-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: The Yamato Dynasty Sterling Seagrave�1999 All rights reserved. Bantam Press Transworld Publishers Random House ISBN 0593 04482 7 pps. 426 -- First Edition -- In-print ----- Available in UK, Austrailia, New Zealand and South Africa. Not available in US. US folk may order from amazonuk.com, though. Om K ----- PROLOGUE EMPEROR MEETS SHOGUN JUST BEFORE 10 A.M. ON 27 SEPTEMBER 1945, A MAROON 1930 ROLLS--Royce with a canvas-covered top whispered out through the Sakurada Gate of the imperial palace in Tokyo and crossed the bridge over its broad moat, followed by three black Daimlers. Japanese pedestrians knew who it was, turned and bowed deeply. Maroon was a colour reserved for the emperor's cars. Emperor Hirohito was on his way to a fateful first meeting with Japan's new shogun, General Douglas MacArthur. Sitting on jump seats in the Rolls facing Hirohito � by custom no subordinate could share the emperor's seat � were his most senior adviser, Marquis Kido, and a trusted English-language interpreter. In the Daimlers were other members of Hirohito's inner council. The emperor's personal physician accompanied him wherever he went, but on this occasion he had a particular reason: Hirohito was suffering deep depression made worse by jaundice. Since Japan's surrender the previous month, the emperor had slept badly, and today in particular his hands trembled more than usual. How different from four years earlier, when he had shaken with rage. Then, in September 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor, the emperor had been given a detailed briefing on the High Command's plans for a surprise attack on the United States Navy base and a coordinated lightning conquest of Southeast Asia. Hirohito had asked the army chief of staff, General Sugiyama, how long it would take. Circumspectly, the general had replied that the conquest of Southeast Asia would take only three months. (It took precisely one week longer than that.) But he did not give an estimate for the subduing of America. Testily, Hirohito pointed out that when the war with China had begun in 1937, General Sugiyama had said it would be over in a month, yet it had dragged on for four years and was far from over in the autumn of 1941. Sugiyama protested that China was vast. This increased Hirohito's anger. 'If you call the Chinese hinterland vast, would you not describe the Pacific as even more immense?' The general squirmed with embarrassment, and sucked his breath in sharply. Hirohito was calmed only by repeated assurances that a diplomatic settlement with America would get first priority after Japan got the upper hand. In this, his ministers lied, for both the Imperial Army and Navy by then were committed to total war, with no serious intention of quitting while they were ahead. Only a major last-minute concession from America such as dropping its oil embargo of Japan could have altered events, and everyone knew this was unlikely. A formal declaration of war had been prepared long in advance, with the understanding that, 'due to a most unfortunate last-minute delay in the English translation', it would not be delivered in Washington until after the attack on Pearl Harbor had already begun. The mood in all four cars was sombre. What could be seen of Tokyo made it worse. The Navy Ministry was nothing but rubble. Bomb craters and bombed-out cars were everywhere. During the Pacific War, 1.5 million Japanese men died in combat. Some 8 million Japanese civilians were killed or wounded, and 2.5 million homes in Japan were destroyed or badly damaged. During the biggest of these B-29 raids on Japan, when 1,700 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on Tokyo, 100,000 people were killed in a single day and 125,000 homes destroyed. Although the war was now over, it was estimated that 10 million Japanese might yet starve to death. The population of Tokyo had fallen from 6.75 million to about 3 million, many living in shanties among the ruins. Osaka and other cities were teeming with disabled veterans, homeless children, desperate women and vagrants. In Tokyo each day, trucks hauled piles of bodies to crematoriums. At night, the homeless crowded into subways to sleep. Others froze to death sleeping rough in Ueno Park. Many died of malnutrition, and tuberculosis was epidemic. As the cars sped towards the US embassy compound, there was no in police escort to halt traffic. To put his visitor at a further disadvantage, MacArthu r had deliberately avoided assigning an escort to the motorcade. When the traffic light at Toranomon intersection turned red, cross traffic made it necessary for the emperor's Rolls to come to a stop like all the other cars. Nobody in the Daimlers could remember that ever happening before. MacArthur had been in Japan only a month. He had arrived at Atsugi Air Base from the Philippines at the end of August, two weeks after Japan's surrender. By then, only 6,000 American troops had arrived to take control of the Tokyo area, where there were still some 2 million fully armed Japanese soldiers. The emperor's radio appeal to all Japanese to lay down their arms had been effective. But there was no certainty that fighting would not flare up again. Bluff was all important. More so than anyone realized. During those first weeks in Japan, MacArthur had been pressed repeatedly to summon the emperor to a private meeting, to resolve certain delicate matters, but MacArthur chose to wait. Conservative policy-makers in Washington, including former president Herbert Hoover, had come to the conclusion that it was crucial for America's future security interests in East Asia to get the behind-the-scenes cooperation of the imperial family, and of powerful financial leaders in Japan � but not to be seen in public as making any concessions to Hirohito, whose image in the West was as bad as that of General Tojo Hideki, Japan's wartime prime minister. Together, Tojo and Hirohito were widely seen as the driving forces behind the war. Hirohito's name came at or near the top of all lists of prospective war criminals who were to be tried by Allied military tribunals. Through intermediaries, MacArthur let it be known that the