Unlike Italy, another country in the Axis powers, Japan is still a monarchy, despite all of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Empire during WW2. So what PoDs are needed to get the Japanese monarchy deposed after the war?
AHC/WI: The Japanese monarchy gets removed from power after WW2
- Thread starter GenericAltHistorian
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- japan japanese empire post ww2 ww2
The big issue with Japan retaining its monarchy is that it was a big factor in retaining the country's stability after the war basically wrecked the country. Removing the Emperor, even in an unconditional surrender, would have left the country unstable and potentially open to disruption.
The Japanese people needed the Emperor and his family to stay; centuries if not millennia of tradition and Emperor-worship had been ingrained in the Japanese collective psyche. Even during the brutal century of the Sengoku Jidai, the Warring States Period, when the Emperor was just a figurehead, nobody wanted to claim the title of Emperor; everyone wanted the title of Shogun. While being Shogun had considerably more power, claiming the title of Emperor was basically claiming to be a god; it just wasn't done. Even during the Meiji Restoration, the whole revolution centered around keeping the Emperor as proof of legitimacy, as the Japanese people would never follow anyone but him. Removing him and his family would have been a massive shock and disrupted if not destroyed Japanese society.
You'd have either massive revolts and rebellions against the Allies once things calmed down a bit, and the country would basically be listless and uncertain, needing a new system (one that would most likely be untested and distrusted by the Japanese) to guide them.
You'd need a PoD somewhere in the Dark Ages or some time before Christ.
So basically Operation: Downfall. There wouldn't be anything left of Japan, so the Americans would be free to rebuild Japanese society.
Of course, Downfall means the Allies would be in a sorry state themselves.
kholieken
Banned
Russia lost its Tsar; Germany, Austria, SK lost I it's monarchy despite their history. Japanese Emperor is no more special than that. Many statement about 'irreplacebility' of Emperor for Japanese is backward justification and postwar propaganda.
A change in personnel in Washington might lost Japan its monarchy.
A change in personnel in Washington might lost Japan its monarchy.
The Russian Tsar was deposed by his people. The Austro-Hungarian one was unpopular with non-Austrians and non-Hungarians, and the Empire was a tottering old hulk doomed to break up eventually. Germany was a new nation and the House of Hohenzollern was once one of the many petty kings and princes of the HRE that eventually formed Prussia. To compare a European monarch to the Japanese is inaccurate, as the Europeans had by 1900 accepted that their kings are neither divine nor untouchable. Even the autocratic, absolutist Russia had had several Tsars assassinated or overthrown, one deposed by his own wife. By 1918, Europe was fucking done with absolute monarchs, and the Italian one had little authority up until his ouster in 1945.
The Japanese monarchy is not like that. For centuries, they ruled uninterrupted, figureheads deemed sacred and untouchable. It is always the Shogun's fault, or the ministers, or the various daimyos. Even as the wars raged around them, nobody thought of harming a Japanese emperor.
Yes, the Japanese emperor could be replaced. But doing so would be a much bigger shock to the very traditionalist Japanese than to a European who has had a few centuries of the Enlightenment and the erosion of the powers of kings and autocrats. The Allies didn't want to completely upend the system, as they needed a reliable new ally against the Soviets and Red Chinese in the Far East.
Much easier to keep him there. Made Japan much easier to transition.
From The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History p262
...The new relationship [postwar US-Japan] was neatly defined some years later when an irreverent Senator William Fullbright (D:AR) quizzed diplomat John Foster Dulles behind closed doors:
The Chairman [Tom Connally, D:TX]: You say the Emperor calls on MacArthur but MacArthur never calls on him?
Mr Dulles: This is right...
Senator Fulbright: Does that prove, you say, the Emperor is no longer regarded as God?
Mr Dulles: Yes.
Senator Fulbright: What does it prove about MacArthur?
Mr Dulles:... I evoke my constitutional privilege.
From The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History p262
...The new relationship [postwar US-Japan] was neatly defined some years later when an irreverent Senator William Fullbright (D:AR) quizzed diplomat John Foster Dulles behind closed doors:
The Chairman [Tom Connally, D:TX]: You say the Emperor calls on MacArthur but MacArthur never calls on him?
Mr Dulles: This is right...
