HIROHITO’S UNCLE PRINCE ASAKA TO COMMAND CHINA TROOPS

TODAY

Tokyo, Japan • December 5, 1937

On this date in 1937 Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japa­nese Army and uncle by mar­riage to Japa­nese Emperor Hiro­hito (post­humously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), flew from Tokyo to his new assign­ment—tem­po­rary com­mand of the Japa­nese Shang­hai Expe­di­tionary Force, a unit of Gen. Iwane Matsui’s Japa­nese Cen­tral China Area Army (CCAA). Mat­sui’s forces besieged 300,000 Nation­alist Chi­nese troops in the vicin­ity of Nan­jing (Nan­king), the for­tress capi­tal of Chiang Kai-shek’s govern­ment. (The Chi­nese govern­ment had vacated its capital days earlier, on December 1, 1937.)

Two days after Asaka’s arrival, the CCAA mounted its final assault on Nan­jing’s walls. Asaka, acting for the elderly Matsui who was ill, allegedly issued the order to “kill all cap­tives,” thus sanc­tioning what became known as the Nan­king Mas­sacre, also known as the Rape of Nan­king. That the order may have been issued by a known ultra-nation­alist staff mem­ber of Gen. Matsui’s CCAA with­out the prince’s know­ledge or assent does not absolve Asaka or Matsui from what tran­spired next because neither officer countermanded it.

Leaving the “kill all captives” order in place may have had much to do with events 4 months earlier, for on August 5, 1937, Hiro­hito rati­fied the lifting of Japa­nese Army con­straints on the treat­ment of Chinese pri­soners of war, whether com­ba­tant or noncom­ba­tant. Indeed, Hiro­hito’s direc­tive advised staff offi­cers to avoid even using the term “POW.” And so with the appear­ance on Decem­ber 13 of the first Japa­nese troops in Nan­king, a 6‑week orgy of bes­ti­ality, rape, mur­der by bay­o­net or machine gun, theft, arson, and other war crimes commenced.

The postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo esti­mated that 20,000 to 80,000 men and women (per a Nation­alist Chi­nese tribu­nal, more than 300,000), ranging from the elderly to infants (whose bellies were often slit open), were raped, many by gangs of sadistic sol­diers going from door-to-door. As tem­po­rary com­man­der of Japa­nese troops in Nan­jing in early Decem­ber 1937, Prince Asaka was impli­cated in the hor­rific events through February 1938, when he was recalled to Japan. How­ever, because he was a mem­ber of the Im­perial family—even repre­senting the family on the Japa­nese Supreme War Coun­cil until the end of the war in August 1945—Prince Asaka, like his uncle the Emperor, escaped indictment and trial as a war criminal.

There remains an element of con­tro­versy in the pre­war and war­time role of Japa­nese Emperor Hiro­hito, who had taken the aus­pi­cious reign-title “Shōwa” (“illus­tri­ous peace”) in 1926. A 2015 narra­tive by Noriko Kawa­mura, Emperor Hiro­hito and the Pacific War, portrays Hiro­hito as a sacred but cere­monial figure in a pre­carious and ambig­u­ous posi­tion when it came to sanc­tioning deci­sions taken by Japa­nese mili­tary leaders, espe­cially when they con­flicted with his own personal, less hawkish views. An opposing narra­tive asserts that Hiro­hito was a true war leader and that he should have been charged with war crimes at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribu­nal just as were Japa­nese Prime Minis­ter/War Minis­ter Gen. Hideki Tōjō and other senior offi­cials who served the emperor. Herbert P. Bix, in his 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, believes the latter narra­tive is correct. In Bix’s view Hiro­hito, as com­mand­er in chief of all Japanese armed forces (daigensui), bears the strongest share of poli­tical, legal, and moral respon­si­bil­ity for the crimi­nal behav­ior of his armed forces in the Asia Pacific Thea­ter in the 1930s and ’40s, and he cer­tainly bears respon­si­bil­ity for green-lighting the infamous slaughter of Chin­ese soldiers and civil­ians in Nanjing in 1937. Bix demon­strates to the satis­fac­tion of many readers that Hiro­hito was a repeat vio­la­tor of inter­na­tional peace, beginning in 1931 with Japan’s ille­gal sei­zure of Man­chu­ria in north­eastern China, con­tinuing in 1937 with the start of the Second Sino-Japa­nese War inau­gu­rated by the grue­some 8‑week-long Rape of Nan­king watched over by his uncle-by-marriage, Prince Yasu­hiko Asaka, and ending in August 1945 only when he and his crimi­nal asso­ci­ates could find no way out of the debacle they had caused in South­east Asia. Hiro­hito, in Bix’s bio­graphy, was the missing defen­dant in the dock—granted immunity—during the Tokyo Trials of 1946–1948.—Norm Haskett