emperor must take the initiative, and ask for a meeting with him. Secret negotiations went on through MacArthur's military secretary and former chief of psychological warfare, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, who had unusual private channels in Japan. Persuaded by his own family and advisers that such a meeting would be critical to the preservation of the dynasty, Hirohito responded by arranging through Foreign Minister Yoshida to see MacArthur on 27 September. Because of the sensitive nature of the meeting, it would take place privately in the general's living quarters at the embassy, rather than at occupation headquarters in the old Dal Ichi Bank building opposite the imperial palace. Despite the unusual secrecy that still surrounds this meeting, both in America and Japan, the superficial details are well known. After passing the Okura Museum, the motorcade turned into the embassy gate and rolled up the drive to the ambassador's residence, where MacArthur was living with his wife and son. General Fellers, waiting with other US Army officers at the entrance portico, stepped out to meet the Rolls as it came to a halt. As Hirohito and Marquis Kido emerged, the Americans saw with some amusement that the emperor had abandoned his customary military uniform and was dressed in 1930s diplomatic attire, with a formal black tall-coat, wing-collar, striped cravat and striped trousers. He was carrying a silk top hat, which he now put squarely on his head, as coached by his chamberlains. At five feet three inches, Hirohito looked small and frail next to the Americans. His moustache and wire-rimmed glasses did nothing to disguise his fragility. He seemed bewildered and tense. General Fellers saluted, then, to put the emperor at ease, smiled warmly and reached out to shake his hand, saying, 'Welcome, sir!' Hirohito responded uncertainly by putting out his own hand, an uncharacteristic gesture that would have astonished most Japanese. Not even his most senior adviser, Marquis Kido, ever shook the emperor's hand. As Fellers guided the emperor into the building, Kido tried to stay with them but another American officer politely but firmly asked the marquis to step to one side. Only Hirohito's interpreter was allowed to follow. The rest of the emperor's entourage was herded with Kido into a conference room for their own discussions with Fellers and others. While waiting for the motorcade to arrive, General MacArthur had been moving furniture nervously a few inches this way and that in the deeply carpeted reception room. In front of a fireplace, he put a side chair next to a big chesterfield where he planned to sit with the emperor. This side chair, MacArthur explained to his personal physician, Dr Roger Egeberg, was there in case the emperor brought along an interpreter, to give him time to think before answering questions. The emperor would not really need an interpreter, MacArthur explained, because as a young man he had gone to school in America and spoke good English. (This amazing remark, recorded at the time by Dr Egeberg, reveals how little MacArthur really knew about the emperor of Japan, his enemy for the past four years; he may have been thinking of Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Chichibu, who had studied in Britain and spoke elegant English.) When word came that Hirohito had arrived, MacArthur stepped to the door to greet him, calling him 'Your Majesty' and giving him an unsmiling but businesslike handshake. In contrast to the emperor's formal attire, the general had deliberately chosen to wear khaki 'suntans' with no hat, no ribbons or insignia of rank, and his collar open wide. A well-briefed US Army photographer was waiting and, as agreed in advance, took three official photos of the general and the emperor. Hirohito stood stiffly at attention, face frozen, arms rigid at his sides, while MacArthur towered over him, at ease, legs apart, arms akimbo and hands jauntily on his hips. This was one of MacArthur's favourite poses. He was a theatrical man who had staged dramatic publicity photographs throughout the war, repeatedly wading ashore at island after island while his favourite photographer took dozens of exposures to get the effect just right. As they were shown to their seats before the fire, Hirohito chose to sit alone in the side chair, so the general ended up on the chesterfield with the interpreter. This annoyed MacArthur and he badly wanted to smoke, so he leaned forward to offer the emperor an American cigarette. Although Hirohito did not smoke, he was so determined to be positive that he accepted anyway, his hand trembling as the general lit it. He smoked the entire cigarette, without inhaling, while MacArthur puffed at his corncob pipe, and this gave both men a chance to gather their thoughts. A Japanese servant brought coffee rather than the traditional pot of very hot green tea, but the emperor did not touch it. There was speculation later that he was warned to consume nothing for fear of poison, but it is more likely that he was simply too tense to pick up a cup. MacArthur, who was then 65, opened the conversation by remarking that he had been received by Hirohito's father in 1906, at the close of the Russo-Japanese War. During the forty-minute conversation, the emperor's interpreter made selective notes. His job was to see that whatever the emperor said on the spur of the moment was put so skilfully in English that no nuance could be misconstrued, and conformed with policy decisions made at the palace before the meeting. One copy of his notes later went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another into the emperor's personal files. Although MacArthur and Hirohito had agreed that their talk would be kept absolutely secret, years later in his memoirs MacArthur quoted the emperor as saying: 'I bear sole responsibility for whatever happened, for whatever incidents occurred in conjunction with Japan's prosecution of the war. Furthermore, I bear direct and sole responsibility for every action taken in Japan's name by every commander, every soldier, and every politician. As for my own life, whatever judgment you choose to make, it does not matter to me. I bear sole