Senator Fulbright: Does that prove, you say, the Emperor is no longer regarded as God?
Mr Dulles: Yes.
Senator Fulbright: What does it prove about MacArthur?
Mr Dulles:... I evoke my constitutional privilege.
The only of them who had a divine mandate recognized by his people was the tsar, and it took a world war and massive dissent for him to be removed. The Japanese emperor is even more holy than the tsar and at the same time didn't had the same level of power on the war effort as him and so he couldn't be blamed for his failures as Nicholas II could.
Removing the emperor is possible, shooting him and the whole family too, but you can expect seventy years of chaos until everyone who was indoctrinated to love and follow the emperor is dead or too old to protest the new political order.
HistoricalArthropod
Banned
I mean, the House of Osman has existed for 7 centuries. Didn't stop the allies from tearing that down
Remove McArthur from the scene and someone who knew less of "the oriental mind" as him would get rid of him, maybe even execute him. Not much would change honestly, he was already a figurehead after the war so not much of the political system would be the same as OTL, maybe there is less faith in the government as the change is far more abrupt and a full blown republic is going to be a new in Japanese society (Hirohito did a lot to reestablish faith on the government among the commoners), but things are going to be sorted out eventually, the USA is going to stay in Japan for a while and the SCAP will make sure of certain things.
And therefore either to resurgent militarism on the one hand, or a communist movement on the other. And American authorities really did worry about that.
There is little question but that there was enough evidence to put Hirohito before a war crimes tribunal. It was a conscious decision by MacArthur, backed by Truman, to bury that and keep him on, because he was seen as vital to a stable and peaceful occupation and transition to democratic government: Hirohito would give any new regime legitimacy.
But they didn't. Ataturk fought against the Porte and the Allies to establish the Republic of Turkey
Hell, there was even an expectation that Hirohito should have abdicated at the very least from sections of the populace. The fact he didn't was something of a sour point for them.
They were nothing more than puppets of the young turks and lost all effective power. Everything they stood for they allowed it to fall, that's good enough reason to abandon them. Hashmites are related to muhammad yet were western puppets, so no one cried when they were killed.
The militarists were utterly defeated and discredited, and why would remove Hirohito being removed/executed draw people to Communism? The founders of the JCP were the strongest supporters of abolishing the Emperor system, being one of the party's core principles until 10 years ago, why would monarchists join them?
Admiral Fischer
Banned
Maybe, without the Emperor traveling around the country and calm downing the people, as he did in the OTL, the GHQ and its puppet government, potentially, could have accumulated enough hatred and hostility, multiplied by famine crisis and economic failure to the point that people would begin to think like, perhaps those militarists were correct to accuse the Americans for conspiring a genocide against the Japanese race after all. And indeed, in this scenario, the GHQ essentially has abrogated their own words of "The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people".
If we are to drop out the militarism from the anti-American politics, then surely the communism would be the only remaining valid card here. The post-war Japan was a fertile ground for left-wing politics, and many militarists had no problem in identifying and re-branding themselves as socialists. If the circumstance allows the monarchists to accept abolition of the Japanese monarchy as a fait accompli, what's there to stop the communists from attacking the GHQ's hypocrisy and span the wheel of nationalism, opening up the recruitment pool to former monarchists.
Well, the nature of the war's end and America's occupation of Japan would be fundamentally different, since ensuring the safety of the Emperor was a condition of Japan's surrender. If the US demands a trial of the Emperor, Japan would refuse to surrender, prompting at least one more atomic bombing. Hirohito could then willingly give himself up and become a martyr, which would cause lasting bitterness with the occupying forces among ordinary Japanese. Even then, the US would probably still allow a relative to assume the throne. Completely removing the Imperial family would alienate too many people in the Diet, and the US would have a hard time finding center-right groups to cooperate with them - those that do will surely be unpopular and provide fuel for anti-American elements.
In the end, I doubt Japan would ever be able to "rise again" and challenge the US, but they would certainly cause a big headache at a time when the US would begin to be very concerned with the political future of most of East Asia.
In the end, I doubt Japan would ever be able to "rise again" and challenge the US, but they would certainly cause a big headache at a time when the US would begin to be very concerned with the political future of most of East Asia.