The People's Emperor ─ Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945-1995

Few institutions are as well suited as the monarchy to provide a window on modern Japan. Since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japanese supporters as well as opponents of the throne have used it to define themselves and their nation. After Japan's defeat in 1945, the American occupation authorities forced the Japanese to re-examine the relationship between the monarchy and the nation by imposing a new, "democratic" constitution on Japan that stripped the emperor of his powers and redefined the institution as a symbol. Despite the many changes, however, the monarchy, which is also a family, remains significant both as a political and as a cultural institution.
In this, the first full-length English-language study of the monarchy in Postwar Japan, Kenneth J. Ruoff examines not only its reform during the Occupation (l945-52), but also, more important, its evolution in the decades since the Japanese regained the power to shape their monarchy and polity. In order to understand the monarchy's function in contemporary Japan, the author analyzes the role of individual emperors in shaping the institution; interpretations of the emperor's new constitutional position as symbol; the emperor's intersection with politics; the issue of the emperor's and the nation's responsibility for the war; nationalistic movements in support of cultural symbols of the monarchy; and the remaking of the once-sacrosanct throne into a "monarchy of the masses" that is embedded in the postwar culture of democracy.

Kenneth J. Ruoff is Assistant Professor of Japanese History at Portland State University.