Supreme Commander (16 page)

General Whitney came into the conference room every couple of hours to mediate disputes, fancying himself—as one of the staffers put it—“as a Thomas Jefferson.” For the entire week everyone worked nonstop. Cigarette smoke fouled the air; empty bottles and food leftovers littered the room; many people stayed up all night. Finally, in just one week—two days ahead of schedule—the American drafters of the Japanese constitution were finished. They had produced a stupendous piece of work. The question was: How would the Japanese respond?

After MacArthur reviewed the document and signed off (Whitney had been feeding him drafts every day for his edits), Whitney, Kades, and two others went to the home of Foreign Minister Shigeru Yoshida to present copies of their document. Waiting for them were Yoshida, Minister of State Matsumoto, and liaison officer Jiro Shirasu. Whitney laid into Matsumoto, telling him that his draft was “totally unacceptable” and that he expected the three men to pay close attention to the American version about to be put in front of them. Shirasu straightened up “as if he had sat on something.” Matsumoto took deep breaths. Yoshida scanned several pages, his face changed into a “black cloud”; this was an entirely new document. “You think you can make Japan a democratic country?” said Yoshida, holding up the document in his hand. “I don't think so.”

“We can try,” responded Charles Kades.

Knowing the conservative Yoshida didn't like him and thought him too liberal and progressive, not to mention blunt, General Whitney decided he had better leave the room. Leaving the Japanese ministers to digest the document's twenty pages, he went out into the garden to smoke a cigarette. Half an hour later Shirasu opened the door to inquire if Whitney needed anything. “Not at all,” said Whitney. “We have been enjoying your atomic sunshine,” at which point a big B-29 came roaring overhead, almost as if on cue, as aboard the
Missouri
.

For the Japanese official, Whitney's curt remark came as a jolt. Back inside, Whitney continued to put on the pressure. MacArthur did not require the Japanese government to adopt the SCAP draft literally, but he did want the draft's underlying principles incorporated. Time was now running short. The emperor might be tried as a war criminal, he warned; a lot of people in the United States still wanted Hirohito's head. Already the Joint Chiefs of Staff had informed MacArthur that the emperor was not immune from indictment as a war criminal: “The Supreme Commander has been unyielding in his defense of your Emperor,” Whitney reminded the three Japanese officials, and “has defended the Emperor because he considered that was the cause of right and justice, and will continue along that course to the extent of his ability.”

“But, gentlemen, the Supreme Commander is not omnipotent.”

Going beyond MacArthur's instructions, Whitney went on to say that the supreme commander was willing to put the document to the Japanese people himself if the government wouldn't. Only by accepting this document could the government expect to survive and not get thrown out in the next election.

The meeting was quickly adjourned on a less than amicable note. Had Whitney gone too far? Afterward he returned to the Dai Ichi Building very nervous and told MacArthur what had happened. MacArthur reassured him it was okay, he had not overstepped. “Court, don't you know that I have never repudiated any action taken by me or by a member of my staff. Right or wrong, whether I like it or not, I accept the situation as it stands and determine my next move from there.”

Two days later Shirasu wrote Whitney that the American way to achieve an objective was too “straight and direct” for the Japanese, whose way must be “roundabout, twisted and narrow.” The letter contained a vivid illustration.

 

 

Whitney responded to Shirasu that the straight way was better than the crooked way, and that anybody who supported the supreme commander's principles could be assured that “the objectives can be reached promptly and directly.” The next day Shirasu came to Whitney's office carrying a lengthy memorandum titled “Supplementary Explanation Concerning the Constitutional Revision.” It was from Matsumoto, citing past failed efforts to transplant constitutions from one country to another, and warning that “too drastic a move . . . may . . . in the end retard the smooth and wholesome progress of democracy.”

Included in the memo was a somewhat arch reminder that this was the Land of the Rising Sun, couched in lofty metaphors only a Japanese could muster: “Some of the roses of the West, when cultivated in Japan, lose their fragrance.”

