FOUR STAGES OF THE JAPANESE KOKUTAI [NATIONAL ESSENCE]
John S. Brownlee,
Department of History,
University of Toronto,
JSAC Conference,
University of British Columbia,
October 2000.

The most original political idea ever developed in Japan was that of the Kokutai[National Essence]. It served from the Meiji Restoration to 1945 as an inspiring andunifying ideology, and provided the national political framework within which to place
the system of constitutional monarchy borrowed from the West under the Meiji
Constitution of 1889. It solves many of the puzzles of understanding that Constitution.
However, unlike the idea of democracy which has universal appeal, the idea ofthe Kokutai
was useful only in Japan, and contributed nothing whatever to thedevelopment of political ideas anywhere else in the world, even when imperial Japan
tried to export it to subject countries. In addition, its fundamental irrationalism is apallingand offensive to many, though this is a characteristic shared by many other politicalsystems based on religious ideas. I shall not dwell on these major defects, but will
explain the development and applications of Kokutai.
Stage One: Shinron [New Theses, 1825] by Aizawa Seishisai.
Aizawa Seishisai (1781-1863) of the imperial loyalist Mito han made the firstextensive statement of Kokutai in his 1825 work Shinron [New Theses]. All the
ingredients for the system had long been at hand, in the form of traditional ideas about
Japan and the emperors, and latterly in Tokugawa Confucian thought about
government and society. Aizawa was the first to pull them all together into coherent
form, though with much invention and exaggeration. This was unremarkable, sinceinvention and exaggeration had been practiced in Japanese political thought since
Japan’s first histories Kojiki [Record of Ancient Matters, 712 ] and Nihon Shoki[Chronicles of Japan, 720]
1
Let us quickly summarize the basic traditional ideas. According to Kojiki and
Nihon Shoki, Japan had been founded by the deities, eight
million of them, who dwelt in the Plain of High Heaven. The greatest of them wasAmaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, who sent down envoys to pacify the unruly
nature and inhabitants of Japan. Later she also sent down her Heavenly Grandchild tobegin the dynasty of emperors, vowing to protect the line forever, coeval with Heaven
and Earth. He bore the mirror, jewel, and sword that became the symbols of theimperial line and its indwelling virtues, which emanated necessarily into the politicalsystem. His fourth generation descendant was the first human Emperor Jinmu,meaning Divine Warrior (r. 660-585 B.C.) (1) The imperial line descended in an
unbroken line, as vowed by the Sun Goddess, and according to some it continues tothe present Heisei Emperor (r. 1989- ), 125th in the succession.
All this was taken as historical fact throughout Japanese history. Although a few
historians briefly challenged some aspects in the 20th century, the imperial state saw tothe universal education of the people in the myths as historical truth. The ideas werequite simple, though like all religious ideas they were treated as profound andmysterious truths for 1,500 years, which guaranteed their status as such. Ceremonies
at government offices, palaces, and Shinto shrines throughout the ages ensured theirperpetuation. Confucian rational scholars offered some criticisms in the Tokugawa
period (1603-1868), but they were sharply answered by the Kokugakusha [National
Scholars], the greatest of whom was Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801). Norinaga inparticular appropriated the superb scholarly methods of the Confucians, and turned
them into the service of the national myths. He established Kojiki as an utterly
unimpeachable source about Japan, rendering it through his scholarship into a work of
marvellous revealed truth, characterized by intelligence and consistency.
Heconsidered it the standard for all Japanese behaviour - political, social, religious. With
Norinaga, the values of ancient times were reified into eternal truths, and no-one evercomplained about the inflexibility and intellectual poverty of fixing ancient times as the
final, unchanging source of Japanese values. However, Norinaga did not develop asystematic political theory.
Aizawa Seishisai did so. He came upon these ideas in Japan’s first modern
time of crisis, created by the advent of the great Western imperial
2
powers into East Asia. He understood the problem as one of national unity, above all asa spiritual problem. Perceiving that the Western powers possessed great unity andstrength, he attributed them to Christianity, holding the religion to be the central
unifying and motivating force of2
those nations. He observed that in Japan this unity had existed in ancient times, in theform of saisei itchi, the unity of government and religion. It was originally establishedby the Sun Goddess, and the knack of maintaining this unity was passed on to herdescendants, the Emperors. She established the virtues of the three imperial regalia of
mirror, jewel, and sword, and began the great ceremonies of worship that were carriedon by the Emperors, which automatically brought about unity and harmony. There werealso sage Emperors in the Chinese mould, such as Emperor Nintoku (313-99). He
observed the poverty of his people and gave them a tax remission for three years, andthereby won the trust and affection of the people, so that Emperor and people wereone. (2) As put by Bob Wakabayashi, “This national spiritual unity - the voluntary
affection and trust the commoners felt for their rulers - was what Aizawa basicallymeant by kokutai in New Theses.” (3) This was a devising of ideology, and had nonecessary relation to the social reality of the brutal Tokugawa governing system.
Aizawa also claimed that it was the Sun Goddess who had devised the fundamentalsocial values generally thought of as Confucian, especially loyalty and filial piety.

