Shinzo Koizumi: As a Teacher of the Emperor, As a Liberal

2019/02/22

At Keio University, Shinzo Koizumi boasts a level of recognition second only to Yukichi Fukuzawa.

However, recounting Koizumi's life is no easy task. Under the wartime regime, President Koizumi actively affirmed the war, boosted fighting spirit, and sent Keio students to the battlefield. As an anti-Marxist economist, Koizumi made enemies of many Marxists and engaged in fierce debates. After the war, based on his conviction that Japan should align itself with the liberal camp, he advocated for a separate peace treaty, clashing with neutralists and those who insisted on a comprehensive peace treaty. While he possessed popularity, character, and scholarship, and had many allies, he also had many enemies.

I wanted to depict Koizumi as objectively and neutrally as possible, and to do so within the Heisei era. This is because Koizumi was the person responsible for the education of the Emperor in his youth—the Emperor who went on to shape the Heisei era. What kind of youth did Koizumi lead, how did he become an economist and then President, and with what ideals and philosophy did he educate the Emperor during his time as Crown Prince? How did his post-war activities and ideals connect to the bellicose Koizumi of that war?

The keynote I have set for this book is the "moral backbone" that appears in the essay "Reflection" published by Koizumi after the war. Koizumi pondered: what once supported the rise of the Meiji era were the samurai who possessed a "moral backbone." They received almost no university education, yet they won through the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. In the last great war, after the generation that received university education became leaders, good books became widespread, and universal suffrage was implemented, they committed unprecedentedly foolish acts. Why? Was it not because the Japanese people had lost their "moral backbone"?

While expressing a "reflection" that contained a great deal of self-reproach, Koizumi proceeded to give lectures to Emperor Showa and undertake the education of the Crown Prince. At times learning from the convictions of King George V of the UK, speaking of Emperor Showa's sovereign virtues, and learning from the works of Fukuzawa, he continued to instill a "moral backbone" in the next generation's Emperor. Responding to this, the Crown Prince also came to say that he wanted to become a person with a "moral backbone."

In the figure of the Heisei Emperor, who stood by disaster victims, memorialized the war dead, and devoted himself to ritual ceremonies, I see Koizumi's legacy. Through this book, I hope readers will also enjoy this journey of tracing the origins of the Heisei era.

Shinzo Koizumi: As a Teacher of the Emperor, As a Liberal

Masamichi Ogawara (Author)

Chuko Shinsho

224 pages, 780 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time this magazine was published.