13

MacArthur Breaks the Impasse

T
HE TWO SIDES
were at an impasse. The gulf was huge. MacArthur knew he could go ahead and publish the American version, though he knew that doing so would smack of American tyranny. Even if he could break the impasse, he didn't want to make the first move any more than he had with the emperor. Such a gesture would upset the delicate dynamic between a powerful occupier and a proud supplicant seeking to become a full partner. Whitney had thrown down the gauntlet: The Japanese must deliver. If they feared the supreme commander, they would respond. MacArthur, with his insight into human psychology, would wait, confident that cooler heads in the Diet would prevail and they would come to him.

He held two aces. Whitney, he knew, had made it explicitly clear that as far as the Allies were concerned, the emperor was in jeopardy, whereas the Americans would protect him, albeit with reduced stature. The second ace was the Far Eastern Commission, soon to begin. Who did the Japanese prefer to deal with: a known entity like SCAP, or a remote and complex international agency likely to be dominated by the USSR and its veto power?

In the Diet a battle raged. Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara and two other ministers read the beginning chapters of the translated SCAP draft and said they could never accept it. Welfare Minister Hitoshi Ashida disagreed and pointed out that if SCAP went ahead and published it, the people would be delighted, and they would all lose their jobs after the next election. Then a surprising voice piped up out of the blue: Joji Matsumoto, whose committee had written the draft rejected by MacArthur. As a scholar and a man with a modest understanding of English, he knew how easy it was to make mountains out of molehills in trying to use words precisely, especially in the difficult business of translating English into a language as different as Japanese. Sometimes it took a translator two days to get through a single page. “Turning Japanese into English, and vice-versa, with the precision of nuance required by lawyers is virtually impossible,” observes one modern-day historian. “Japanese as a language bears no relation to English or any other European language, and the process of translation is more like describing a picture in words—creating an equivalent, not a replica. Not only is it difficult, it is also particularly time-consuming.”

Maybe the two versions weren't so different, Matsumoto said. Heads must have turned at this startling pronouncement. Maybe with more time it might be possible for him to reconcile his document with the American one. However, by now Matsumoto had lost a lot of credibility, and had come under scathing criticism when it was revealed that SCAP had repeatedly warned him and he had failed to share these warnings with the cabinet. Matsumoto, courageous though he was in speaking up and admitting his failure, was now dead meat.

What to do? The cabinet couldn't go to Whitney, who had made his position unmistakably clear: No negotiation, “atomic sunshine.” There could be only one solution: The prime minister, like the emperor, would have to go to the supreme commander.

 

THE MEETING LASTED
three full hours. The two men had met twice before, both times productively: first in early October when MacArthur mentioned constitutional reform, and again in January after the emperor had denied his own divinity. In the second meeting Shidehara, whose wife—an heiress to the Mitsubishi fortune—was a Quaker, brought up the issue of renunciation of war, saying he had no problem including this in the constitution, since Japan had been a signatory to a similar provision in the 1919 League of Nations Covenant and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact. Shidehara didn't know it, but by this gesture he had touched on MacArthur's soft spot. Back in 1930 he had refused to attend the Geneva disarmament conference, saying, “The way to end war is to outlaw war, not to disarm.” MacArthur immediately agreed with the suggestion that there be a provision saying that “the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” Such a provision, he said, would relieve the concerns of the Soviet Union and Australia. On that positive note, the two men parted.

This time, in their third meeting, there would be no sweeping declarations of principle. The two men discussed everything face-to-face, openly and in confidence, made easier because Shidehara spoke perfect English. MacArthur reminded Shidehara that the FEC was beating down on him, he was personally concerned with “the good of Japan,” and that Shidehara was undoubtedly doing “his best for the sake of his country.” Did not the two men share the same goals? The danger to Japan, he told Shidehara, came not from the American government. It came from the Soviet Union and Australia, full of vengeance. “I don't know how long I can stay at my present position, and I feel great concern when I consider what might happen after I leave.” Asked what Whitney had meant by saying that Japan must accept certain fundamental principles, MacArthur replied that the intent was to preserve the emperor, and that for the emperor position to work, it must be based on a clear statement of popular sovereignty.