Thus the term National Essence entered the language, and its earliest meaning
was spiritual, having no reference of systems of political organization or law. Its
comprehensive nature is evident, permitting Aizawa to bring together traditional
Japanese and Chinese Confucian political thought.
It is remarkable that this farrago of myths, inventions, and exaggerations was not
immediately attacked by Confucian scholars whp resented the seizure of their values by
the Sun Goddess, or intellectuals who had been exposed to corrosive Westernrationalism. Instead it was welcomed as a superb expression of the National Essence,and it served without modification through the Meiji Restoration, providing theideological basis for the new state. In 1868, few acknowledged their intellectual debt to
Aizawa Seishisai, but everyone could state the essential ingedients of the National
Essence.

3
Stage Two: The Liberal Interpretations of Katô Hiroyuki and Fukuzawa Yukichi
Katô Hiroyuki (1836-1916) and Fukuzawa Yukichi (1830-1901) both were activein the 1870’s, the era of Bunmei Kaika [Civilization and Enlightenment]. They weremembers of the famous Meiji Six Society, which promoted the values and institutions
and practices of the advanced countries of the West. In its short-lived journal Meiroku
Zasshi [Journal of the Meiji Six Society] the members tackled every aspect ofJapanese society in light of the superior institutions of the West. They fully believed in
the superiority of Western civilization, unabashedly recognized the backwardness ofJapanese society, and urged progress upon the Japanese nation. Katô and Fukuzawa
are remarkable because they wrote the first and last original, and liberal, interpretationsof the National Essence. After them, liberal interpretations were smothered by the
resurgence of conservatism in the 1880’s and 1890’s.
Katô Hiroyuki is the more interesting, because in his later career he was wellknown as a crusty conservative president of Tokyo Imperial University, who fully
supported the imperial state as expressed in the Meiji Constitution, and viciously
attacked Christianity as antithetical to state purposes. But back in the 1870’s, under the
influence of contemporary English and French liberal thought, he held that the National
Essence consisted in natural human rights.

Katô Hiroyuki: The National Essence and Natural Human Rights(a) Natural Human Rights
Katô Hiroyuki was one of the few who understood the social contract theory of
the state.
His early thought in the 1860’s and 1870’s was also distinguished by his rareability to understand the taxonomy of states, which had eluded all the Confucians, whothought monarchy was the only possible type of government. In Rikken Seitai Ryaku

