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University of Washington Tacoma

2020

Emperor of Japan

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A Reexamination Of Emperor Hirohito's Military And Political Role In Wartime Japan, 1926-1945, Kazuaki Suhama Nov 2020

A Reexamination Of Emperor Hirohito's Military And Political Role In Wartime Japan, 1926-1945, Kazuaki Suhama

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

This paper discusses and reexamines Emperor Hirohito’s degree of responsibility in Japan’s military aggression in China during the late 1920s and 1930s to the attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States during World War II. Scholars have long debated the extent of Hirohito’s role as a warmonger due to his ambiguous position as a head of state and the lack of primary evidence displaying his actions and thoughts on the war. This paper will utilize the Constitution of the Empire of Japan of 1889 (informally known as the Meiji Constitution) which delineated the emperor’s supreme position in the government …