responsibility.' MacArthur grandly concluded that the emperor's willingness to assume responsibility for everything that had gone wrong made him unquestionably 'the first gentleman of Japan'. In December 1975, a Japanese magazine published what it said were the interpreter's notes. The two versions did not agree. The interpreter's notes made no mention of Hirohito offering to take 'sole responsibility'. The Japanese people would have liked very much for Hirohito to take some responsibility for the war, and were deeply disappointed when he did not. It is unlikely that a statement of such historic significance would be left out of the written record. Exactly what Hirohito said to MacArthur remains a mystery, unless we believe the general's memory. Given his confusion about Hirohito going to school in America, that is risky. But, as we will see, this was not the only time MacArthur (and others) put words in Hirohito's mouth. Ten minutes after their meeting was supposed to end, MacArthur and the emperor came out with happy looks on their faces. The general was introduced to the emperor's aides and then escorted Hirohito to his car. On his way back to the palace, the emperor seemed relieved and talked much more than usual. He slept better as well. He was certain now that he could escape arrest or prosecution for war crimes. What was it that put smiles on their faces so soon after a war without mercy, and the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Two people who eavesdropped on the meeting were the general's wife Jean and Dr Egeberg, who � with MacArthur's full knowledge � hid behind the red velvet drapes in the reception hall, but later claimed that they only overheard an occasional phrase. We can eavesdrop in a different way. To read the bare details recounted so far is to see this great turning point with only one eye, in flat two dimensions. We can now open the other eye, for today we know what else was going on. It is a surprising and deeply disturbing story. The general's chief concern that day, quite naturally, was to ensure his own public success as America's proconsul in Japan, which he hoped would lead to his being chosen by the Republican Party as its candidate for president in the 1948 elections. Becoming president of the United States had obsessed MacArthur since the early 1930s, and had shaped many of his actions. Liberal Washington policy-makers, particularly New Deal Democrats, wanted to alter the postwar power structure of Japan permanently to make it more democratic. MacArthur was a reactionary conservative, not a liberal by any measure, yet he had to appear to be carrying out Washington's orders. He and his inner circle of advisers, including Herbert Hoover, concluded that his success in occupied Japan would depend upon manipulating Hirohito. The way he went about this would have to be kept absolutely secret because of the methods to be used and the tradeoffs involved. He would have to frighten the emperor with the threat of being indicted, prosecuted and hanged (or shot), and then offer to protect him in exchange for his secret collusion. Using carrot and stick, and outright extortion, he would induce Hirohito to give them inside knowledge of Japan's financial cliques and other vital power relationships, so that key people could be put under pressure, deals could be made and Japan's postwar power structure could be rearranged to suit MacArthur's conservative political and financial backers, rather than American liberals. During those first weeks after the surrender, great effort already was being made to distance the emperor from direct responsibility, for Pearl Harbor in particular, shifting the blame entirely to General Tojo. This had been decided in secret talks between conservative American and Japanese envoys in Switzerland, long before the war ended. To rescue Hirohito, everyone would have to be persuaded that the emperor was 'a captive of Tojo and the militarists' who were 'exclusively responsible for the war'. In keeping with this strategy, two days before seeing MacArthur, Hirohito said in written replies to questions from a New York Times correspondent that Tojo was responsible for the government's failure to communicate Japan's declaration of war to Washington prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. This was untrue; the delay was a ruse they had all agreed upon in September, long in advance of the attack. At no time during the remaining forty-four years of his life did Hirohito ever publicly accept personal responsibility for the war, whether for starting it (which angered Americans) or for losing it (which angered Japanese). Marquis Kido became so distressed by Hirohito's refusal to accept responsibility that he privately advised the emperor to abdicate rather than disgrace his ancestors. Hirohito grieved over the tragedy that had befallen his country, but felt no responsibility whatever for the failure of his military commanders, who had assured him of victory repeatedly only to let him down. Although the ultimate decision to continue the war for two more years remained with Hirohito, he saw it as their failure, not his. The rescue of Hirohito would have to be drawn out over several years. If he was exonerated too quickly, he could slip off the hook. Whenever he became obstinate, evasive or hesitant, MacArthur would frighten him with word of new demands for his prosecution, from Congress, from the Allies or � most dreaded of all � from the Kremlin. To be sure, this extortion would have to be carried out with great tact and subtlety. But MacArthur had long experience of being vague and oblique. Indeed, as they left the embassy in the Rolls, Hirohito told Marquis Kido that MacArthur had said: 'I believe Your Majesty knows about the people and important men in the [Japanese] political world, so from now on, I would like to have your advice on various matters.' In what follows, we will unfold new evidence of the massive fraud that ensued, who was involved, and how major witnesses including General Tojo himself were suborned by MacArthur's staff and forced to falsify their testimony and perjure themselves before the international war crimes tribunal. At least one general was hanged for