[Outline of Constitutional Government, 1868] he presented a systematic outline of thegeneral theory of government, discussing limited or constitutional monarchies as well as
4democratic republics, the separation of powers in states, and civil liberties. (5) This
lifted him far above the contemporary nationalists who could not see beyond theabsolutist Emperor of Japan. He also introduced a fresh idea about the nature of the
National Essence, advocating natural rights as its essential nature. This was the firstand last time that such a claim was made about the National Essence, and it could
only have occurred in the 1870’s era of Civilization and Enlightenment.
Katô’s Kokutai Shinron [New Theory of the National Essence, 1874] waswritten specifically to attack traditional Asian theories of government, and the theories
of Japanese National Scholars in particular. He began with a fairly vicious review of
Asian theories of the state, in which the land and the people are the possession of theruler. The theory also holds that the ruler is always virtuous. This, says Katô, is notalways so. He described the unthinking service of the people to the state envisioned by
the National Scholars as the behaviour of cattle and horses. Taking recourse to thetheory of natural rights developed in the West, Katô went on to develop a theory of thestate in constitutional monarchies, which he thought the most appropriate form forJapan, which after all had a monarchy, not yet bound by a constitution.
Though he was influenced by German political theory, his discussion in Kokutai
Shinron in 1874 seems mostly to reflect classic English liberalism, which held that the
only purpose of the state is to protect the life, liberty, and property of the people, andnothing else. When it fails to do so, it is no longer a legitimate state. Katô was preparedto face up to5
the implications of this position, as he held in chapter five that the people have the rightto resist bad government, like the American colonies which resisted allegedly bad
English government in the American Revolution.
He did not long persist in his liberal positions. Like many other Japanese
intellectuals, he moved across the political landscape from left to right, becoming a firm
upholder of the authoritarian state of the late Meiji period. He said this happened
because of a change in thought, derived from fresh learning. Following his early
exposure to classical liberalism and natural rights theory, he encountered the theory ofnatural evolution and Social Darwinism, and came to hold that human rights are notnatural, but are gained by the strong. They extinguish the weak. Katô returned to theclassical theory of the Kokutai.

5(b) The National Essence and the Form of Government

In chapter seven of Kokutai Shinron Katô made a distinction between Kokutai,
the National Essence, and seitai, the form of government. Whether or not he was thefirst to think of them does not matter. They became the key terms for the discussion ofpolitical and constitutional theory until 1945, for better and for worse.
The Kokutai-seitai distinction enabled conservatives to identify clearly as
Kokutai, National Essence, the “native Japanese”, eternal, and immutable aspects of
their polity, derived from history, tradition, and custom, and focused on the Emperor.
The form of government, Seitai, a secondary concept, then consisted of the historicalarrangements for the exercise of political authority.
Seitai, the form of government, was historically contingent and changed throughtime. Japan had experienced in succession direct rule by the Emperors in ancient
times, then the rule of the Fujiwara Regents, then seven hundred years of rule by
Shoguns, followed by the allegedly direct rule of the Emperors again after the Meiji
Restoration. Each was a seitai, a form of government. In this understanding, themodern system of government under the Meiji Constitution, derived this time fromforeign sources, was nothing more than another form of Japanese government, a newseitai. The Constitution was nothing fundamental.

Fukuzawa Yukichi: The Last Sensible Interpretation of the National Essence

In Outline of a Theory of Civilization, Fukuzawa held more explicitly than KatôHiroyuki, who was vague on the subject, that the concept of National Essence did not
apply solely to Japan; every country has one, China. India, all the countries of the West.
This simple claim deflated the importance of the discussion, for most conservatives up
to 1945, and especially Shintoists, believed without much thought on the matter that
only Japan had a National Essence.

6
Fukuzawa’s next point about the National Essence was completely unintelligible
in the current discussion of his time. The National Essence, he said, could change:
The national structure of a nation is not something immutable. It is subject toconsiderable change. It can unite or divide, expand or contract, or even vanish
entirely.
Its existence or disappearance does not depend upon suchconsiderations as language, religion, and the like. (6)This contradicted everything that was known about the National Essence. Starting with
Motoori Norinaga and the National Scholars, and proceeding
through Aizawa Seishisai and all the patriots who carred out the Meiji Restoration,
everyone believed that the fundamental characteristics of the National Essence were
found in ancient times. Nothing that had happened to the Japanese in history everchanged the National Essence, not the importation of Chinese civilization, thebreakdown of the ancient imperial state, feudalism, the sixteenth century contact with
the West, the opening of Japan and the advent of Civilization and Enlightenment, thegeneral improvement in material and cultural life since ancient times, the vast
accumulation of knowledge through the ages.
It is important to understand this point about Japanese political ideas. To say
the least, this kind of thinking was not very supple. Its rigidity would be endlessly
displayed in the twentieth century by thousands of writers and speakers, learned andnot-so-learned alike, all insisting upon the same points about the National Essence, as
determined in ancient times.
Next, Fukuzawa held that the most important aspect of the National Essence
was national sovereignty, making the point repeatedly. Without the survival of Japan as
an independent nation, discussion of the National Essence was beside the point. His
use of national sovereignty as the main aspect of the National Essence brought him
back to his principal and urgent concern, the survival and progress of the Japanesenation. This identification of the National Essence with national soverignty, and not withmatters of ancient Japan, was original with Fukuzawa.

