"Japan was willing to surrender throughout all of 1945, but only with the gurantee their Emperor would remain"

[TokyoBayer]

@Northern_Piper

I think the reason it was such a big deal, aside from general history/society issues, is that some of the references to the Emperor were also code for the “Imperial system”, i.e. the constitution where the Emperor had authority, not simply as a symbolic monarch like the British monarch. So for some of the Japanese higher-ups, keeping the Emperor meant that they would not be moving to a democratic constitutional monarchy, and the elites would still have corresponding authority.

This is close, but the question of how much power the Emperor actually had is fascinating.

For most of Japanese history, the Emperor was kept in a religious ceremonial role and didn’t weld any actual power. The Meiji Restoration was conducted with the pretense of giving real power to the Emperor, but in actuality, the aim was to create a new oligarchy.

The Emperors under the Meiji constitution had less actual executive power than the US president or the British PM and certainly nowhere near what the dictators held. His constitutional role was to “accept the advice of his advisors” although he certainly did more than that.

Like the US at the beginning of the war, the Japanese Army and Navy were completely separate organizations, with their own cabinet ministers (Minister of War (Army) and Minister of Navy). While they were both in the Cabinet, they nominally reported directly to the Emperor.

Japan law at the time stated that those two position needed to be filled by active duty flag officers. If either of them resigned, it would bring down the government and the branch of service could prevent a new cabinet from forming by retiring any officer that the PM nominated.

In addition, the Chiefs of Staff of the services also directly reported to the Emperor (who again was constitutionally bound to accept their advice) and were completely outside of civilian control.

Retaining the Emperor could have meant to the Japanese military could have retained their independence. The leaders knew that they could be considered war criminals and one of the demands was that Japan be allowed to try and punish war criminals themselves.

From my post in the tread linked by @Dissonance ;

@TokyoBayer

We’re so far out of GQ territory here, but IMHO, Japan was headed for martial law and then it may not have ever surrendered.

[snip]

For the discussion of the surrender of Japan, one simply cannot talk about “Japan” as a monolith. We talk about seven people. There were two rival groups of three each (the Big Six) in the Supreme War Council: the “peace faction” and the die hards who intended to do just that. The later never were going to give in.

The Foreign Minister, and the only civilian, had seen the writing on the wall. He wanted to quit before everyone was killed. The not that strong Prime Minister and the Navy Minister were also on this camp.

General Anami, the War (Army) Minister, and the most [powerful] member of the government (outside of the Emperor, who had more theoretical power, but was usually unable to act on it) led the hawks.

In addition there was the Emperor and then the people who he looked to for advice.

The Big Six had been split before the bombing and neither the Soviet entry into the war nor the atomic bombs changed that. What did change was the Emperor’s decision to intervene. There are no GQ answers to that.

Then after the intervention, Gen. Anami decided not the lead a coup for reasons again, which are not GQ.

The war faction was not going to surrender, no matter the terms. They used the excuse of retaining the Emperor perhaps not only because that would have preserved their independence but also it was used as an excuse. Had that been clarified, they would have found something else.

When the Emperor acted by making a decision on his own, it was actually acting in contrary to the constitution. A contemporary analogy would be if Pence had acted as Trump wanted.

@Jackmannii

There was also political pressure on the Truman Administration to end the war before the Soviet Union could make significant territorial gains and demand a postwar role in the occupation of Japan. Republicans could’ve had a field day in that event.

While there was growing concern among some people about Soviet encroachment, that was actually still very early in the process. The surrender of Germany had only been three months early and the broken promised were still unfolding.

I believe that the much greater pressure of ending the war sooner came from the concerns of the expectation of great casualties and questions of how long the war would end. The public wanted the war to be finished.