The Mikado’s August Body: ‘Divinity’ and ‘Corporeality’ of the Meiji Emperor and the Ideological Construction of Imperial Rule

Abstract

How do we characterize the emperor in modern Japanese history? The general outline of the answer may go something like this: the Japanese emperor was hoisted up by the Loyalist coalition – consisting of the mid-level samurai terrorists and activists and their merchant and landlord sympathizers – against the Tokugawa bakufu as an alternative to the latter’s secular authority during the final phase of its rule. When the coalition emerged victorious (symbolically at least, in 1868), they had immediately seized upon this opportunity to plunge the country into rapid modernization. Included among their agendas was adoption and modification of the imperialist–colonialist model of the ruling structure from Europe and the United States. But such efforts went hand-in-hand with the revival of the long-dormant tradition of emperor-worship, for the purpose of integrating the nation into one nation-state. Thus, the Meiji emperor was considered not only the head of the executive branch of the government (and supreme commander of the Army and Navy) but also the ultimate patriarch and a ‘living god.’ Those who stress the particularities of Japanese militarism and fascism in the early part of the twentieth century tend to see them as always imbued with a certain flavour of religious fanaticism. It is implied, but not necessarily proven, that this peculiarly ‘religious’ character of the modern Japanese emperor is traceable to its origins in the Meiji period.