Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019)

Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Noriko Murai, Jeff Kingston, Tina Burrett, Noriko Murai, Jeffrey Kingston, Tina Burrett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000521818
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia giapponese

Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) provides a retrospective and multidisciplinary account of a society in flux. Featuring analyses from leading scholars around the globe, this textbook examines the evolving contexts of Japan throughout the Heisei era and how longstanding verities and values have been called into question. Asking what this holds for Japan's future relations with the world and within its own communities, chapters delve beneath the layers of a complex and increasingly diverse society, exploring topics including simmering ethnonationalism, economic torpor, political stagnation, and cultural dynamics.

Features of this textbook include:
• Analysis of key social issues ranging from immigration, civil society, press freedom, politics, labour and the economy, to diversity, the marginalisation of women, Shinto, and Aum Shinrikyo
• Evaluation of the legacy of Emperor Akihito on war memory, the imperial institution, art, regional relations, and constitutional revision
• Multidisciplinary insights from both the social sciences and humanities
• Rich illustrations for visual analysis of developments in contemporary Japanese literature, film, art, and pop culture

Providing students with dynamic analyses of how contemporary Japanese society continues to transform, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese Studies, including Japanese culture, society, history, and politics.

PART 1 Symbol emperor

1The people’s imperial couple

Kenneth J. Ruoff

DOI: 10.4324/9780429273575-2

A close relationship between the imperial house and the people is a product of the Heisei era (1989–2019). During his three-decade reign, Emperor Akihito (b. 1933), the first emperor enthroned under the postwar constitution that defines the emperor as the ‘symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power,’ pursued an active role for the ‘symbol emperor,’ becoming close to the people.

The Heisei-era monarchy represented the thorough realization of the concept of the ‘people’s emperor’ (Ruoff 2001, 2020; Kobayashi and Ruoff 2019). I should also explicitly reference the ‘people’s empress’ as well, so important was Empress Michiko to the Heisei monarchy. It is the Constitution of Japan that provides the framework for the people’s emperor. In the postwar era, the basic survival of the monarchy became a question that was open to debate, along the lines of, ‘shall the imperial house be maintained?’ The fact that the Japanese people enjoy popular sovereignty means, in constitutional terms, that the future of the monarchy depends on the people wanting to maintain the imperial house. For this reason, the imperial house must keep its finger on the pulse of the public and also operate in a way that is in tune with the wishes of the people.

For a period in 2004, the public had a window into the complex calculations among imperial family members that normally go on behind closed doors in reference to balancing their personal hopes and aspirations with the public duties expected of them. It is worth outlining this drama because it sheds light on the basic function of a symbolic monarchy. The drama began when, under the strain of his wife’s mental breakdown and the confusion regarding Princess Aiko’s (b. 2001) future (would the law be changed so she could ascend to the throne?), then-Crown Prince Naruhito bluntly remarked during his press conference in May 2004 before leaving, solo, to attend royal weddings in Denmark and Spain, ‘There were developments that denied Masako’s career as well as her personality’(Imperial Household Agency 2004a).

At the time, I interpreted Naruhito’s remarks as an indictment of the notion that then-Crown Princess Masako’s primary duty was to serve as a womb to produce a male heir, and also as a call for action to change the law to permit Princess Aiko to ascend to the throne. But in a broader sense, this incident, which soon embroiled other members of the imperial family, spoke to the question of what does it mean for imperial family members to dutifully serve the nation? The fact that Naruhito’s May 2004 remarks continued to reverberate for months thereafter was evidenced at Prince Akishino’s press conference on the occasion of his birthday (30 November) later in 2004.

Akishino remarked that:

Identifying what is official work is also a very difficult matter, I think. Naturally, we, members of the Imperial Household, are expected to perform a variety of duties of an official nature …. In my view, official duties are rather passive in nature. We’re going to hold this or that event, people say, and they ask us to attend them. If we think a given event is very valuable, then we accept the request as required. Personally, that’s how I understand the process, and that’s how I have been going about my responsibilities.

