Answer 1

No, because although the world thought the Japanese Emperor held complete power it was in fact the nationalist government and the prime minister (Hideki Tojo) who had the real power and were responsible for everything Japan did during the war for example the ministers would plan an invasion and then show it to the emperor to see if he would say yes or no but unfortunately the emperor would not know what an invasion entailed so he was unwillingly saying yes to actions that would cause the deaths of thousands of people, but in the end Tojo was held responsible and executed at the International Military Tribunal for the far East.

Answer 2

Yes, he was, according to a growing number of historians. Kenneth J. Ruoff, Director of the Center for Japanese Studies, Portland State University, shows in his book "The People's Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945-1995" how Hirohito participated in the policymaking process that led to the war. Much evidence of this is now available thanks to Herbert Bix's research on Hirohito for his book "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan". Ruoff also shows that other authors, such as Irokawa Daikichi, Awaya Kentaro, and the aforementioned Herbert Bix have studied several documents on the decision-making process, including the political maneuvering behind the palace gates, concluding that was not exceptional for the Emperor to exercise his authority in several areas.

Irokawa, in his book "The Age of Hirohito: In Search of Modern Japan" shows that Hirohito had strong opinions in such areas as diplomacy, war strategy or personnel, he was actively involved in the crucial affairs of state and was not the passive constitutional monarch that several scholars (and Hirohito himself), had portrayed after the war. Bix studied Hirohito's Monologue (March, 1946), and his conclusions were similar to Irokawa's. According to Bix, an important detail of the Monologue was its portrayal of the emperor's active involvement in war strategy.

And, even from a critical view towards Bix, Professor Forrest E. Morgan admits that Bix rightly dispels the myth of the emperor as a puppet of Japanese military and unaware of the behavior of his government, demonstrating that the emperor was well informed and intimately involved in military planning even at the operational level. He was an active participant in Japan's decision making process; however, Morgan believes that Bix overstates the evidence when he portrays Hirohito as the driving force behind those decisions, because Japanese decision making process was pluralistic, and though Hirohito was not powerless, he was not omnipotent either. Nonetheless, he admits Hirohito was a nationalist with expansionist ambitions.

Despite the controversy around Hirohito among historians, around his responsibility for the war, it is clear now, according to many experts, that it is not correct to portray Hirohito as a "powerless figurehead".

Documentaries as "Hirohito's War" from the series "Secrets of War" or "Emperor Hirohito" (BBC) are very useful. Read also books as the above cited of Herbert Bix, Kenneth Ruoff and Daikichi Irokawa, and others such as "Inventing Japan: 1853-1964″ (Ian Buruma), "Hirohito: Behind the Myth" (Edward Behr), or "Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō II" (Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno). Hirohito was not a "powerless figurehead".

According to Sir Max Hastings in "Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45", the weight of evidence is that the image of Hirohito as the pacifist he was depicted to be by postwar apologists is now a discredited legend. The emperor's ambitions were aligned with those of the military.