Post on 28-Nov-2014
Ben JonesAMES 143B
4/27/11Dear Diary,
It happened again. It’s all Bullshit. Everything is. It’s becoming more and more clear why
we used to censor this goddamned leftist media more and prevented Westerners from polluting
our impressionable citizens’ minds by preventing Westerners from existing in our country. It was
so simple before the war and occupation. I can’t even imagine the ease with which the emperor
lived before that damned Matthew Perry decided so kindly to globalize the Japanese economy.
Bastard.
You see, it’s all about the media distorting situations and making frogs look like toads
and Americans like Kings. As you know, I wasn’t that upset when they misinterpreted the high
pitch of my voice during the surrender address, and their confusion over the MacArthur photo
was understandable after looking at it from their perspective and giving them many benefits of
the doubt. But now, they’ve crossed the line. They’ve actually crossed four or five or maybe
even six lines. They’re attributing all my hard work of remaking the economy to those bastard
Americans and that damn SCAP administration. I mean, I’m the emperor, so how could they
possibly think I wasn’t the driving force behind all the change that has happened? It was even
my idea for the postwar constitution to specify that the emperor would have a more symbolic
role in Japan. I was just so tired of all the controversies and hubbub around those stupid public
relations “fiascos,” and I wanted a break from having to worry about how things were unfolding.
I can’t believe how people portrayed me as looking inferior to MacArthur in that picture.
He looks like such a clown, and I’m dressed in my formal attire. Yea, he may be tall, but his
slouch and childish clothing aren’t the mark of a man of honor: they show how much one’s
mother has failed in raising them. Can you imagine? This guy doesn’t even have the capacity to
stand up straight or present himself in a dignified manner, and people have the nerve to say I
look outmatched. He doesn’t even have divine blood. I’m descended from the fucking Sun God.
We’re in the Land of the Rising Sun, and we’re worried about a little height differential? But
hey, I get it, the Westerners occupied our country and pretty solidly defeated us in the Pacific. I
was just clumsy enough to let my generals get overconfident in assuming the Americans didn’t
have the guts to go all out in the war effort. And that Hawaii bombing Pearl Harbor thing was
probably a bad idea in retrospect. Still, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about the war defeat.
They had more than twice as many people as we did, and we were close to world domination.
Not to mention their vast natural resources and supposed superior technology. When all was said
and done, at least we cleansed Asia of the dreaded white colonial presence. Well, everywhere
except Japan…and Korea.
Which brings me to that other touchy subject that convinced me to claim my status as the
symbolic leader. The stupid surrender address. Did we ever fire that damned consultant? How
did he ever convince us that I should sound more feminine to seem more soothing to the
populace? My voice is in actuality quite deep and intimidating, but that stupid public relations
consultant convinced me that people needed to be comforted and that my natural voice would
scare them into submission and we’d never get the economy going again. Sometimes consultants
aren’t worth their weight in sake, which looking at the exchange rate, costs almost nothing in the
US. At least he was right that we needed to rely on the people’s cheap labor to boost our exports
and manufacturing sectors after the bombs fell. I should’ve realized that I would appear weak if I
tried to sound feminine, but that guy had a way with words and really did a good job convincing
me that a mother’s voice was much more likely to mollify people’s minds than was a father’s
roar. I just didn’t realize what impact it would have on my public image. Even though it was on
radio, I’m still glad we didn’t hire a public image consultant. What if somebody took a picture
while I was speaking? Boy, that could’ve been another MacArthur picture disaster.
So now, we’re looking at what went wrong with the credit being doled out for our current
“economic miracle.” It really is amazing how quick people are to think that it has something to
do with the occupation or some kind of Japanese management techniques. I get all the blame and
none of the credit. That’s all a load of crap. To think that people are producing so much and
growing the economy at double digit rates because America is minimizing our defense spending
is ridiculous. People are producing more effectively for two reasons. First, they love me and
want to look good in my eyes. The ways that they do this is by producing as much as possible
both so that our economy looks powerful and so that I can have more tax revenue to fund
extravagant ceremonies at my sole discretion. This was definitely one of the perks of changing
my status to a purely symbolic one. Even though I became a more symbolic figurehead with the
ratification of the Constitution in the late 40s, I still take full responsibility for the post-war boom
in the economy. What is the only completely consistent factor since the late 1920s? Me. I mean,
here we are ten years into it, and look at how happy everyone is, what with their three new
regalia: television, washing machines, and refrigerators. How would people even know that
they’re happy without the emperor’s support? There would be no such comparison to the three
regalia had the imperial domain not started the idea in the first place. We’ve had our jewel,
mirror, and sword for years, but when the damned media starts playing off that idea, we get no
credit for the increased happiness and prestige factors that people feel when they think of their
consumer goods in imperial terms, like regalia. Not to mention that the linguistic applications of
my position are the least important in terms of the impact I have on daily life.