a crime at which he was not even present, forced to take the fall to protect Hirohito's uncle Prince Asaka, the butcher of Nanking, who escaped punishment of any kind. But it did not stop there. Soon matters got completely out of hand. Mistakenly, MacArthur and his inner circle thought it was enough to take the emperor himself hostage. They got it wrong. Real power in Japan remained in the shadows. He could squeeze the emperor like a lemon till his pips squeaked, but the real power-brokers felt no pain. They watched from the wings and from backstage, and figured out what MacArthur was really after. The secret exorcism of Hirohito involved a lot of horse trading, which was skilfully used by Japanese negotiators. Once they had participated with MacArthur and his aides in perjuring witnesses to rescue the emperor, they could pressure MacArthur repeatedly for the rescue of others. This led first to the exoneration of the whole imperial family, then to that of the entire financial and industrial elite of Japan (a group that had been the Allies' explicit target for purge and prosecution). All the big Japanese banks and zaibatsu financial cliques that had bankrolled the war were originally to be dissolved, but were let off. They were excused from paying war reparations on the argument that Japan was 'bankrupt'. While Germany paid some � 30 billion in compensation and reparations over the years, Japan paid only �2 billion. Even today, Germany continues this programme of compensation and reparations, but Japan dug in its heels and said it was all settled in 1951. Instead of encouraging the democratization of Japan and the growth of alternative political parties, MacArthur thwarted opposition groups, clamped down on postwar labour unrest and jailed any and all demonstrators. Next came freedom for all the indicted war criminals locked up in Sugamo Prison, including underworld figures who had participated in the looting of billions of dollars in treasure from a dozen conquered countries. Finally, there was exoneration for all the 220,000 people who were initially blacklisted by America for their roles in the war. It may not have been MacArthur's original intention to let all these people off, but once the emperor's advisers realized what the general wanted, it was a simple matter to take advantage, patiently, step by step. Extortion can work both ways. Most Japanese learned about the private meeting between the emperor and the general only when MacArthur insisted on publication of the photo in every major newspaper in Japan. This caused an uproar because it made the formally attired emperor look absurdly subordinate to the rudely casual American. Previously only carefully vetted photographers had been able to take pictures of the emperor, using a telephoto lens from a distance, showing only the upper part of his body and never showing him in relation to others. Many Japanese still believed that if they looked directly into the emperor's face they would be blinded. The photograph of Hirohito with MacArthur was a masterful political stroke, of a sort. But it backfired when MacArthur's efforts to manipulate Hirohito were turned to Japan's advantage. When the transition government in Tokyo objected to the publication of the photo, MacArthur flexed his muscles by repealing all of Japan's restrictions on publishing. This was followed by a directive on civil liberties that effectively outlawed all of Japan's secret police and-internal security organs. Prince Higashikuni, another uncle of the emperor, resigned his post as head of the transition government in protest. MacArthur did this to show what he could do when provoked. The last thing he wanted was to open the way for genuine civil liberties, which would invite political change in Japan. That would be entirely too radical. From his point of view, anyone who was not ultra-right was a communist. We can only guess at what repercussions there might have been in Japan, America and Europe if the real nature of the secret meeting with Hirohito had become known to the general public. It is a cliche that in Asia things are rarely what they seem. Nobody puts more effort into deception than the Japanese. So it is hardly surprising that MacArthur and his staff thought they were doing the manipulating while they were being manipulated. Their mistake arose from being fascinated by the similarities between Japan and the West, when they should have focused on the differences. The differences were dangerous. The similarities were disarming, reassuring and seductive. Take, for example, the Quaker network in Japan. It comes as a surprise that Quakers, despite their small number, are sprinkled throughout Japanese society, and have remarkable leverage. Let us begin with General Bonner Fellers. He was not just the greeter in the embassy portico. Fellers was an unusual army officer with interesting connections. Through his family he had ties to a Japanese diplomat, Terasaki Hidenari, who was riding in one of the black Daimlers in Hirohito's motorcade on that day. Both Fellers and Terasaki were intelligence officers. 'Terry' Terasaki had held the senior post of first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Washington at the time of Pearl Harbor. He and his American wife and daughter were interned, swapped for other diplomats, then spent the war years miserably in Japan. Now Terasaki had been transferred to the imperial Household organization, which took care of all practical matters for the emperor and the imperial family. Essentially, his job was to act as Hirohito's personal liaison with General Fellers and General MacArthur. Terry was perfect for the job. He loved America and knew it well. Bonner Fellers was a cousin of Terry's American wife, Gwen Harold, who came from a long line of Quakers. Bonner Fellers had attended a Quaker college in Indiana, where he became friends with Japanese Quaker exchange students. Two of these, Watanabe Yuri and Kawaii Michiko, became leading educators in Japan and had palace connections. In postwar Tokyo they were helping Fellers carry out his secret mission. In short, Fellers and Terasaki were part of a network of Quakers and near-Quakers that reached from Herbert Hoover