Word: emperor
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Washington has been less forthright. The last Tokyo Cabinet shake-up brought into office a group of conservatives influenced by such old friends of the Emperor as Prince Konoye and Baron Hiranuma. Is a split developing between the businessmen and nobles, on the one hand, and the Armyj chiefs, on the other? If so, the split is bound to weaken Japan's war effort. Washington does not want to heal the breach by an overt propaganda attack on the Emperor...
...Japan is defeated militarily, what then? There are two points of view. One, to which Washington lends an attentive ear, has been best expressed by Under Secretary of State Joseph Clark Grew, who for ten years was U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo. He compares Japanese society to a hive, the Emperor to the queen bee. There comes a time when the queen is thrust out. The hive follows her to its new home. "It was not the queen which made the decision; yet, if one were to remove the queen from the swarm, the hive would disintegrate...
...implications of this analogy are clear. The Emperor institution (in the form of Hirohito or, if he is too discredited, Crown Prince Akihito) must be retained to save the Japanese nation from disintegration. The Emperor institution must be used to prepare the way for a nonaggressive, nontotalitarian state...
...second school of thought abruptly dismisses the idea that the Emperor can ever be used to further democracy in Japan. Even a divine Rescript cannot bridge the gulf that separates western political liberalism from Shinto totalitarianism...
...starting the war in the East, pledged a battle alone "to smash the enemy, to avenge fallen Germany." An emergency Cabinet meeting drafted an emergency statement: the collapse of the Nazi Reich "will not bring the slightest change" in Japan's determination to fight to the finish. Emperor Hirohito gave the statement his divine approval...