Emperor Showa valued peace and international cooperation, yet as a constitutional monarch he generally followed cabinet decisions and refrained from taking direct political initiative except in extraordinary circumstances.
Drawing on an essay by Sukehiro Hirakawa, this article examines how defects in the Meiji Constitution divided military and civilian authority, enabled the Army to obstruct cabinet formation, and allowed Japan’s major newspapers to criticize politicians and bureaucrats while avoiding open criticism of the military.

June 22, 2020
Yet while editorials in the major newspapers sometimes voiced complaints against the government, the Diet, and the bureaucracy, they never openly expressed dissatisfaction with the military.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
The Defects of the Meiji Constitution
I would also like to discuss the relationship between that war and Emperor Showa.
There was the May 15 Incident of 1932.
There was the February 26 Incident of 1936.
From around that time, Japan had become internally unstable.
Although the major newspapers condemned the young officers who murdered senior statesmen in their political pages, their social pages praised them as patriots of the Showa Restoration.
Of course, there were also voices among the public expressing anger at the violent actions of the young officers.
Because Emperor Showa was committed to peace and gave priority to international cooperation, he was concerned about and cautioned against the conspiracies and reckless actions of military forces in the field that had continued since the cabinet of Giichi Tanaka.
Nevertheless, because he was a constitutional monarch who faithfully observed the Constitution, he followed the decisions of the cabinet.
Except in such circumstances as the February 26 Incident, when the cabinet ceased to function, or the decision to end the war, when the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War was divided into two opposing camps, the Emperor did not take an active initiative.
Or rather, he believed that he should not do so.
However, when senior statesmen who were “the Emperor’s trusted limbs” were murdered, he showed no willingness to pardon the actions of the rebel forces.
The Emperor’s position became known among the Japanese people from around the time of the February 26 Incident.
Among adults, complaints about the tyranny of the military were whispered.
This was because, by the second decade of the Showa era, it had become impossible even to form a cabinet in Japan without the consent of the Army.
The military was at fault, but the original cause lay in defects within the Meiji Constitution, which had created a situation in Japan “as though there were two countries—one country consisting of the Army and another consisting of everyone else.” Note 9.
Because the Meiji Constitution, Note 10, was not revised at an early stage, the military and the government acted separately from one another, turning Japan into an unseemly state incapable of coordinating its decisions.
For that reason, when independent actions by military forces in the field succeeded, as they did during the Manchurian Incident, the people cheered the military operations.
However, there was already dissatisfaction at the time with the Army for expanding the front on the Chinese continent without any prospect of bringing the conflict to a conclusion.
Yet while editorials in the major newspapers sometimes voiced complaints against the government, the Diet, and the bureaucracy, they never openly expressed dissatisfaction with the military.
Before and during the war, they refrained from making critical remarks about the Japanese military.
After the war, they showed the same restraint toward the American military.
To be continued.