Article 9 would become the most important and controversial part of the new constitution. Matsumoto liked it because he was a pacifist. The supreme commander, no pacifist himself, liked it for other reasons. War had become so deadly as to render the value of victory meaningless. “The enormous sacrifices that have been brought about by scientific methods of killing,” he said, “have rendered war a fantastic and impossible method for the solution of international difficulties.” Since there was no way to control war, the only other thing to do would be to abolish it.

As in MacArthur's meeting with the emperor, no transcript survives, a loss to future leaders in a similar situation. Such a transcript—a lesson in statesmanship—would merit careful study. MacArthur and Shidehara had made a pact to “agree to agree.” SCAP officials would sit down with their Japanese counterparts and make a deal, no matter what, and MacArthur would sign off on it.

Little did the two men know what a marathon it would turn out to be.

But MacArthur kept his word, and so did Shidehara. Out of a basic agreement in principle between two powerful adversaries, history was made, and Douglas MacArthur—the ultimate gambler—would achieve more than Washington ever dreamed of.

 

THE NEXT DAY,
Shidehara made his report to the Japanese cabinet, inviting the other ministers to express their views. At first these were decidedly negative. This American document, protested one minister, was “like swallowing boiling water.” Matsumoto complained that there wasn't enough time to reconcile divergent views, and he was fed up with the abrasive “Whitney group.” Welfare Minister Ashida jumped in and disagreed: Why wasn't it possible for an esteemed man with Matsumoto's “scholarship and experience” to do what the Weimar Republic in Germany had done in 1919, write a constitution in three weeks?

With Matsumoto flummoxed and marginalized, the discussion assumed a cooler tone. The majority agreed that there was room to yield and maneuver. Shidehara would report to the emperor immediately, and to show his sincerity to the Americans he would send the two archconservatives Matsumoto and Yoshida to meet that afternoon with—of all people—the liberal Whitney. If that didn't send a signal of goodwill, what would? As for Charles Kades, who had never met MacArthur—he wouldn't until mid-1947—he had his plate full. The supreme commander had spoken from on high: Kades was to forget all his legalese, let what was past be past, compromise and make a deal. And of course, keep your mouth shut. “The revision has to be made by the Japanese themselves and it has to be done without coercion,” MacArthur had decreed—fooling nobody while he snapped a whip over their heads.

When the Japanese met with Whitney and Kades, they quickly found they had a long way to go. In Whitney's office, behind his desk, was an enormous painting of a Filipino boy trying to defend his sister from being raped by a Japanese soldier. If the purpose of the painting was to intimidate a Japanese visitor, it certainly had that effect. Trying to avert his gaze from the terrified eyes of the young girl staring down at him, Matsumoto expressed optimism that a deal could be reached and the emperor would be pleased to present a new constitution. Whitney cut him short: A constitution, he said, “comes up from the people, not down to the people”—a fundamental and important distinction. Other, more specific differences dominated the remainder of the meeting. Whereas the Japanese wanted to keep the current constitution and amend it to include the two provisions about the emperor and war, plus whatever minor adjustments might be necessary, the Americans had a broader perspective. The SCAP document, explained Whitney, formed a whole and could not be reorganized or chopped up. Appropriate changes of small points would be permitted, but that was all. The more Matsumoto pressed with specific questions about details such as the preamble, amendment procedures, the Diet, elections, the imperial house law, and the rights and duties of the people, the more obvious it became that the two sides were coming from different directions. Whitney emphasized that the imperial family was not in control of the law, it was under the law, as in England. Matsumoto questioned why renunciation of war was an article of its own, couldn't it be inserted in the preamble as a principle? No, said Whitney, the supreme commander wanted it prominently displayed so as to attract the world's attention that Japan was now serious about its rehabilitation.