at one end deep into the imperial palace at the other, to the personal entourage of Hirohito's mother, Dowager Empress Sadako, and other members of the imperial family. A number of Japanese men in the ruling hierarchy, who were themselves Buddhist or Shinto, had Christian wives. So the inner core of an aggressively warlike Buddhist-Shinto state, in the volatile 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, had a nucleus of Christians, many of them Quaker pacifists. They influenced England and America greatly between the wars. They did not have enough power to prevent the war, but they tried to stop it. Some of these palace officials used their links to Swiss, British and American Quakers to send secret peace feelers to London and Washington by way of Switzerland. After the war, they intervened in every way they could to save the imperial family from humiliation and prosecution as war criminals. While this may seem commendable in some respects, it had a dark side. The same network was used very cynically by Bonner Fellers and others to achieve MacArthur's personal objectives, and those of his conservative backers. On the Allied side, this quasi-Christian network was a cat's cradle of powerful connections. One of its leaders was US Undersecretary Of State Joseph Grew, the prewar US ambassador to Japan. Grew had longstanding ties to General Fellers and to former president Herbert Hoover. Grew's wife, Alice Perry Grew, was a descendant of Commodore Matthew Perry, who had opened Japan to Western commerce in the nineteenth century. As a child, Alice attended school in Tokyo, became fluent in Japanese and was intimate friends with aristocratic Japanese girls, one of whom grew up to become Hirohito's mother. So Alice and Joseph Grew had unique access to aristocratic circles in Japan. One of Grew's cousins, Jane Norton Grew, was married to Jack Morgan, son of J. Pierpont Morgan, whose banking empire was known in Japan as 'the Morgan zaibatsu'. Morgan Bank made huge loans to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, and helped many big American corporations like General Electric to make major investments there. So Grew, part of the extended Morgan family, also enjoyed a very cosy reception in the Japanese financial world. While he served as US ambassador to Japan in the 1930s, Grew associated with Japanese men and women who were reassuringly like the Boston Brahmins of his own childhood. With so many Quakers and other Christians among them, Grew felt he was dealing with the Asian equivalent of New England Puritans. The Japan he saw was neat and tidy, freshly scrubbed. The Japanese financial elite he met were so crisp, elegant and beautifully mannered that he failed to see � or chose not to see � the profound institutional corruption that was deeply embedded in the Japanese system (and remains embedded to this day). At the centre of the Yamato dynasty during the first half of the twentieth century was Empress Sadako, Hirohito's mother. A tiny woman of great character, she was an invisible force in imperial affairs from the 1910s to her death in the early 1950s. In a matrilineal society like Japan, an emperor's mother had leverage that can never be overestimated. Although she was a Fujiwara, one of the top families that provided brides for emperors over many centuries, Sadako had been raised in the countryside by Japanese Quakers. She was said to read the Bible every day, and there are strong indications that she was a practising Christian, although the Imperial Household kept this carefully obscure. For thirty years, the dowager empress surrounded herself with Japanese Quakers and other Christians, men and women, adding them to her retinue and discreetly arranging for them to be appointed to senior posts in the Imperial Household and in the government bureaucracy. That there were a surprising number of Christians like Sadako in the upper strata of society does not, however, alter the fact that they were first of all Japanese, with overriding loyalties to their own society. This was largely a network of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, unnoticed by Japanese men, committed to altruistic values and to pacifism at a time when Japan was becoming increasingly violent and militaristic. That this secret network was composed largely of women is not surprising. In ancient times Japan was often ruled by women. Historically, the Yamato dynasty was founded in the first century AD by a 'witch' named Himiko, a priestess with unusual powers who had her court in the Yamato river valley near what is today Kyoto. Chinese court records from that period state clearly that Japan was ruled by women at the time. Himiko was thought to be descended from a line of priests and priestesses going back some six hundred years. Those earlier prehistoric roots of the dynasty were in the warm southern island of Kyushu. It was there, according to legend, that the sun goddess Amaterasu first created the imperial line that has led 'unbroken' down 2,500 years to Emperor Akihito and Crown Prince Naruhito. The Yamato people ruled by Himiko were not the earliest known inhabitants of Japan. Those were the more primitive Ainu, whose origins are still unknown. The Yamato people were more recent arrivals. Immigrants from China first brought wet rice cultivation to the lowlands of Kyushu, then more warlike immigrants from Korea settled along the mountainous north shore. Over several centuries of conflict these two immigrant cultures mingled, and their most powerful clans sorted out a feudal pecking order. In search of better farm land they gradually migrated eastwards up the Inland Sea to the big fertile plain around what are now Kyoto and Osaka on the main island of Honshu, pushing back the Ainu and taking over their land. There, by the Yamato river, the dynasty coalesced in the first century around Himiko, the leader of the strongest clan. Himiko was succeeded by a line of emperors who also served as high priests of Shinto -'the way of the gods'. But women continued to have strong influence, sometimes ruling alone, sometimes acting as regents for young emperors or as marital pawns in power struggles. This ended in the twelfth century when a