(Imperial Household Agency 2004b)

Akishino’s comments reflected the interpretation held by many people inside the palace. The Imperial Household Agency definitely wants royal family members to be perceived as putting duty before happiness, or at the very least as not putting personal happiness before duty.

Later that year, Akihito, during the annual press conference marking his birthday (23 December), referenced Naruhito’s blunt public comments. Without defending his oldest son’s remarks, Akihito offered a critically important interpretation of public duties carried out by imperial family members that sought to reconcile interpretations offered by his two sons:

Since the Crown Prince’s statement in May, there has also been much discussion about the Crown Prince and Crown Princess’ official duties. I think that the statement made by Prince Akishino that ‘official duties are passive in nature’ and the statement by the Crown Prince about ‘new official duties in step with a particular era’ are not necessarily contradictory in nature. The Empress and I have learned during the long years since our marriage that new official duties would have very little real meaning if they did not reflect individual hopes or interests, and, at the same time, official duties could newly emerge in the course of diligently carrying out the duties of one’s assignment.

(Imperial Household Agency 2004c)

This comment was a reminder that each emperor and empress put their particular stamp on the throne, a central point of this chapter.

One of the best ways to understand the concept of the people’s emperor is to examine dissent against it from the right, the sort of bashing that has taken place throughout the postwar era. Consider Etō Jun’s (1932−1999) bitter attack at the time of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. Reacting to images of how the imperial couple had consoled victims of the disaster, Etō fumed in an essay in Bungei shunjū (1995):

It is not necessary (for the imperial couple) to kneel down. It is not necessary (for the imperial couple) to be at the same line of sight as the victims. If one views it from the perspective of the emperor having a special position according to the constitution, then it would make no difference if they stood. It would be fine if they were on top of a horse or in a car (for the visit). There is no necessity whatsoever for the imperial couple to try to be loved by the people.

The ‘people’s emperor’ so loathed by elements of the right-wing, but celebrated by an overwhelming majority of the population, saw its full fruition under Akihito and Michiko. So much has the ‘people’s emperor’ developed these past decades that as abdication approached in early 2019, for many Japanese, the Heisei monarchy seemed ‘natural,’ in other words, it almost seemed to many that the monarchy had always operated in this fashion. This assumption was challenged only by the deluge of television programming and print media coverage at the time of the abdication that outlined antecedents to the Heisei monarchy, including historical accounts of the sacrosanct throne under the Meiji Constitution.

The Heisei agenda

What, then, was the symbolic essence of Akihito and Michiko? It was characterized by five themes which sometimes overlap: (1) an unabashed support of the postwar system; (2) efforts to compress the margins of society by reaching out to the most vulnerable members of society, and also by extending a hand to others marginalized by geography and other factors; (3) efforts to bring closure to the postwar era by trying to heal the festering wounds of the war and of the imperial era in a more general sense; (4) demonstrations of pride in the best that Japan has to offer, but a pride in Japan tempered with a cosmopolitanism that clashed with simplistic nationalism, including in reference to views of Japan’s history; and (5) the unusually active and important role played by Michiko.

In terms of the imperial couple’s embrace of the postwar system, one can begin with the fact that the basic style of Akihito was more informal than that of his father. When he was ready to make a prepared statement, he simply retrieved it from his pocket rather than having a chamberlain present it to him, as was customary under Hirohito (b. 1901; r. 1926–89). Additionally, the Heisei imperial couple narrowed the distance between themselves and the people to the extent that images of Michiko hugging victims of natural disasters were widely cited as iconic, precisely the sort of informality and closeness to the people that results in fits of rage among far-right critics of the postwar democratic system.

Akihito also made numerous public statements in support of the postwar system, leaving little doubt as to how thoroughly he was aligned with it. In 1987, during the regular press conference on the occasion of his birthday, then-Crown Prince Akihito spoke in support of free speech: ‘When all is said and done freedom of expression is crucial’ (Yamashita 2017: 34). Although circumstances did not allow Akihito to play the sort of heroic, hands-on role of steering his country from a dictatorial to a democratic system of government as King Juan Carlos (b. 1938; r. 1975−2014) did for Spain during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Japan’s emperor nonetheless made clear his resolute support for democracy and for peace. For many Japanese, the definition of democracy actually includes peace, a formula specific to postwar Japan.

