Yamato Dynasty : The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family

by SEAGRAVE, STERLINGSEAGRAVE, PEGGY

• ISBN13: 9780767904964
• ISBN10: 0767904966
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Broadway

Summary

The main entrance to the Kyoto Palace, ancient home of the Japanese imperial family, is called the Door to Heaven. How the emperors fell from heaven is a story that crosses two world wars, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American occupation of Japan, and Japan's phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Second World War. In this authoritative biography, Sterling Seagrave, bestselling author ofThe Soong Dynasty, and Peggy Seagrave bring to light the uneasy history of the Yamato Dynasty, from Emperor Meiji in 1852 to the present day. Revealed here for the first time is the full scale of the Japanese looting operation, code-namedKin No Yuri("Golden Lily") --which systematically removed billions of dollars' worth of gold, platinum, diamonds, art, religious artifacts, and other treasures from a dozen occupied countries during World War II--and the fate of these hidden assets after 1945. Drawing on decades of research, the Seagraves reveal Golden Lily and other secrets of the family's long reign, such as the police state resulting from the Meiji restoration; the folly that led to Japan's 1920s economic crash; the greed that forced hundreds of thousands of working-class girls into prostitution; the devastating effects of the Meiji dogma, which asserts that the imperial family is of divine descent and infallible; and how money--not Shinto--became the state religion of Japan. Among the most important revelations inThe Yamato Dynastyis how Japan has transformed itself since World War II. After the war, Japan's "official" financial status was so dismal it seemed the nation might never recover from bankruptcy and devastation. Yet today Japan is one of the world's richest nations. InThe Yamato Dynasty, the Seagraves expose the shocking backstage manipulations that enabled Japan's astonishing full recovery--and the American involvement that ensured its success. The Seagraves provide documentary evidence of how former President Hoover and General MacArthur colluded with Emperor Hirohito to deceive the world into thinking the war had bankrupted Japan, so that Tokyo would be exonerated from paying reparations and American investments would remain secure.The Yamato Dynastyshows how this promotion of American self-interest thwarted any hope of establishing true democracy in Japan, and denied war victims any compensation, while powerful figures like Hoover and MacArthur pocketed huge sums. Presenting the facts in uncompromising detail and raising important questions about the role of dynastic rule in the new millennium,The Yamato Dynastytells the story of the powerful men hidden behind the screen--the shoguns and financiers who control the throne from the shadows. It takes readers behind the walls of privilege and tradition to reveal the true nature of a dynasty shrouded in myth and secrecy.

Author Biography

Sterling Seagrave grew up on the China -Burma border. For many years an investigative reporter in Asia, he is the author of <b>Yellow Rain</b>, <b>The Marcos Dynasty</b>, <b>Dragon Lady</b>, the bestselling <b>The Soong Dynasty</b>, and <b>Lords of the Rim</b>. Peggy Seagrave, coauthor of <b>Dragon Lady</b> and <b>The Yamato Dynasty</b>, is Sterling's wife and longtime collaborator. They live in Europe.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Cast of Main Characters	xi
Authors' Note: The Door to Heaven	xiv
Acknowledgments	xvi
Maps	xviii
Family Tree of the Yamato Dynasty	xx
Prologue: Emperor Meets Shogun	1	(21)
Reinventing the Emperor	22	(23)
Bismarck's Mustache	45	(23)
The Tragic Prince	68	(17)
The Caged Bird	85	(15)
Out of the Cage	100	(16)
Yamagata's Ghost	116	(21)
Evil Spirits	137	(26)
With the Princes at War	163	(34)
The Exorcists	197	(23)
Unclean Hands	220	(18)
Japanese Gothic	238	(24)
Invisible Men	262	(22)
Eclipse of the Sun	284	(24)
Notes	308	(51)
Bibliography	359	(18)
Index	377

