Talk:Hirohito

Naming convention

This article should open with "Emperor Showa," and then the name he's better-known by among English speakers, in line with his native cultural practice. GOLDIEM J (talk) 19:43, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

i was just about to put a comment saying the same thing, I honestly agree Camillz (talk) 13:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 September 2023

In the section "Foreign honours", "Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS)" needs changing to "Fellow the Royal Society (FRS)". Hirohito was elected as a Royal Fellow under Statute 12 of the Society in 1971. He was never a Foreign Member. See https://catalogues.royalsociety.org/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Persons&id=NA2021&pos=1 and https://catalogues.royalsociety.org/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=EC%2f1971%2f37. 88.106.154.89 (talk) 19:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

 Done Pinchme123 (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Legacy section does not actually discuss his legacy.

The legacy section only informs the read about what honours he received and when, and nothing about what his legacy actually is, and the "see also" section only leads to the "Japanese Nationalism" article. 92.236.211.53 (talk) 19:22, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28/1/2024

Request to change his infobox name to his posthumous name (Emperor Showa), the same as his predecessors. 2400:4050:8841:EE00:C9BB:8BD4:1028:7A91 (talk) 08:42, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done Please take a look at the assorted discussions, both above and linked above to archives, about the use of his name. Besides that, the posthumous name is given in the infobox, it's simply that the infobox uses the most common name for this man as its title. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 09:26, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 March 2024

Legacy and Honors section:

On 31 October 1975, a press conference was held immediately after returning to the United States after visiting Japan.[142][143]

Correct to say her returned to Japan after visiting US. (I think it is a simple error where the countries were swapped.) Sbken (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done.--Ulises Laertíada (talk) 18:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

what do you think about him

what do you think about him 2601:704:501:BB80:2947:5DCA:A408:8164 (talk) 23:11, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Not the right place for such questions. See WP:NOTFORUM. Keivan.f^Talk 21:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 March 2024

I suggest that in the first section, fourth paragraph, the phrase "the Emperor formally renounced his divinity" be linked to the article regarding that event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity_Declaration) Devmo (talk) 06:00, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. DrKay (talk) 17:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Addition of a year

As the article is semi-protected, I cannot edit it myself and would therefore ask someone who can to add the year 1941 to the sentence which currently reads "On 5 September, Prime Minister Konoe informally submitted a draft of the decision to Hirohito". The last year mentioned before this is 1940, and then this sentence is followed by several paragraphs containing seven more dates without a year. These seven dates also belong to 1941, but are not recognisable as such because the year 1941 is stated nowhere before. 89.12.2.139 (talk) 15:00, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Usage of Bix.

I see that Herbert Bix's book is cited throughout the article in numerous places, and this gives me a small amount of concern. For instance, this review of the book does state He also makes controversial statements about Hirohito without providing any evidence at all, and significant stretches of his narrative are highly questionable. His portrayal of Hirohito as wanting war with China in 1937 and 1938 is just one example. and Bix exaggerates Hirohito's importance. His own narrative account is at odds with his emphasis on Hirohito as the key decision maker because it shows the great extent to which the emperor was constrained:... In this context, Hirohito was far less a free agent than Bix implies, and while he was scarcely a puppet, he was not the puppet master that Bix makes him out to be. [1] as well as this review that notes Other historians, examining more or less the same material, reached different conclusions. Stephen S. Large, in his Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan (Routledge. 1992), found that the emperor was involved in the war as an informed observer and as a sanctioner of military plans, but he never initiated, decided, or dictated policy. Hata Ikuhiko, in his Showa tennō itsutsu no ketsudan (Bungei Shunjü, 1994), claimed that during the years 1937-45 Hirohito made only one important decision, that of ending the war. Peter Wetzler, in his recent book Hirohito and War: Imperial Tradition and Military Decision Making in Prewar Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 1998), pointed out that in accordance with the political tradition of Japan, the emperor was only one of several participants in the decision-making process. Therefore he had to be consulted but could not dictate to others. Wetzler dismisses the theory that Hirohito was a frustrated peace lover, but he rejects Bix's claim (as presented in the 1992 article) that the emperor led Japan in war. On the basis of the wartime records, he concludes that Hirohito was well informed on military planning, was often consulted, occasionally made suggestions, but at no time did he determine strategy in the manner of a Western commander in chief. [2]