military dictatorship was set up by the shoguns, or generalissimos, of rival samurai clans. The imperial family then went into a long eclipse. The survival of the Yamato dynasty was often in jeopardy. The gravest challenges came from the emperor's own relatives, who found ways to gain control of the throne and turn the emperor into a puppet. For most of its history, as a consequence, Japan's imperial family has had more spiritual influence than temporal power. At times emperors even were reduced to selling noodles in the street. Many were packed off to Buddhist monasteries, others were exiled to remote islands, while several were simply murdered. Powerless as they often were, emperors provided supernatural cover for the tyranny of invisible men behind the throne. No group portrait of Japan's imperial family can begin without quickly sketching these other faces in the background. From the time of Himiko to the Meiji Restoration in 1868, five families gained extraordinary power over the throne: the Soga, Fujiwara, Minamoto, Ashikaga and Tokugawa families. The Soga and Fuliwara were wealthy noble families who married their daughters to emperors and then ruled indirectly as regents for the offspring, generation after generation. They hired samurai mercenaries to protect their interests, and these mercenary armies gradually grew into powerful military establishments. The other three families � Minamoto, Ashikaga and Tokugawa � were samurai warrior clans who set themselves up as dictators starting in the twelfth century, and ruled Japan for the next 800 years, usually treating the imperial family with contempt or Ignoring it entirely. Shoguns were subject to the same kind of manipulation. Typically, the first one or two shoguns in each epoch were shrewd, tough men who ruled by violence and treachery, but they were succeeded by weaklings who were manipulated by their own regents, wives and advisers. The Soga family in the fifth century were the first in Japan to perfect the technique of using the emperor as a front man, deflecting attention from themselves so they could operate in complete secrecy. For three centuries the Soga fended off all rivals, then were toppled and exterminated by the Fujiwara. Although the style of the Fujiwara was different, they used the same Soga devices to stay in control. To hide their manipulation, corruption and murder, it was essential to preserve the imperial family as a cosmetic device. As Sons of Heaven, emperors could be seen as pure and sacred. Nobody dared to criticize an emperor because to do so would be a sacrilege, punishable by beheading. For the same reason, nobody dared to criticize the emperor's advisers. This allowed the men behind the throne to be as corrupt as they wanted, without fear of being challenged or overthrown. Danger usually came only from palace rivals, who tried to gain the upper hand by conspiracy, by bribery or poison, or by putting their own daughters in the imperial bedchamber. The Fujiwara used every means available to destroy initiative on the part of each new emperor, so that a passive state of mind became inbred over the centuries. It was extraordinarily cunning to put the emperor in a position to enjoy all the benefits of authority with few of the responsibilities. To resist would require unusual moral courage. Few had it. Most emperors were awash in luxury, with hundreds of sexual companions, and all the food, drink and entertainment they could consume. Emperors continued to have tremendous inferential power, but they rarely sought to use it without clearing their actions in advance with whoever happened to be the current strongman. For the better part of those eight centuries under the shoguns, most Japanese were unaware that emperors still existed, and only a small circle of court nobles continued to regard them as divine. When the shoguns were toppled in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan's new strongmen gained control of the current Son of Heaven, a boy of 15, and announced that the whole country had 'submitted to rule by the divine emperor'. This was sheer bluff. Even today, there are huge credibility gaps in Japan. If there were a Japanese version of the fable The Emperor's New Clothes, the tailor would be executed for exposing the truth, the little child for speaking the truth and the peasantry for seeing the truth. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 was not a revolution. Japan has yet to experience a true social revolution, although one may be about to begin. During the Meiji coup, real power simply was transferred from one ruthless backstage clique to another, and the boy emperor was moved from Kyoto to the shogun's palace in Tokyo. They made sure that the emperor appeared to rule, but he was only decoration. just as with the Soga and Fujiwara, real power remains to this day in the hands of invisible men behind the throne, heading rival power cliques. No other royal family is so guarded. Seclusion is imperative because the imperial family is � in a certain sense � held hostage by the cliques that actually rule Japan. Who controls and manipulates the emperor controls and manipulates the people. This isolation prevents rival forces from taking similar advantage. The emperor has magical, supernatural influence as a divine icon � he is 'above the clouds'. Because he is a demigod, he cannot be criticized. By extension this applies to his advisers and his government, so they too are protected. For most of Japan's history, lese-majesty has been punished by beheading. Even constructive criticism was impossible. The sacred hid the profane. >From time to time, liberals or other 'deviants' have tried to separate the emperor from the strongmen, so that the government could be criticized without implying criticism of the emperor. But the Meiji strategists who designed the modern Japanese system anticipated this, and skilfully identified the emperor with every decision and every aspect of the regime. It was a Meiji Restoration, a Meiji government, the imperial will, an imperial decree, the imperial army, a decision of the throne, 'a dynasty unbroken since time immemorial'. Because of this mystification, only Hirohito became well known outside