The Yamato Dynasty

The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family is a book, on a recommendation from a friend, that I've been meaning to read for a long time. Well, I checked it out at the library a couple weeks ago, and I finally started in yesterday. If you have any interest in either modern Japanese history or true, compelling political intrigue, this book is well worth checking out. Otherwise, stay away.

I'm only about a hundred pages into it (out of about 300), but so far there are some very interesting revelations that help to inform the extent that recent events in Japan's history -- the Meiji "Restoration" of 1868, for example, and the narratives of the reigns of emperors Komei, Mutsuhito, Yoshihito, Hirohito, down to the current Emperor, Akihito - and the considerable political machinations behind the throne -- have been major shapers in contemporary Japanese attitudes and cultural tendencies.

The Meiji Restoration was a restoration in the sense that the emperor (on the surface) once again seized power, after centuries of Shogunate rule. This occurred shortly after American warships appeared in Tokyo Bay and demanded the opening of Japan - crucially, in matters of trade - to the West. Here's something I didn't know - and that perhaps a lot of Japanese don't know, or refuse to acknowledge - about the restoration:

It was easier for foreign nations to acknowledge the new monarch than it was for the Japanese. After eight centuries of military rule, most of them did not know there was still an emperor. They only had been conscious of rule by the shogun. Outside of Kyoto, people had long ago ceased to be aware that the imperial house existed, so it was necessary to reintroduce the emperor to the people, and make him an icon again. The strategists behind the regime launched a vigorous promotion campaign. If Japan's new strongmen were to remain invisible, the emperor had to be conspicuous. To become an effective figurehead, he had to be put on display. This involved a certain falsification. As Professor Carol Gluck put it, when he was taken out of the closet the emperor was deliberately "enveloped in an aura of symbolic meaning" that had not been practiced for over seven hundred years.

Venturing outside Kyoto for the first time in April 1868, Mutsuhito (the emperor), now 15, climbed into a palanquin and was borne off to nearby Osaka for his first glimpse of the blue water and lush green crags of the Inland Sea. He saw six new steamers belonging to wealthy domain lords, reviewed soldiers, and had a great day. The public was told the emperor had left Kyoto at the head of his army to put down a few die-hard rebels in the east, but that was only to inflate his image as a military leader. His next journey was a permanent move to the shogun's administrative capital at Edo (modern Tokyo). While Kyoto had been the imperial capital since 794, it was not suitable as a home for the new government because Japan's new strongmen wished to distance themselves from the intrigues of the old aristocracy, and to make certain that everyone saw the emperor taking the place of the shogun. The great castle of the Tokugawa shoguns at Edo was redecorated as a new home of the imperial family. This move was announced as an imperial decision, but Mutsuhito had nothing to say in the matter. The term "imperial decision" meant the emperor gave his nod to something already decided for him.

...

Although Mutsuhito remained hidden, he saw rice-farmers, porters, fishermen, shopkeepers, peasant women--a true cross-section of ordinary people and their way of life. This was the first time in 2,000 years that an emperor had crossed the mountains to eastern Japan. Though the trip was made to remove the emperor from the conspiratorial aristocracy in Kyoto, word was put out that he really wanted to be closer to the scene of rebel suppression.

Another passage:

Traditionally, Japanese strongmen and power-brokers take extraordinary pains to disguise themselves and their ambitions. It would be gauche and dangerous to do otherwise, for to have their ruthlessness revealed would defeat the whole purpose. After being excluded too long from decision-making, the coalition of conspirators who put Mutsuhito on the throne was ruthlessly aggressive. But they were extremely careful to maneuver in the background, while the emperor provided window-dressing. They did not restore power to the throne, but only went through the motions of doing so. To be more precise, they restored a certain kind of implicit power to the throne, but kept executive control for themselves. Mutsuhito became head of state, but not head of government. In itself, this was an historic change, for many centuries had passed since emperors were allowed even to be figureheads. During the Meiji coup, real power simply was transferred from one backstage clique to another, from the shogun's faction to a faceless group of new oligarchs. The Japanese people did not participate, nor did the emperor, except ceremonially. The throne was exploited to provide an aura of divine legitimacy, and to hide the fact that members of the new ruling coalition were continually cheating and trying to destroy one another. This clever deceit was so artfully contrived that most people were convinced it was real. Even within the State Council and among the power-brokers themselves, the deceit was maintained so effectively that in a few short years it became dogma, and the idea of Japan being ruled by the emperor became accepted as holy writ. It was suicidal to challenge this, or to point out that it was myth, and by the early decades of the twentieth century even the power-brokers and the emperor himself were addicted to its maintenance.

Wow. I'm tempted to draw a parallel between this and the contemporary tendency of our American administration to establish the mythical sanctity of our armed forces, so as to [attempt to] create a situation in which it becomes unpatriotic and unsupportive of them to criticize the motivations of the war.

