1. *The author would like to thank Robert J. C. Butow and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms.
2. 1. This question was originally raised by Brigadier General Bonner F. Fellers, military secretary of General Douglas MacArthur and the chief of his psychological warfare operations, to Terasaki Hidenari, who served as liaison between General Fellers and Emperor Hirohito during the American occupation of Japan. Higashino Makoto,Showa tenno futatsu no"dokuhakuroku" [Two monologues by the Showa Emperor] (Tokyo, 1998), 113-16.Japanese names in this essay are addressed in their traditional order; that is, family names precede given names. However, when Japanese authors' publications are published in English, their citations follow Western style.
3. 2. John Dower argues in Chapter 9 of his bookEmbracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II(New York, 1999) that General MacArthur and his staff dissuaded Emperor Hirohito from acknowledging his responsibility for the war in order to resituate the emperor as the center of the democratic reforms they would try to bring about in postwar Japan.
4. 3. Kojima Noboru,Tenno[The emperor] (Tokyo, 1974); Shoda Tatsuo,Jushin tachi no showa-shi[Jushin in the history of Showa], 2 vols. (Tokyo, 1981); Kawahara Toshiaki,Tenno Hirohito no showa-shi[Emperor Hirohito in the history of Showa] (Tokyo, 1983); Hata Ikuhiko,Showa tenno itsutsu no ketsudan[The Showa Emperor's five decisions] (Tokyo, 1994); Hando Toshikazu,Seidan[The imperial decision] (Tokyo, 1985).
5. 4. This author's use of the term "leftist" follows Hatano Sumio's definition in Sadao Asada, ed.Japan and the World 1853-1952: A Bibliographical Guide to Japanese Scholarship in Foreign Relations(New York, 1989), chap. 4. Hatano offers a useful historiographical essay on Japanese leftist scholars' works, including Inoue Kiyoshi, Ienaga Saburo, and Fujiwara Akira. Younger scholars, who belong to the postwar generation, also have published numerous studies on the Showa Emperor and his war responsibility. Awaya Kentaro is best known for his critical works of the Tokyo Trial; Yamada Akira for his studies of the Showa Emperor asdaigensui(commander in chief) during the Asia-Pacific War; and Yoshida Yutaka for political, historical, and intellectual studies of the emperor's war responsibility.