Excerpts

The future Meiji emperor was only eight months old in July 1853 when four large, black-hulled American Navy ships appeared off the entrance to what is now called Tokyo Bay. Two of the heavily gunned warships were steam-powered, spewing smoke and terrifying onlookers. Commanding the squadron was Commodore Matthew Perry, carrying a letter to the Tokugawa shogun from the president of the United States asking Japan to establish commercial and diplomatic relations. For centuries, Japan had been closed to foreigners. Past shoguns had distrusted Western traders and regarded Christian missionaries as subversives who encouraged opposition to the military regime. All Westerners were expelled except a few merchants restricted to a man-made island in the port of Nagasaki. Contact with the outside world became illegal, and Western ships were turned away from Japanese harbors. Commodore Perry refused to be diverted, however, and demanded that the president's letter be accepted by an official representative of the shogun.

After six days of tense confrontation, the Japanese complied and Perry delivered his letter, adding that he expected a positive answer the coming year, when he would return with a larger squadron. To drive his point home he steamed his black ships directly across the bay toward the shogun's capital. Expecting bombardment, people panicked. Savoring the moment, Perry turned and sailed away.

In his wake he left Japan in crisis, climaxing fifteen years later with the overthrow of the shogun, the restoration of an ancient monarchy after eight centuries in eclipse, and a teenage Meiji emperor on the throne. The Meiji Restoration was followed by other dramatic changes, and in only a few decades Japan was transformed into a world power, today the second biggest economic force on the planet. But in Japan things are rarely what they seem--powerful mythology hides what is really going on. After making a great public display of restoring the emperor to power, the new state obliged the emperor and the imperial family to resume their deep seclusion, hidden by a screen of ritual, protocol and mystification. As one of Meiji's grandsons exclaimed, they are like "caged birds." Japan might be liberated from centuries of feudal samurai dictatorship, and be thoroughly modern in most other respects, but the Sons of Heaven, and heaven's daughters, remain hostages of the past.

Keeping hostages for long periods is a venerable tradition in Asia. What better than to hold the gods themselves captive. This is not just a turn of phrase. For eight centuries Japan's emperors were kept hostage by military regimes, and defiant emperors were roughly treated. Plots to capture the emperor were central to the overthrow of the shogun in 1868. Once young Meiji was on the throne, he remained in effect a political prisoner to prevent any countercoup by rival forces. And for other important reasons.

On the surface Japan seems to be a passive society devoted to loyalty and consensus. But underneath it is a power country. Treachery, so common throughout its history, made loyalty admired precisely because it is so rare and beautiful. Consensus is idealized, because everyone cheats or colludes behind the scenes. In such a corrupt situation, an icon of divine purity is handy to solve power struggles. As the Son of Heaven, directly descended from mythic gods, and as chief priest and embodiment of all supernatural qualities in the national religion, Shinto, the emperor provides that divine icon. In the past, Japanese strongmen who held the emperor hostage claimed that they derived their office from the throne (meaning from the gods). Anyone who challenged their rule was not only treasonous but blasphemous, deserving terrible punishment. Out of this grew a mythic tradition and a double standard that keep most Japanese submissive and silent even today.

Given the fact that they were gods, it is astonishing how badly the Yamato emperors have been treated over the centuries. While some lived in perfumed silks, others were betrayed, poisoned, dethroned, exiled or driven to suicide. Those who cooperated were surrounded by chamberlains and court ladies who often were snoops and spies for the real strongmen. Under those conditions, being a god was far more dangerous than being ordinary. As gods, emperors were magical, but in reality they were powerless because all real power was held by regents or shoguns. Nothing has changed today.