Books could be written (and probably already have) about emperor Mutsuhito's two closest advisors (in his later years), Ito and Yamagata, and their interaction. Ito was an arrogant but jovial and carousing man, in stark contrast to Yamagata, who was secretive and austere, but with a network of secret police and informants blanketing the entirety of the nation:

Yamagata's police state was all-pervasive. Public meetings were permitted only if they met severe restrictions, so there was no forum of any kind for political discussion. State employees including teachers and bureaucrats were forbidden to take part in political meetings. Journalists were gagged by self-censorship. To blot up activists he encouraged all kinds of patriotic societies expressing intense loyalty to the throne or devout obedience to superiors. Although he backed a law prohibiting secret societies, Yamagata encouraged all manner of secret organizations, paramilitary forces and underworld gangs, so long as they were ultra-nationalist. Behind harmless groups like the Women's Patriotic Society was a paramilitary cult known as the the Genyosha (Black Ocean), founded by Toyama Mitsuru, a follower of General Saigo who transferred his loyalties to Yamagata after his release from prison for his role in Saigo's rebellion. Toyama became Japan's leading underworld middleman, feeding the egos of men who dreamed of conquest and looting on the Asian mainland and making available to Yamagata an endless supply of bullies and assassins. Yamagata's web also included the Yamaguchi Gumi (Yamaguchi Group), gangsters in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the new administrative name for Choshu. He used gangs to harass political organizers and labor demonstrators. Later he used them to soften up Korea and Manchuria in advance of invasion by the Imperial Army.

I emboldened Yamaguchi-gumi because anyone who has lived in Japan for a certain amount of time becomes familiar with them. The Yamaguchi-gumi, which contemporarily might be regarded as a large arm of the Yakuza, or at best a quasi-legal business organization, even have a prominent office building in downtown Tokyo. They're well-entrenched in business and politics, even today.

Both Ito and Yamagata were brilliant men, but they vied for power:

Japan emerged from the Russo-Japanese War with control of Korea and south Manchuria. Yamagata was triumphant. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to broker the peace in return for a secret accord. Japan could have Korea if the United States could have the Philippines.

Ito was sent to Korea as Japan's reluctant viceroy. He was bullied into it. When he initially resisted plans for seizing Korea and Manchuria, Black Ocean boss Toyama and three beefy thugs arrived at Ito's front door in Tokyo where Toyama shouted, "I don't know whether there is going to be a beating or not." According to the official history of the secret society, Toyama's conversation with Ito that day "determined the decision for war."

The great Ito's time had now passed and his days were numbered. Japan now belonged to Yamagata. Half a century earlier, Ito had been the right man in the right place at the right time. His Choshu masters had given him the job of stage-managing the emperor, of conjuring up the administrative organs of the new Japan and of making them look modern and democratic. He had done all this and more. Thanks to Ito's stagecraft, the new state looked dynamic, and the imperial family gained domestic adoration and international stature. But his showmanship also cloaked the intrigues of Yamagata and others who were only interested in personal power. They despised Ito's sophistication, his Western ideas, his endless talk, his grandly negotiated solutions. They perceived that Japan had no real friends in the world, only enemies. They wanted to turn the clock back. They arranged for Ito to be sent as proconsul to Korea, where he would be a very large target.

As an old man, Ito ad lost his elasticity and even his sense of humor. In his dealings with Korean officials he was overbearing. Yamagata arranged for the Black Dragon (another underworld secret society) boss, Uchida, to be on Ito's staff, accompanied by a large contingent of thugs. Secretly financed from army funds, Uchida's thugs murdered 18,000 Koreans during the next three years under the pretext of suppressing rebels. Disgusted by Yamagata's meddling, Ito resigned as proconsul in 1909. But as his enemy (Yamagata) intended all along, Ito was widely seen as Korea's oppressor.

On a trip to Manchuria that winter to ease tension with the Russians, Ito arrived in Harbin on a cold, blustery morning under snow clouds. Before descending from the train, he put on a great-coat, then stepped down to greet the Russian finance minister. Shots rang out behind him and Ito crumbled. Fifteen armed Koreans had been allowed on to the platform by Yamagata's security men. When Ito was told the identity of his young assassin, his last words were, "What a fool!"

In Japan, Ito's murder was used to rouse popular support for Korea's annexation. His body was taken back to Tokyo where he was given a state funeral.

These events happened comparatively recently, really - and are still going on today, in Japan. It makes me wonder what kind of -- no, I mean, the extent of -- political intrigue that occurs in modern-day Washington. I suspect more than we might possibly imagine.

My only complaints about the book so far are that I think it requires you to have some knowledge and appreciation about Japan to really get a lot out of it. Also, there are so many names to remember - it's almost like a Frank Herbert novel. But to the minority with even a passing interest in Japanese politics, intrigue, and the events leading up to and surrounding the Pacific War, the book is well worth the read.