who was Hirohito and what was his divine-pragmatic status at the apex of the nations political hierarchy?
To what extent was he personally responsible for Japan’s wartime aggression, atrocities and expansionism? More controversially, was he a war criminal? At a time when several of Japan’s historians and politicians still publicly deny Japan’s World War II atrocities and peddle the old line that ‘Japan was not the aggressor nation in World War II’, Herbert P. Bix’s volume is timely. Hirohito is not an easy candidate for biography. He was not fond of the company of others; he was a reticent speaker, wary of revealing his inner thoughts; he wrote no personal reminiscences and until the post-war years was unknown as a flesh and blood person to his teeming subjects. Until 1945, he was considered a living god. Nevertheless he remains a fascinating and complex political character in twentieth century Japanese and international history. For his reign ran from 1926, when Japan was once more embroiled in his nation’s relations with and hatred of China, thence after World War II through the Cold War
