http://www.pulse.ru/articles.asp?release=36&theme=10&article=228 What interests you in the personality of Hirohito? How do you explain the fact that, of all the leaders of the defeated countries in the Second World War, he was the only one not to be punished? ヒロヒトの人間性のどこに関心を持ったのか?第二次大戦の敗戦国リーダーの中で彼だけが処罰されていない事実をどう説明するか?
What makes a man great? Exceptional personal characteristics, blind chance, Providence? And how can we measure the greatness of a concrete historical figure? What are the units of measurement that we should use?
Hirohito ruled Japan from 1926 to 1989. During that long historical period, a major military empire, which terrified South-East Asia and was partly responsible for the Second World War, was crushed by the Allies, but it still managed to be reborn on new foundations by the 1960s, embodying the technological dreams of humanity.
But an even more astonishing metamorphosis took place with the Emperor himself. He traces his family back to the empress of the sun Amaterasu, he is the embodiment of a god on earth, but he not only signed Japan's capitulation on September 2, 1945, but a few months afterwards repudiated his divine origin. That wasn't easy. These steps entirely broke with historical tradition. Japan was hit by hundreds of ritual suicides by leading statesmen, a number of which were carried out right in front of the imperial palace.
Hirohito was brave enough to reject the past and provide for a worthy historical future for the country. A small, frail man with a high-pitched voice, an academic working on botany and hydrobiology, he was entirely unsuited to absolute tyranny, both physically and spiritually. He even turned his palace into a scientific laboratory - this wasn't the bunker of a bloody god of war. But that was the role that Hirohito had to play, that was the mask that he had to put on, and rejecting it was one of the main themes of the work that lay ahead.
Emperor Hirohito valued concepts of national and state honor less than the interests of the people and the saving of their lives. That's the great accomplishment of this man and of the American politicians who in that historical moment could understand and appreciate that fact. But the Emperor gave the world a lesson for which no students could be found. The scale of the example that he set wasn't noticed in Europe or in the Soviet Union. Our creative group is drawing attention to the fact that good can be both strong and intelligent.