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