Akihito began his reign with a ringing pledge to carry out his duties in accordance with the postwar constitution, and also specifically referenced peace and social welfare (Yamashita 2017: 36). It is sometimes said that the pre−1945 emperor system was laden with ideology, but it is not as though the Heisei monarchy has been free of ideology. It may seem natural, almost invisible, but a complex web of ideology underlays the postwar democratic system, no less so than the ideology that was linked to the imperial system (1868−1945). Not only did Akihito and Michiko learn how to ‘operate’ within the postwar democratic system, but during the Heisei era they made clear their fervent support of the values, of the ideology, inherent in this system.

What does it mean to say that the Heisei imperial couple sought to compress the margins of Japanese society? Throughout the modern era (1868−present), imperial family members have sponsored charitable causes on behalf of the disadvantaged. However, previously this sponsorship typically took the form of, for example, helping to provide facilities that kept those suffering from such and such condition comfortable but in a setting isolated from mainstream society. In contrast, Akihito and Michiko worked to integrate as much as possible previously marginalized groups into mainstream society. The definition of marginalized is multifold, ranging from those who suffered discrimination because of physical handicaps to those who might feel marginalized for geographic or for historical reasons.

Long before they became emperor and empress, Akihito and Michiko lent imperial prestige to individuals who faced particular challenges in their daily lives. When the Paralympics were first held in Japan, in the aftermath of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, then-Crown Prince Akihito adopted them as one of his causes. Decades later, on the tenth anniversary of his enthronement, Emperor Akihito stressed:

I think that it is very important work to reach out to individuals with disabilities and the elderly, as well as individuals who have suffered natural disasters, as well as to individuals working on behalf of such people.

(Yamashita 2017: 88)

Ogawa Eiichi, President of the Japanese Federation of Organizations of Disabled Individuals (est. 1958), credited Akihito and Michiko with having been one of the few constant sources of support for this organization’s initiatives in his speech at the ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of Akihito’s accession to the throne.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko also reached out regularly to areas of Japan that are geographically marginalized (e.g. remote islands) through their visits. Here it is important to understand that as some monarchies have evolved in the modern era away from ruling to reigning within a democratic polity, their functions have changed, too. According to the historian of Great Britain David Cannadine, a term that describes well the contemporary British royal family is ‘peripatetic.’ He stresses how this is a contemporary development:

But the practice whereby, on any given weekday, many members of the royal family will be found undertaking public duties in towns and cities across the length and breadth of the country is a relatively recent development …

(Cannadine 2008: 52)

Peripatetic is a term that also could be used to describe Akihito and Michiko, and Japan’s imperial family in general. In his opening address at the ceremony to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Akihito’s accession to the throne, parliamentarian Hiranuma Takeo (b. 1939) noted with precise statistics just how peripatetic Akihito had been:

Up until Heisei 19 (2008) His Majesty has made 180 regional visits, including to each of the forty-seven prefectures, and including remote islands he has visited 514 cities, towns, and villages, and has been welcomed by 7,700,000 people. He is the first emperor to have visited all the country’s prefectures.

(Houshuku 2012)

Emperor Akihito long took a particular interest in spiritually integrating Okinawa, which both for geographic and historical reasons was the most estranged of the 47 prefectures during the postwar era, more fully into the national community. This was demonstrated by the repeated visits that he and Michiko made to that prefecture since its reversion from American military occupation to Japan in 1972, and the interest they showed in Okinawan culture. In March 2018, Akihito and Michiko competed for their 11th and final trip to Okinawa. Close observers of these visits point out that it was not just the number of visits, but rather the insistence of Akihito and Michiko during each of the visits to go to the sites of the most intense battles during the Battle of Okinawa (1945), a...