Japan’s wartime leader Emperor Hirohito said there was “no point in living” if it meant he would continue to be blamed for the country’s resounding…
Japan’s wartime leader Emperor Hirohito said there was “no point in living” if it meant he would continue to be blamed for the country’s resounding defeat in World War II, according to newly released excerpts from an aide’s diary.
Hirohito was wracked with guilt in the final years of his life — emotions that were laid out in the journal of his chamberlain, Shinobu Kobayashi, Kyodo News reported .
“There is no point in living a longer life by reducing my workload. It would only increase my chances of seeing or hearing things that are agonizing,” Kobayashi wrote in an entry dated April 7,1987.
Hirohito died two years later at age 85.
The Imperial Household Agency had been working on lightening Hirohito’s load following the death of his brother, Prince Takamatsu, in February 1987.
“I have experienced the deaths of my brother and relatives and have been told about my war responsibility,” Hirohito told Kobayashi.
He tried to assuage the aging emperor, writing that he told him, “Given how the country has developed today from postwar rebuilding, it is only a page in history.