7
Last we must consider Fukuzawa’s position on the imperial house, which
everyone identified as the core of the National Essence. Almost everyone said thatJapan’s National Essence was unique, because of the unroken succession of Emperors
begun by the oath of the Sun Goddess. Fukuzawa too said that the unbroken
succession of Emperors was unparalleled in the world [gaikoku ni rui nashi ] (7), but
he had already made himself clear that this did not constitute the National Essence;national sovereignty did. His point was that the unparalleled succession of Emperors
could be used to promote Japan’s national sovereignty, by focusing the sentiments ofthe people. This functional approach to the imperial house distinguished him from allother writers.
Fukuzawa used the standard nationalist words to describe the imperial house -its
majesty and sacredness [songen seishin ], its unbroken descent [bansei ikkei ] forages eternal [mukyû ]. Indeed his 1887 work Sonnô Ron [Essay on Imperial Loyalism]
began, “The ruling house of our imperial Japan is majestic and sacred.” (8) Thisseemed toplace him with traditional nationalists, who always opened their books with worshipfulstatements about Japan and the Emperor, which constituted their whole point. But justas he scathingly criticized the scholarship and institutions of the Tokugawa period, so
he maintained a clear and critical view of political authority. In a memo sometime in
1875-7 he wrote, “The holy Son of Heaven of blessed reign [the Emperor] - that is afalsehood. In modern times, Emperors and Shoguns have been nobodies.” (9) He had
not belief at all in such ideas, but understood their utility. He was far from the National
Scholars of his day, who believed in the literal truth of the ancient myths about theEmperors. “To my embarrassment,” he wrote, “I am not a scholar, and do not know thehistory of the Age of the Gods, and find the ancient records obscure.” (10)Instead he found the imperial house useful as the independent head of state, above
politics, that is found in most modern societies such as England, France, Canada. Anexception is the United States of America, where the president is both the head of state
and the leader of government, a frequently unsatisfactory arrangement.
In the 1880’s, as Japan moved toward constitutional government under theEmperor as sovereign in the state, Fukuzawa’s position was washed away. Tosummarize, he identified the National Essence with national sovereignty, and not withthe succession of Emperors in a line unbroken for ages eternal. While recognizing
hereditary succession as the8basis of the institution, and saluting the Emperor with such terms as majesty andsacredness, he held that the imperial institution had only functional value as the head ofstate. This I call the last sensible interpretation of the National Essence. It was beyond
Fukuzawa’s imagination that the Emperor was the National Essence.
Stage Three: The Political Thought Behind the Meiji Constitution
In 1881 the Emperor of Japan, that is, his government, announced that a
constitution would be established by 1889. Conservatives immediately took control ofthe process of drafting it, ousting the liberal Okuma Shigenobu (1838-1922) from thegovernment. The court noble Iwakura Tomomi (1825-83) laid out principles for a draft
constitution by the Council of State:
1 The Constitution shall emanate from the Emperor and the policy of a gradualapproach toward constitutitonal government shall prevail.
2 The Emperor shall have supreme command over the army and navy, declarewar, make peace, conclude treaties, etc.; moreover, the Emperor will direct thenational administration.
3 The organization of the cabinet shall not be subjected to the intervention ofparliament. (11)After the expulsion of Okuma, nobody in the government had a democratic constitution
in mind, though many among the intelligentsia and the general public did. At this time,
explicit discussion began of the Kokutai and seitai as the framework within which
modern Western institutions would be placed.
Prominent men were clear on the point. During political discussions at theimperial court, in 1879 Motoda Eifu (1818-91), a Confucian advisor to the Emperor,
wrote a submission. It established the principles of the state for conservatives,
employed the language that would become standard and compulsory in political
discussion, incorporated the inventions and exaggerations in use since Aizawa
Seishisai’s time, and referred to the religious and historical myths that justified thesystem, without a trace of scepticism or irony.