Translation remained a major problem. SCAP wanted the constitution to be written in colloquial Japanese to prevent obfuscation by classical rhetoric, whereas the Japanese argued that a literal translation of the American document would not achieve the formality and dignity of a Japanese legal document, especially a constitution. Making a translation into Japanese style would take weeks, and inevitably much of the American meaning might be lost. MacArthur was in a hurry; already months had been wasted; he needed the constitution completed before the FEC tried to take over constitutional reform and possibly deny the emperor's sovereignty.

On February 27 Matsumoto and his assistants started work on the judicial translation (actually more of a Japanese draft using the American one as a model). They had two documents to work with: the SCAP version in English, and a literal Japanese translation done by the Foreign Ministry. Their job was to make the Japanese translation legally correct according to Japanese law.

The Americans expected, when they got the Japanese version, to translate it back into English, match it up side by side with the American original, and find the two virtually the same. That didn't happen. For example, the American draft said in article 1: “The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the Unity of the People, deriving his position from the sovereign will of the People, and from no other source.” The Japanese version switched the two clauses around and made the emperor look godlike by using the word “supreme” in place of “sovereign”: “The Emperor derives his position from the supreme will of the Japanese People, maintaining his position as a symbol of the State and as an emblem of the Unity of the People.” In article 2, the American version said: “Succession to the Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and in accordance with such Imperial House Law as the Diet may enact.” The Japanese version left out the Diet entirely: “The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House Law.”

Another problem for the Americans was that there were in reality two Japanese languages—the classical one and the conversational one. Like the Greeks, who use a modern rather than a classical form of their language, many Japanese could not understand the classical Japanese used by the emperor and the government. Indeed, when the emperor read his announcement of the surrender, the people in one particular village thought he was announcing a great victory and celebrated all night, only to wake up the next morning and realize they had been quite mistaken. When the emperor delivered his message to the first postwar Diet, fewer than half the members of that august body could understand him. When the list of Japanese war criminals was announced, only one out of ten Japanese could read the names. Americans were stunned to learn that the once-mighty country they had taken over was basically illiterate.
*
 

Throughout the document the Americans found a host of omissions and differences, some of them critical. With time running out, the two sides got together to hash out an agreement. It was like writing a constitution all over again. Back and forth the two sides went, often so frustrated and exhausted that people were on the verge of exchanging physical blows. The Americans made many concessions, several of them by MacArthur personally. In what turned out to be the guiding principle of the constitution drafting, they would use “spoken Japanese instead of the traditional literary style of legal language,” which they found to be “archaic, stilted and inelastic and could not be read, much less understood by the ordinary man.” A constitution should be simple, MacArthur reminded his staffers; they were to remember what FDR said on the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution in 1937: The American Constitution is “a layman's document, not a lawyer's.”

In a thirty-two-hour nonstop, marathon session, the translation got done, bipartisanship at its best. On March 6 the government signed off on the “Japanese Government draft” and it became official on April 17, a week after the general election, which SCAP gladly interpreted as a popular ratification of the document.

Of course no SCAP deed occurred without an American-style dose of publicity and public relations, especially when Douglas MacArthur was personally involved. To make sure the new constitution would be taken seriously and reverently, a Committee to Popularize the Constitution was organized in the Diet. Advised by Alfred Hussey and Ruth Ellerman of the Government Section, the committee put together an advisory board of prominent politicians and academicians and went into high gear. It divided the country into ten districts, sent experts to conduct training sessions for local public officials, and published twenty million booklets, one per household, titled “The New Constitution! A Bright Light!” The constitution, the booklet gushed, “is the compass of our daily lives . . . the splendid code which will be woven into our ideals and aspirations.” Readers were pleased to learn that “The Japanese people mutually respect individual character. They will correctly practice democracy. With a spirit of love of peace, they will have warm and friendly relations with the countries of the world.” The publicity committee made a special effort to reach out to the citizens of tomorrow. Grade-school and high-school children saw documentary films, put on plays using puppets, participated in essay-writing contests in the local newspaper, and sang musicals about peace and democracy marching onward like Christian soldiers.