The fact that Bix was demonstrably contested and seen in reviews as something of a fringe/minority viewpoint, isn't it a bit WP:UNDUE to have Bix represented without including the sources that disagree with Bix's interpretation per WP:WEIGHT? For instance, Historians such as Herbert Bix, Akira Fujiwara, Peter Wetzler in a paragraph that ends with American historian Herbert P. Bix said that Emperor Hirohito might have been the prime mover behind most of Japan's military aggression during the Shōwa era. makes it appear like Wetzler and Bix are in total agreement when Wetzler has, as demonstrated in the review above, rejected Bix's claims. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 03:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Bix's book on Hirohito won a Pulitzer Prize and received considerable acclaim from other historians. [3][4] the reviews have said that Bix challenged the theory that Hirohito was a passive figure manipulated by those around him. Both reviews noted that the book is well-researched and backed by an impressive body of evidence supporting his claims. Given this information, his view is not a fringe one and should not be dismissed. I believe his statements should be organized into one pargraph and attributed appropriately.

The sentence, "Historians such as Herbert Bix, Akira Fujiwara, Peter Wetzler in a paragraph that ends with American historian Herbert P. Bix said that Emperor Hirohito might have been the prime mover behind most of Japan's military aggression during the Shōwa era." should probably be reworded to reflect the information provided by Stephen S. Large.

The entry i made below titled "Response to edit" is also relevant to this discussion. LilAhok (talk) 06:17, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and that's all well and good. However, that doesn't change the fact that the reviews I noted state several issues with the book and with some of Bix's claims that seem to be firmly in a minority opinion even among historians who do believe Hirohito was culpable. The reviews I posted above specifically note that Bix makes controversial claims and that a number of historians disagree with the extent to which Bix represents Hirohito's direct control over the affairs of the war. Currently, however, the article pairs together at least one of those historians with Bix and gives the impression that Wetzler supports the concluding statement that Emperor Hirohito might have been the prime mover behind most of Japan's military aggression during the Shōwa era, which doesn't mesh with the fact that Peter Wetzler rejected Bix's notion that Hirohito was so heavily involved. In his book Hirohito and War: Imperial Tradition and Military Decision Making in Prewar Japan Peter Wetzler writes it is equally tenuous to make him into a “Fighting Generalissimo” and assert, as the historian Herbert Bix does, that “it was the emperor, more than anyone else, who delayed Japan’s surrender" (p.180). Brocade River Poems (She/They) 11:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I really don't think that the fact that this article cites Professor Bix's book on many occasions should be a cause for concern (even if only a small one) for anyone. In addition to the two positive reviews cited by LilAhok, the value of this book is recognized by other experts, such as Kenneth J. Ruoff, Director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University, who writes in his books The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945-1995 (2001, p.127) and Japan's Imperial House in the Postwar Era. 1945-2019 (2020, p. 136) that "If 'war responsibility' means participating in the policymaking process that led to the commencement and prosecution of an aggressive war (for many Japanese, the key issue was the responsibility for defeat, not complicity in an aggressive war), then there is growing evidence that Emperor Hirohito played a considerable role in this area.Thanks to Herbert Bix's biography of Hirohito, much of this evidence is now available to the English-language reader."

Of course, no one (not even Bix, of course) gets to have the final word on the unresolved debate about the extent of Hirohito's personal involvement in the war, and of course there are many authors who do not believe that he went so far as to be considered the mastermind of the war, beyond being an active participant in it. But that does not disqualify the book as a reliable source for many aspects of the article, as clearly demonstrated by the position of Professor Forrest E. Morgan, who, starting from a generally critical point of view towards Bix's opinion, recognizes the merit of his work insofar as "Bix rightly dispels the emperor’s popular image as a helpless, symbolic leader, who was a virtual puppet of Imperial Japan’s military oligarchs and unaware of how his government was prosecuting the war. Drawing from previously unexamined documents, he ably demonstrates that the emperor was fully aware of Japan’s political behavior and intimately involved in military planning even at the operational level. Based on Bix’s evidence, it is clear that the emperor was an active participant in Japan’s decision making process; however, Bix overstates that evidence when he protrays Hirohito as the driving force behind those decisions. Japanese decision making was a corporate process, versus the dominant-leader model that Bix depiction implies. Hirohito was not powerless, but he was not omnipotent either. Hirohito was a nationalist with expansionist ambitions, as was nearly every other political actor in Japan’s imperial government…”

Finally, the paragraph that is flagged as potentially confusing actually states what is attributed to Hara and Wetzler on the one hand, and what is attributed to Bix on the other. However, if the separation is not clear enough, Wetzler's opinion on the extent of Hiorhito's role can be added after that of Bix without any problem.Ulises Laertíada (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Response to edit

I’d like to address an edit made on October 26, 2024, which noted, "This section makes it sound like there's an academic consensus when everything preceding it says there isn't. I do not think a single statement by a historian in a news article about the diary of an aide is enough to verify this statement." [5]

I’m responding here to avoid any edit warring.