9The National Essence [Kokutai ] of the country of our ancestors must bepreserved forever. The form of government [seitai ] by the court must changewith the times.
This is the general principle not only of our country, but also of eachcountry in the world, in accordance with the Way of Heaven and Earth.
Therefore, countries where the Kokutai changes, or is unstable, violate
the Way of Heaven and Earth. Where they go against the standards of theirancestors, the country becomes disordered, and ultimately falls into destruction.
This is amply demonstrated beyond doubt in both ancient China and modern
Europe. And chaos was the original condition of our country when it was createdby Heaven.
Then the deity Ninigi no Mikoto [the Heavenly Grandchild of the Sun
Goddess] first opened up the country. The principles were establishedeverywhere and forever, of the unbroken succession of Emperors for ages
eternal, of affectionate relations between father
and son, and of the duties of the ruler and the subjects, resulting in ourprosperous country of the present day.
Our Kokutai based on the ruler must be preserved for ages eternal.
However, the seitai has changed, according to the conditions among the people
and local customs, and thus developed with the times, in accordance with thenatural principle of non-action. (12)With the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution, the Kokutai-seitai distinction
became the underlying, widely accepted theory of the state. With the Emperor declared
sovereign because of his descent in a line unbroken for ages eternal, as well sacredand inviolable, the essential conditions were established for the preservation of the
Kokutai. Further, the divine founding of the country and of the imperial house during
the Age of the Gods provided the ultimate justification for the Kokutai. This divine
founding of the country was not mentioned at all in the Constitution, perhaps for fear ofraising derision in the West. However, it was understood by everyone and taught ashistorical truth in Japan’s educational system, from elementary schools throughuniversities, until 1945.

10
The main problem clarified by Kokutai-seitai theory was whether the Emperor
could be limited and bound by the Constitution. As its author, the Emperor could not be,
unless he chose to be so limited, out of his undoubted, unbounded benevolence; nor
could the Kokutai, which was primary, be limited by any seitai. The matter became
extremely important in the 1930’s with the development of extreme nationalism, which
vigorously attacked theories such as that of Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948), who heldthat the Emperor was indeed an organ of the state, bound by the Constitution like theother organs such as the cabinet and the Diet. Yet the point was strictly one of fiercely
contested political ideology, since in fact the Emperor, assuming extensive powers
under the Constitution, was never expected to exercise them. It was the intention of theframers of the 1889 Constitution that he remain largely a ceremonial, symbolic figure as
his ancestors had been through most of history. (14))
The new seitai included most of the features of modern Western governments,
with two houses, the lower one elected, the upper house appointed; regularparliamentary sessions; cabinet government, and so on. It is often wondered whether
Japan’s leaders were seriously committed to these unfamiliar, and perhaps uncongenial
Western forms, or merely meant them as a cover for real power operating behind thescenes. It is my view that they did indeed work behind the scenes, and this occurs inevery
government. But they were in fact committed to these forms, made every effort tomake them function successfully, and they never attempted to change the provisions of
the Constitution by so much as a comma. They even held an election during the PacificWar. The conservative leaders of Japan could do this because they were confident
about the fundamental nature of the imperial country [Kôkoku ]. Arrangements for thepolitical representation of the people in the form of government could never disturb the
National Essence.

11

Stage Four: Kokutai no Hongi [Cardinal Principles of the National Essence ofJapan], 1937.
Government did in fact develop in a democratic direction in the early twentiethcentury, in the period known as Taishô Democracy, named after the Taishô Emperor (r.
1912-26). Taishô Democracy had many drawbacks and weaknesses, and in terms ofpolitical theory, its greatest drawback was the inability of its supporters to devise atheory to supersede the Kokutai-seitai theory of the Meiji Constitution.
None of the supporters of Taishô Democracy, including its greatest theorist
Yoshino Sakuzô (1878-1933), was willing to challenge imperial sovereignty, and they all
professed belief in the National Essence. Even Minobe Tatsukichi did so, though in an
abstruse and legalistic manner that confused his opponents into believing he denied
the Kokutai. Yoshino Sakuzô was unable and unwilling to overcome the concept ofimperial sovereignty and replace it with the concept of popular sovereignty [minshu
shugi ] that is essential in most democratic states, though not in Canada, where
nobody knows who is sovereign. He compromised with a proposal on minpon shugi[The people are the basis of the state]. This