As a child, Meiji's future was highly uncertain. He was not the son of an empress, but of Emperor Komei's favorite concubine, Nakayama Yoshiko, daughter of a court noble. He was born on November 3, 1852, at his mother's childhood home, one of many noble mansions built around the edge of the imperial palace grounds in Kyoto. As a precaution, the baby was given his first bath in the Well of Divine Help. They called him Sachi no Miya--Miya being one of three words for prince. In 1860, when he was eight years old, he was adopted by the empress as the formal heir, and given the name Mutsuhito Shinno (Prince Mutsuhito). Meiji was a formal reign title chosen later when he became emperor. (Because it is confusing to call one emperor by his reign title [Meiji] and another by his given name [Hirohito], we will use given names for our main characters where possible, reserving reign titles for certain purposes.)

Of Emperor Komei's six children--two boys and four girls--Mutsuhito was the only one to survive beyond the age of four. Infant mortality ran high in the nobility after centuries of inbreeding for strategic marriages and political liaisons. Because the aristocracy isolated itself from ordinary people, it developed little natural resistance to infections or endemic diseases like meningitis. Komei himself was one of fifteen children, but only three reached maturity.

In a highly competitive court, infanticide was also a danger, so during his first five years Prince Mutsuhito was separated from his parents and sheltered from intrigue at the home of his maternal grandfather, Lord Nakayama. Two wet nurses were with him around the clock as imperial infants were fed every two hours day and night. In 1854, when Mutsuhito was two years old, the Kyoto imperial palace burned down, so the emperor came to live for a while at the Nakayama mansion and grew fond of his son.

Physically delicate and rather effeminate, like a tender asparagus shoot, Mutsuhito was a headstrong child who would fly into tantrums, break his toys and hit his noble playmates, who were forbidden to retaliate. Little Japanese boys are rarely disciplined. Mutsuhito's tantrums continued even as a grown man. To strengthen the toddler, Lord Nakayama gave him a wooden horse and a bamboo sword, and encouraged him to play samurai. From this the boy developed a love of horses and swords, not as weapons but as playthings and treasures. Strenuous exercise gave him a hearty appetite and a robust appearance, although he was never really robust. From Lord Nakayama's diary we know he hovered over his grandson, worrying about every bruise. At age five the crown prince was taken back to the rebuilt palace, to live in a new pavilion with white walls and a black tile roof overlooking a pond full of carp and gardens of evergreens, weeping plum and black-stemmed bamboo. There his father gave him lessons in poetry while scholars tutored him in a range of subjects. History and geography were his favorites. Many of his questions concerned the foreigners who were appearing in Japan in increasing numbers since the arrival of Perry's black ships. He saw them in the streets of Kyoto on those rare occasions when he was allowed out of the palace to see the changing autumn leaves or the spring clouds of cherry blossoms. These excursions were made in a black lacquered cart, a black box on wheels drawn by two carefully washed white bullocks. In the wagon, the crown prince was shielded from view by roll-down bamboo shades, through which he peered with great excitement.

In the palace, Mutsuhito was surrounded by nearly three hundred women. They controlled who saw him, what he could do and not do, what he wore, what he ate and when he went to bed. These ladies-in-waiting were chosen from families of nobles when they were young girls, and most spent their entire lives in the palace. Parents were eager to volunteer their daughters because having a family member in the emperor's inner apartments gave them influence at court. All spoke an archaic form of Japanese called gosho kotoba or palace language, incomprehensible to most Japanese. A rigid pecking order gave great power to court ladies of higher rank. They could keep an emperor isolated, to the fury of his ministers. Among them over the centuries were individuals of extraordinary intellect and talent, such as Lady Murasaki in the eleventh century, who wrote a masterpiece, The Tale of Genji. But there were also many who were ignorant, or conspiratorial. It was their responsibility to serve or amuse the emperor and make certain he had plenty of heirs, if the empress failed to oblige. Mutsuhito's mother was a court lady fortunate enough to become an imperial concubine. These women had their own intelligence network reaching all corners of Japan, so it was often from them that the emperor had his first news of events outside Kyoto, or heard of conspiracies.

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Excerpted from The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family by Sterling Seagrave, Peggy Seagrave
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