At first, I didn’t mind that people took what I do so much for granted. I mean, if people
don’t understand the intricacies of government and think that they make decisions on their own,
that’s not a big deal. But once the Americans came and started hinting that I was a fraud and
unimportant in the grand scheme of things, that’s when I started getting a little flustered. Just
look at the data. The current boom in the economy has nothing to do with the wartime period or
the period just after it. We were gonna have a great time in industry no matter what. The war was
a minor blip on a grand scale that only pointed upward. And the Americans almost ruined
everything by occupying Japan and instituting those crazy reforms. I tried to warn them against
it, but the liberal academics really swayed them pretty well. Fortunately, their nonsense was
quickly realized, and they made a quick “reverse course” to go back and fix everything that they
had done wrong. To think that they could have kept those crazy liberal concepts like new deals
for labor and the working class, bottom-up democracy, and a true renunciation of militarism, is
pretty hard to imagine. They finally got some sense smacked into them somehow, and by the end
of the occupation, they started to see things the right, conservative, way. Eventually, their goals
were more evenly lined up with what I had been preaching all along through my conservative
cohorts in the “actual” government and business. We could finally have the economic recovery
work well in the way we had originally planned.
A few of their crazy reforms unfortunately did last, and we’ve seen the tragic results of
those. That damned land reform that keeps Japan with no efficiency in agriculture. If we could
just use our cartel model that we have in the steel industry and apply it to agriculture, maybe we
could get folks out of the country and increasing productivity within the city. Can you believe
that the Americans took away land from the landlord class and distributed it to peasants? They’re
doing this while fighting the Cold War against the communists in the Soviet Union. Do
Americans not understand irony? I guess they don’t actually learn anything during their
mandated years of schooling. Anyway, back to the original point.
Even if you tried to make an argument in favor of Japanese management techniques
being the driver of this strong growth, it’s still because of me. People are so driven to success
and productivity because they have a strong moral center and believe that they are doing
something for the greater good. And of course, I am the greater good.
Then, the media tries to give credit to other factors that have just as little to do with the
true cause of growth. Another way of thinking about it is that all these factors are directly
attributable to me, and I am directly the cause of the economic growth. Let me explain fully.
So, some people have said it’s because of the advantage of “followership.” Right,
because our companies paying hefty fees for foreign technology is such an advantage in terms of
productivity. We would have already invented this technology had the US not resorted to drastic
measures and bombed innocent civilians that happened to be working in huge industrial
complexes that occasionally made weapons. Even Truman, not to mention Einstein, was deeply
disturbed by what they had done. Maybe they felt guilty and gave us some discounts on the
technology. Should we feel bad about that? I don’t think so. Like I said, we were gonna develop
it ourselves anyway, so they pretty much owed it to us. Or maybe they just did it because of the
US-Japan Security Alliance, ‘cause it fostered a friendly atmosphere between our countries.
Well, I’ll take the credit behind that notion as well, because I approved the Prime Minister’s
signing of the damned thing.
On the other hand, we’re getting some fans of the industrial planning model. It shouldn’t
be too hard for me to convince you that this is a direct result of my fantastic leadership. The
whole concept of “competitive advantage” was actually something I thought up while thinking
about how best to have my concubines fulfill my needs. I just decided to translate it to the
political realm. And the media doesn’t give this mind any credit. Imagine that. I think up things
like MITI before I even have breakfast, but some silly bureaucrat gets the credit because I’m too
humble to broadcast these facts over the radio. Of course, if I were to broadcast them, I’d use my
normal voice and show people how threatening I can be.
Beyond that, they’ve been talking about a few minor points that are all really just
nothing, but I guess I should mention them for completeness’ sake: entrepreneurship, education,
and the exchange rate. For entrepreneurship, I always encouraged people to think on their feet
and innovate as much as possible. That obviously carried over into business. I also wanted
people to have good education and they realized how important it was when the war came and all
those smart engineers made such great weapons and planes. I’ve always been an intellectual, and
I don’t mind the fact that education gets some credit in this great time, due to my strong support
of education. I guess I already mentioned the exchange rate, which has had a pretty good impact
on our exports (which tripled between 1949 and 1951, hey hey hey), but that’s really just because
I secretly used monetary policy in tricky ways to keep our currency undervalued compared to the
dollar and all those silly European currencies. I really think they should standardize and just go
to a one-currency policy for the region. I doubt worries about government debt crises are actually
valid, but that’s really neither here nor there.
There was one strong point in the media’s portrayal of this whole deal, and that was the
beautiful point that there were wartime continuities in industry and manufacturing sectors.
Everything that has boosted the economy has basically just been a carryover from before the war.
Which is exactly the point that I’ve been trying to make this whole time, but of course, I have to
resort to telling you about it because I can’t just go out making speeches about trivial matters,
like why I’m the most important thing that has happened to our economy since 1868.
Which as you know, I am.
Stupid Media,Hirohito