was fine with traditional conservatives, who held that the Emperors since Jinmu andNintoku had always made the people the basis of their state, making the welfare of thepeople their first concern in their benevolent government, involving perfect obedience tothe relations between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, etc. Minpon
shugi thus provided no theoretical basis for political or social democracy; it was just a
reinforcement of ancient imperial theory. Yoshino was left with a lot of practical
proposals for making political democracy work - enlarge the franchise, enforce theelection laws, educate the people. These had worked over centuries in Britain, but inJapan, time and nationalist, authoritarian political movements did not allow.
The events of the 1930’s are well known, and need not be discussed in detail.
They include the rise of nationalism and militarism, the independent action of the armyin Manchuria and the consequent death of Taishô Democracy as the military forced its
leaders into compliance with its foreign policy. Under a sense of crisis in world
developments,
12
government, the military, and the educational establishment all became concerned
about threats to the essential nature of Japan. They were particularly disturbed by theadvent of individualism, a necessary product of modern industrialism in which labour is
a commodity, and its related evils: democracy, socialism, communism, and anarchism,
which they discovered in alarming degrees among the youth of Japan, especiallyuniversity students.
Even given all the explanatory causes, it is difficult to understand the depth andpassion of their concern for Japanese values, which were not actually seriously
threatened. The depth and passion were fully displayed in the Minobe Incident of 1935,
in which Minobe Tatsukichi, a professor emeritus of law at Tokyo Imperial University,
was forced to resign from the House of Peers. The reason was his theory of theEmperor as an organ of the state under the 1889 Constitution. This had long been
acceptable: his distinguished scholarship was recognized in 1911 by appointment to theImperial Japan Academy; he had given the New Year’s lecture before the Emperor in
1932; and he was appointed to the House of Peers in 1932. Now it seemed all Japanwas suddenly criticizing him for disloyalty, and he was even wounded in anassassination attempt. Press and parliamentary discussion was fierce, meetings were
held everywhere, committees were formed, studies made, reports presented. The event
consumed most of a year of public agitation, and resulted in a Movement to Clarify the
National Essence [Kokutai meichô undô ]. Finally a committee of Japan’s leading
scholars was formed to make a definitive exposition of the Kokutai, for the educationand edification of the entire nation. This was published as Kokutai no Hongi by the
Ministry of Education in 1937, and it was meant be accorded nearly the same status in
Japan’s schools as the Imperial Rescript on Education and the portrait of the Emperor.
By 1945 more than a million copies had been printed, including editions by private
publishers. (15)
It is clear that at this stage in history, they were no longer dealing with a concept
to generate spiritual unity like Aizawa Seishisai in 1825, or with a political theory ofJapan designed to accommodate modern institutions of government, like the 1889

Constitution. The committee of professors from prestigious universities sought todefine the essential
truths of Japan, which might be termed religious, or even metaphysical, because theyrequired faith at the expense of logic and reason.

13
They were Japan’s leading professors, and collectively they might be expected to
be aware of modern trends of thought. These included astronomy, geology andgeography, evolution, anthropology, and history, all of which would indicate that theconditions and matters of the Age ofthe Gods described in Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were not historically true. Yet the
professors displayed no sign of doubt, as they opened their book with a statement that
“The unbroken line of Emperors, receiving the Oracle of the Founder of the Nation,
reign eternally over the Japanese Empire. This is our great and immutable national
entity (Kokutai ).” (16) By the Founder of the Japanese Nation, they meant the Sun
Goddess. To explain the origins of this, they went straight to the Age of the Gods inthose ancient works, Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, much as Christians used to go straightto the Bible, and indeed many still do.
Next, the professors used the difficult formulaic terms of the Japanese
language, many of them religious, that had accumulated since ancient times forexpression of these truths. Perhaps this was really why their professorial knowledge
and expertise were required: they knew the origins, derivations, and uses of thesewords in all the texts. It was not because of their special ability to produce a logical andconcise explanation of the Kokutai, since these qualities were absent. As in many
religious works, it was only necessary for the professors correctly to state the terms, inorder for the relations among them to be understood. Real logical explanation would
have been impossible. For example, it would have been fatal to belief if they had
attempted to explain exactly the mechanics of how the virtues of the sacred mirror,
sword and jewel flowed into the Japanese political system, making it flawless bydefinition. The mechanics are as difficult to understand as those of the redemption of
all sinners through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which are better left
unexamined, and just believed.
A summary of the contents of this work is not required here. Written byeminent professors, it was surprisingly, entirely repetitious of accepted truths. The
professors had nothing new to say. Its effect surely was important, helping to inspire theJapanese nation to the utmost effort in World War II, and reinforcing the belief of theJapanese people, their leaders and its Emperor in the truth and importance of the
Kokutai.
At the end, long after defeat was clear, the leaders of Japan could not
surrender, because the safety of the Emperor and the imperial institution were notguaranteed in the Allied demand for unconditional
14
surrender. They sought not immunity for themselves as leaders, or safety for thepeople of Japan. They needed only a guarantee for the imperial house, in which theKokutai was incarnate. It is a nice question, whether they would have decided
otherwise, had they known the atomic bombs were coming.
It is also a nice question, whether the Kokutai, inherently irrational, could havesurvived if Japan had won the war.

