9-9-14
Japan’s Emperor Hirohito cautioned against second world war, says new official history
Breaking Newstags: Japan, WW II, Emperor Hirohito
Emperor Hirohito, the demi-god at the apex of the Japanese state when it waged bloody war across Asia, cautioned against conflict but celebrated military success, according to the long-awaited official history of his reign, released on Tuesday.
The mammoth 61-volume set, which has taken 24 years to compile at a cost to the Japanese taxpayer of 230 million yen (HK$16.92 million) reveals little new hard evidence about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century.
But it offers a largely sympathetic view of the man considered by some to have played a pivotal role in Japan’s march to the second world war, and by others as the helpless puppet of an out-of-control military state.
The annals, produced by the Imperial Household Agency, show how in the lead-up to Japan’s surprise attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Hirohito warned against a “reckless war” that would make him feel “deeply sorry for my imperial ancestors.”
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Chair of Florida Charter School Board on Firing of Principal: About Policy, Not David Statue
- Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
- When Right Wingers Struggle with Defining "Woke" it Shows they Oppose Pursuing Equality
- Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
- The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective
- Excerpt: How Apartheid South Africa Tried to Create a Libertarian Utopia
- Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly
- Kendi: "Anti-woke" Part of Backlash Against Antiracist Protest Movements
- Monica Muñoz Martinez Honored for Truth-Telling in Texas History