Originally published on July 9, 2019.
This passage, based on a dialogue between Takashi Tsutsumi and Kōshi Kubo published in Hanada, examines the fundamental issues surrounding the Emperor and imperial diplomacy.
It discusses John Foster Dulles’s attempt at “Emperor diplomacy” during the Korean War, Yukio Mishima’s metaphor that “the Emperor is a joker,” the position of the imperial institution under the postwar Constitution, and the danger of political power exploiting the imperial house.
It is a highly suggestive piece that also considers both the possibilities and the limits of Reiwa-era imperial diplomacy, as well as the necessity of constitutional revision.

2019-07-09
Once there was something like this.
The Korean War broke out, and Dulles asked Shigeru Yoshida to rearm Japan.
That was because he wanted to make use of Japan’s military strength.
Yoshida kept evading the issue and would not comply at all.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Emperor Is a Joker
Tsutsumi
People speak of imperial diplomacy, but is it really desirable for the Imperial House to come too far to the front.
Once there was something like this.
The Korean War broke out, and Dulles asked Shigeru Yoshida to rearm Japan.
That was because he wanted to make use of Japan’s military strength.
Yoshida kept evading the issue and would not comply at all.
So Dulles gathered men close to Emperor Showa, such as Yasumasa Matsudaira and Takeshi Watanabe, a Finance Ministry bureaucrat, and through them attempted “Emperor diplomacy.”
It was a kind of dual diplomacy.
At that time Dulles said before them:
“I will convey President Truman’s message.
‘Our America will remain stationed in Japan as a victor’s right.
However, although we will remain stationed, we assume no obligation to defend Japan.’
That is the President’s message.”
This is a story that appears in Watanabe’s memoirs.
“We will remain stationed, but assume no obligation of defense.”
That later became the Yoshida Security Treaty, which Shigeru Yoshida signed alone.
What revised that into “if you are stationed here, then you bear the obligation of defense” was the 1960 Security Treaty concluded by Nobusuke Kishi, and there was no inconvenience in that at all.
Be that as it may, it is entirely possible that people like Dulles, weighing the Emperor and the Prime Minister against one another and scheming “dual diplomacy,” may continue to appear both inside and outside Japan.
That is so even though, by the Constitution, the Emperor has been stripped of all political authority.
Once Yukio Mishima said to me, “The Emperor is a joker.”
He meant an almighty card in a game of cards.
I conveyed those words to Ambassador Reischauer and asked, “What do you think, Ambassador?”
Reischauer replied, “I think so too.
In the future as well, when Japan is struck by crisis, he will fulfill that role.”
That joker can fulfill that role in the decisive moment only because he remains behind the bamboo blind.
Is it really desirable for him to come constantly to the front and behave like the British royal family.
Using the expression “mass-emperor system,” Mishima repeatedly voiced deep concern about that very thing.
Kubo
That is exactly why Mishima was disliked by the Emperor（笑）。
According to Monthly Asahi, when the Emperor Emeritus was a student at Gakushuin, he reportedly told his friends things like, “Mr. XXX is a nationalist and an unpleasant politician,” and “I dislike what ○○ writes.”
The blacked-out portions were self-censored by Asahi, and Kenichi Matsumoto later went out of his way to add that they were “Nakasone and Mishima.”
The stance of the Emperor Emeritus in his Crown Prince days, stepping one step outside the “place of nothingness” where the Emperor ought originally to be, “without self and without action,” and actively asserting the “self,” later continued in such statements as “I will defend the new Constitution to the death” (Asahi Journal), his statement at the post-enthronement audience ceremony that he would “uphold the Constitution of Japan,” and his unilateral remarks about “abdication while living,” all of which became a source of concern for successive administrations.
For example, I once heard from a government leader that in May 1990, when South Korean President Roh Tae-woo visited Japan, what the government guarded against and feared most regarding the Emperor’s words was the possibility that Emperor Akihito might ad-lib something onto the words that had already been so carefully composed.
That is why it is certainly true that Mr. Tsutsumi’s concern cannot be dispelled even in Reiwa-era imperial diplomacy.
However, regarding Trump’s visit to Japan this time, I found it interesting to observe that the positive side of Japan’s unique national system, one that holds as its symbol an Emperor with two thousand years of history, came into play, making visible something like the sacredness of the Imperial House that calms a raging god, and that Abe’s political diplomacy and imperial diplomacy played in splendid harmony.
But the root of this problem lies not with the Imperial House, but with the side of politics, that is, secular power.
In other words, without touching the fundamental defect of the postwar peace Constitution, namely the lack of national independence, which means without truly establishing for ourselves a political主体 based on popular sovereignty, they push “imperial diplomacy” to the fore and lean upon it, and even if it fails, they attempt to use the current constitutional system, under which “the Emperor is not held accountable” and the people cannot hold the Imperial House responsible for the failure of a political decision, as a cloak to conceal their own indecision and evade political responsibility.
It is a particularly pernicious political exploitation of the Emperor.
A prime example would be the visit of the Emperor to China pushed forward by Kiichi Miyazawa.
After all, that imperial visit to China was in effect a “supra-partisan” collaboration between the Tanaka faction, then the largest force within the Liberal Democratic Party, namely Takeshita and Kanemaru, who believed that “for the sake of economic development, it is acceptable to make use of the Emperor even if that means deviating from the acts of state prescribed in Article 4 of the Constitution,” and most of the opposition parties, the postwar pro-Constitution and pacifist forces, who supported the Emperor’s visit to China on the grounds that it was “for protecting, maintaining, and developing peace in Asia, and for defending the pacifist Constitution.”
Astonishingly, for them, achieving that “lofty objective” and promoting Japan-China friendship were one and the same thing.
What I especially want to emphasize here is that, as Ango Sakaguchi wrote in A Further Essay on Decadence, constitutional revision is both indispensable and urgent in order for the political side to skillfully make use of “the imperial system and the Imperial House, works produced by Japan, tools produced by Japan.”
To be continued.