Two of Emperor Hirohito’s Accomplices in the Nanking Massacre, 1937

Nanking Massacre: Prince Yasuhiko Asaka (1887–1981) in 1940Nanking Massacre: Gen. Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) and Prince Asaka, Nanjing, December 17, 1937

Left: A member of the Japanese Supreme War Council from 1937 to the end of the war in August 1945, Prince Yasu­hiko Asaka (1887–1981) wears the uni­form of a general in 1940. Asaka was tem­porary com­mander of Japa­nese forces in the final assault on the Chinese capital of Nan­king (now Nan­jing). His culpa­bility in the issuing the “kill all cap­tives” order and in the sub­se­quent events in Nan­jing is fod­der for debate. Not open for debate is that the sanc­tion for the Nan­king Mas­sacre (sources place the number of dead between 50,000 and 300,000 or more) and the crimes com­mitted during the Second Sino-Japa­nese war (1937–1945) must ulti­mately be found in the August 5, 1937, ratifi­ca­tion by Emperor Hiro­hito of the Japa­nese Army’s pro­po­si­tion to remove the con­straints of inter­na­tional law on the treat­ment of pri­soners (combatants and noncombatants) swept up in the Chinese conflict.

Right: Aging Gen. Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) and 50‑year-old Lt. Gen. Prince Yasu­hiko Asaka (in back­ground) on parade, Nan­jing, Decem­ber 17, 1937. Like Asaka, Gen. Matsui held a seat (since 1934) on Japan’s Supreme War Council. Pulled from retire­ment after a rela­tively undis­tin­guished mili­tary career, Matsui was given com­mand of the expedi­tionary forces in China from August 1937 to Febru­ary 1938. Con­sidered a “China expert” owing to his life­long interest in Chinese civili­za­tion and postings to China as far back as the Russo-Japa­nese War (1904–1905), Matsui remarked to Japa­nese War Minis­ter Gen. Hajime Sugi­yama before leaving for his post in August 1937 that the China prob­lem could only be solved by breaking the power of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and capturing his capital, Nan­jing. On Decem­ber 23, 1948, the 70‑year-old Matsui was hanged in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, having been con­victed of war crimes and sen­tenced to death by the Inter­na­tional Mili­tary Tri­bunal for the Far East for respon­si­bility over the Nan­king Mas­sacre. (By agree­ment of the U.S. occu­pa­tion author­i­ties, Asaka was spared indict­ment and con­vic­tion as a war crimi­nal and thus the hang­man’s noose owing to his relation­ship to the untouch­able imperial family.) Matsui was pre­ceded in death by Hajime Sugi­yama, who com­mitted suicide by shooting him­self 4 times with his ser­vice revol­ver on Septem­ber 12, 1945, 4 weeks after he and other senior Japa­nese mili­tary offi­cers had affixed their signa­tures to an agree­ment to carry out Emperor Hirohito’s order of surrender to the Allies.

Survivor Recounts Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanking) Using Contemporary Japanese Footage