Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 230, The Measure of an Emperor, Part 6.

So now we get to a really interesting and somewhat unexplored moment in Hirohito's life,

and if we're being honest, the reason I am most excited to write this series of episodes.

Hirohito after the surrender went through what is, to my mind, one of the most unique

transformations in Japanese political history, or really political history period.

Before and of course during the Second World War, he was the War Monarch, reviewing

his troops in a resplendent

uniform atop his white horse, which incidentally did have a name, like all the horses of

all great generals in history, Shurya Yuki, White Snow.

After the war, he became the suit-wearing constitutional monarch, a harmless science geek who, just like the

uninformed war leader, would encapsulate the essence of the New Japan.

How did this rebranding take place?

What lets a man reshape his own self-image like that?

That's what I want to explore with the last two parts, because I've decided this

will be two parts, of this series. Of course, at first it wasn't entirely clear that any of this

would happen, that Hirohito would hang on to his throne, or even his life. A substantial

percentage of the American public wanted Hirohito tried as a war criminal alongside

the other leaders of Imperial Japan, and potentially to face the same punishment many of them

would face, execution.

Among Americans, particularly during the war, there had been this desire to humiliate the

Japanese leadership,

which had struck the United States in such a cowardly surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.

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