Japan. Very little is known of his father and mother, his brothers and uncles, or any other members of the family. Now, thanks to the gradual accumulation of scholarship, plus the recent discovery and publication of family diaries, it is possible to fit many tiny pixels together into a collective portrait of all five generations � four emperors and a crown prince � in the modern period. Even the Meiji emperor remains obscure, his real personality hidden by image-building. In public he was an operatic figure. In private he was completely different, an indolent and self-indulgent man who loved women, horses and flowers, and drinking the night away with his favourites. Keeping him under control was difficult. Because Meiji was so troublesome, his ministers decided to take a different approach with his children and grandchildren. Great effort was put into making them compliant, completely dependent upon their privy councillors and chamberlains. The Imperial Household staff grew to number more than ten thousand. They failed in the raising of Meiji's son and heir, the Taisho emperor. Most historians write Taisho off as a misbegotten clown not deserving serious consideration. They say he was mentally unbalanced and a drunken womanizer. When Taisho is compared to his father, 'the great Meiji emperor', he is always found wanting. But these are false comparisons, because the father's image was as grossly inflated as the son's image is cruelly diminished. On closer study, Taisho turns out to be refreshingly different. The caricature of him as a lunatic libertine was largely the invention of General Yamagata, who turned Japan into a secret police state and launched it on its binge of militarism. Yamagata glorified the throne, while diminishing the emperor. By calculated leaks to the press, he destroyed the reputation of the young emperor, and was stopped only by the steadfast counter-attack of Empress Sadako and her allies. Moving behind the scenes, she was able to humiliate the old general in a contest over the choice of a bride for Crown Prince Hirohito. Yamagata was trying to plant his own female agent in the palace bedchamber. When he failed, the general went into terminal decline. But his ruthless, cold-blooded style poisoned Japan for the rest of the twentieth century. By the 1920s, the imperial myth had become dogma. Thought police were at every level of society to inform on neighbours and family. It could cost your life to raise an eyebrow, and all critics of the regime were jailed or executed under harsh new laws. In this atmosphere of terror � Asian in style but reminiscent of Europe's Inquisition � the militarists emerged and were able to take control of Japan in partnership with big business and financial cliques. Hirohito was raised to be different from his grandfather and his father. To avoid the indolence of Meiji and the audacity of Taisho, the Imperial Household oversupervised Hirohito, giving him a life- long dependence on advisers and complicating the process of decision-making. This had tragic consequences in World War II when Hirohito waited interminably for Japan to regain the upper hand, so he could sue for peace from a position of advantage. His reign was the longest in Japan's history, and the most contro-versial. Emperor Akihito's resistance to similar manipulation led him to marry outside the aristocracy, and to identify more with the Japanese people. Crown Prince Naruhito has continued this refreshing trend, bringing into the palace as his bride the most independent princess since Sadako. They have their enemies. Japanese conservatives block and frustrate both Empress Michiko and Crown Princess Masako, to keep them from developing the leverage wielded by Hirohito's mother. Both women have been the target of vicious backbiting. While it may still be dangerous to criticize the emperor, it is open season on the empress and crown princess. Recent scandals reveal that money � not Shinto � is the state religion of Japan. Because greed is so fundamental a religion, we will examine how it replaced politics as the main motive force behind the Meiji Restoration, and how greed steered the ship of state into secret alliances, war and disaster. In the 1920s, the promising Anglo-Japanese diplomatic alliance was replaced by a vast web of private financial alliances between America and Japan. On the advice of Morgan Bank's Thomas Lamont, America made huge private loans and investments. When the economic bubble burst � first in Japan and then on Wall Street in 1929 � it became apparent that much of this prosperity was built on unsecured sweetheart deals. In America, this resulted in major reforms of the banking and financial sectors, and radical social programmes to help the common man. None of this happened in Japan, where all energy and resources went into rescuing the financial elite from their own folly. Nothing was done to ease the desperation of the people, and hundreds of thousands of girls were sold into prostitution by families unable to feed themselves. Instead of reforming the system, Japan's power cliques arrested and executed critics and reformers. Today, seventy years later, the same financial corruption has brought Japan to its worst economic crisis yet. During World War II, Japan's militarism became a heady mixture of glory and greed as the army and navy embarked upon a binge of conquest and looting, from which Tokyo could not extricate itself. We know a lot about the conquest, but amazingly little about the looting. In the Japanese holocaust, millions were killed and billions were stolen, but the loot vanished. One of the great mysteries of World War II is what happened to the billions of dollars' worth of treasure confiscated by the Japanese Army from a dozen conquered countries. The answer involves the imperial family, so it is an essential part of this biography. Recognizing after the Battle of Midway in June 1942 that the war was going badly, a number of imperial princes devoted the rest of the war to hiding the loot ingeniously to give Japan a hedge against disaster. This systematic campaign of looting and hiding treasure, codenamed Golden Lily, was under the direct supervision of Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu. Until now, he was assumed to have spent the war on medical leave from the army, recuperating from tuberculosis at a country estate beneath Mount Fuji, nursed by his wife. In fact, he travelled all over occupied China and Southeast Asia supervising the collection of plunder, using hospital ships to carry much of it to Manila for onward shipment to Japan. From early 1943 till mid-1945 he was in the Philippines overseeing the hiding of this loot in bunkers, in vaults beneath old Spanish churches and in vast underground tunnel complexes. Golden Lily stripped Asia of currency, gold, platinum, silver, gems, jewellery, art treasures and religious artefacts, including more than a dozen solid gold Buddhas, each weighing more than a ton. According to Japanese who participated, some $100 billion worth of gold and gems was hidden at more than two hundred sites in the Philippines when it became physically impossible to move the loot to Japan. We have corroborated accounts from eyewitnesses and participants, including Japanese, and members of Prince Chichibu's personal retinue. Faced with Allied invasion of the Home Islands, and the total destruction of Japan's heritage, Emperor Hirohito was finally persuaded to opt for a quick surrender. This was a bitter pill, but it allowed Japan to survive the war with the bulk of its assets intact, including many billions of dollars of loot that would help put the nation back on its feet. Since the war, the gold hidden in a number of sites in the Philippines has been recovered by teams from Japan and other countries', and these recoveries have been verified. A Swiss court disclosed in 1997 that one of the solid gold Buddhas is now in a bank vault beneath Zurich's Kloten Airport, along with a large quantity of other gold bullion recovered by former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and held in Marcos family accounts. In 1997, a Japanese investigative team from Asahi Television was taken to an underground vault in Luzon where they filmed (and took core samples of) 1,800 gold bars worth $150 million � gold that was stolen from Sumatra, Cambodia and Burma. This gold had been melted down in occupied Malaya, recast and marked in accordance with the accounting procedures of Golden Lily, and then sent to Manila on fake Japanese hospital ships. Treasure looted from China was taken to Japan by way of Korea and hidden in underground vaults in the mountains near Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. Gold bullion aboard ships at the time of surrender in 1945 was sunk in Tokyo Bay and other points along the coast, and some of it has since been recovered. Thanks to Prince Chichibu and Golden Lily, when the US occupation ended in 1952 'bankrupt' Japan was able to begin a 'miraculous' recovery, on its way to becoming the world's secondrichest economy. War reparations were dodged, the imperial family evaded punishment, and Japan's financial elite resumed control as if the war had not occurred. Claims that Japan and its imperial family were left virtually penniless by the war would therefore appear to be completely false. War loot also provided a huge pool of black money used by postwar politicians to corrupt Japan's bureaucracy, bringing the country full circle again at the millennium to the verge of economic collapse. Although there have been many investigations of Nazi war loot, there has never been a formal investigation of the looting of Asia by the Japanese, nor has Japan ever been forced to account for the plunder. The amounts involved dwarf the Nazi looting many times over. The truth about Japan's looting of Asia puts a completely different spin on history. Emperor Akihito, who was only a child during the war, has begun the process of putting the imperial family in tune with the people of Japan rather than with the power elite. He has effectively cut the umbilical to heaven. But he and his family are still hostages to the myth contrived during the Meiji Restoration long ago. Today, instead of being manipulated by Meiji oligarchs, or Hirohito militarists, the imperial family is window-dressing for financial manipulators who milk Japan like a cash cow. There is a glass ceiling separating 90 per cent of the population from the elite and their militant disciples. The long-suffering Japanese people have now discovered that even their meritocracy has been corrupted. There are signs that the long-awaited social revolution has begun. Ordinary people are voting with their money by not spending it. Rather than keeping it in Japanese banks, they are investing it abroad. Like a huge supertanker, however, the ship of state will take a long time to slow and turn around. So this is a double-image, this family portrait, of those on the throne and significant others looming behind it. What was true under the Soga and Fujiwara remains true today � real power in Tokyo is in the hands of secretive financial cliques, bureaucratic factions, political kingmakers and outlaws whose roles are little known and poorly understood. They remain hidden because they have learned that 'all trouble comes from the mouth' and 'when you cease being invisible, you take the first step towards defeat'. The public role of the imperial family is like a kabuki troupe. Their highly stylized drama unfolds with magnificently costumed and masked players moving around a curious figure draped from head to toe in black. This dark figure, while clearly observed by everyone, is never acknowledged by actors or audience. By tradition he is totally invisible, and therefore does not exist. He is the stage manager, moving the scenery and furniture, altering the set as the drama goes on around him. He is called the kuromaku, the man behind the black veil, and he goes back long before kabuki to the ancient puppet theatre of Japan, where audiences could clearly see the puppetmaster and his assistants. Japan's imperial family is comprehensible only if we understand the part played by the kuromaku. Life at the top in Tokyo involves many veiled players. The emperor and his family are surrounded by them. pps. 1-21 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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