One issue with some of the sources listed in Hirohito's wikipedia article is their age; many are from the 1990s and early/late 2000s, which can limit their relevance. The New York Times article from 2018 provides a more recent perspective.

From the NYT article, Jennifer Lind, an associate professor at Dartmouth College and an expert on Japanese war memory, stated, "Over the years, these different pieces of evidence have trickled out and historians have amassed this picture of culpability and how he was reflecting on that. This is another piece of the puzzle that very much confirms that the picture that was taking place before, which is that he was extremely culpable, and after the war he was devastated about this."

Lind stated that the diary referenced in the article is only one of many pieces of evidence historians have used to assess Hirohito's culpability. As the article was published in 2018, her mention of evidence that has "trickled out" encompasses all pertinent findings up to that point. The historians' assessment of Hirohito's culpability in the war is not based solely on a single diary entry.

Considering Lind’s statement that "...historians have amassed this picture of culpability and how he was reflecting on that" into account, Lind’s comment was about the general consensus among historians, rather than just her own perspective. Since the article was published in 2018, it offers a more contemporary view of Hirohito's culpability.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/world/asia/japan-hirohito-war-diary.html

Just wanted to note real quickly that you've forgotten to sign this. That not withstanding, it's well and great for a single historian in an article to state historians have amassed this picture of culpability and the article can certainly state "Historian Jennifer Lind states historians have...", but writing it as a definitive statement in wikivoice would doubtless necessitate scholarly sourcing to demonstrate that the consensus is, in fact, that the majority of historians think this. Again, I am not convinced that a single remark by a single historian in a news piece is substantial enough to verify such an unattributed claim as a fact in Wikivoice, not least of all when a journal article published in 2023 writes the extent of his responsibility in the war has remained intensely debated among predominantly Western scholars [6] as well as this article from 2017 which states Appendix A does not hint, even obliquely, at the on-going scholarly debate over the emperor’s culpability.[7]. That is at least two academic sources that depict the matter of Hirohito's culpability as still being debated, one from 2017 and one from 2023. Hence my point that while Lind's statement is in a reliable source and they are a subject matter expert, making that claim in Wikivoice should probably have higher quality sources to substantiate it.--Brocade River Poems (She/They) 12:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, in my opinion, I think it would be good to point out the following:

• First of all, the issue of the extent of Hirohito's responsibility in the war is unquestionably still a matter of debate among historians, and unless a lot of crucial documentation that is not yet available to researchers is declassified, I very much doubt that it can be resolved anytime soon.
• However, some authors point out that in recent years some critical positions have been gaining ground and are now in the majority.
• So, in addition to Jennifer Lind's words, we can cite Peter Wetzler's book Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War: The Collapse of an Empire (2020, p.175) that "During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials the testimony offered by Tôjô Hideki, and gladly accepted by US officials, succeeded in exonerating the Shôwa Emperor of war guilt. The debate, however, about Hirohito's participation in political and military affairs during the Second World War -whether or not (at first) and to what extent (later)- still continues. It will animate authors for years to come. Now most historians acknowledge that the Emperor was deeply involved, like all nation-state leaders at that time."

That is, Jennifer Lind stated in 2018 that "Over the years, these different pieces of evidence have trickled out and historians have amassed this picture of culpability and how he was reflecting on that." and Peter Wetzler add in 2020 that "Now most historians acknowledge that the Emperor was deeply involved, like all nation-state leaders at that time."

Also, Wetzler points out that the debate around Hirohito's role evolved from Did Hirohito take part or not in political and military affairs during the war? to To what extent was Hirohito involved in political and military affairs during the war?

In short, regardless of how far Hirohito's involvement in the war went, Lind and Wetzler seem to agree that most historians think he was at least as deeply involved as the other nation-state leaders at the time and he should be considered culpable on these terms.Ulises Laertíada (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)