15

Notes
(1) Traditional reign dates are given for the early Emperors. Since they did not exist,
there is no point in correcting the reign dates.
(2) The story of Emperor Nintoku was copied entirely from Chinese sources illustrating
the Confucian virtues of the Emperor.

(3) Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in EarlyModern Japan (Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 124.
(4) Ibid., p. 149.
(5) Summary from Tabata Shinobu, Katô Hiroyuki (Yoshikawa Kôbunkan, 1969), pp.
76-7.
(6) D. A. Dilworth and G. C. Hurst, translators, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization
by Fukuzawa Yukichi (Sophia University Press, 1973), p. 23.
(7) “Bunmeiron no Gairyaku,” [An Outline of a Theory of Civilization] in Fukuzawa
Yukichi Zenshû [Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi], vol. 4 (Iwanami Shoten,1959), p. 37(8) Fukuzawa Yukichi, “Sonnô Ron“ [Essay on Imperial Loyalism], in Fukuzawa, Nihon
Teishitsu Ron [Essays on the Japanese Imperial House] (Shimizu Shobô, 1987), p. 99.

(9) Kano Masanao, Fukuzawa Yukichi (Century Books, Shimizu Shoin, 1967), p. 150.
(10) Fukuzawa Yukichi, “Teishitsu Ron” [Essay on the Imperial House],
Teishitsu Ron , p. 26.

Nihon

16
(11) George M. Beckmann, The Making of the Meiji Constitution. The Oligarchs
and the Constitutional Development of Japan, 1868-1891 (University of Kansas
Press, 1957), p. 59.
(12) Imperial Household Agency, Meiji Tennô Ki [Records of the Meiji Emperor](Yoshikawa Kobunkan), vol. 4 (1970), pp. 691-2, citing Motoda family archives.
(13) Deleted. Close up(14) The Meiji and Taisho Emperors complied with this understanding. The truth about
the Showa Emperor is now becoming more fully known. After World War II, both
Japanese and Americans had an interest in preserving the imperial institution, and theytacitly colluded in presenting a version of the Emperor as nothing more than aconstitutional monarch who had no choice but to endorse the proposals of his
governments. See John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of WorldWar II (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1999). Recent works by Peter Wetzler,
Hirohito and War. Imperial Tradition and Military Decision-making in Prewar

Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), and Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Makingof Modern Japan (Harpercollins, 2000) claim that he knew everything, approved
everything, and commanded some things.
(15) After the war it became extremely difficult to find copies of this work, produced insuch abundance. When defeat was imminent, Japan’s leaders, who knew precisely
which aspects of their ideology were offensive to the enemy, ordered destruction of
millions of such documents, and the officials and the people co-operated, with children
even burning documents in schools. On top of that, liberals and radicals entered
Japan’s universities and libraries after the war, and cleared shelf after shelf ofobjectionable material into the garbage. The translator and editor of the English versionof Kokutai no Hongi worked from a copy found in Brazil, where there was a large
Japanese community. In the 1990’s I still had great difficulty in finding a copy in Tokyo;
not even the Library of Tokyo University has it. I obtained a copy from Cornell University
Library. Later I learned there are some in Kyoto libraries. In October, 2000, a graduate
student of mine in Tokyo found a copy in a used bookstore in Kanda, and sent it to me.
(16) R. K. Hall, ed., Kokutai no Hongi. Cardinal Principles of the National Essenceof Japan, trans J. O. Gauntlett (Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 59.
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