Re:A Chunk of Trinitite Reminds Us of the Power of the Atomi...
by krapp on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:19PM
(#20773603)
> The Japanese population was largely prepared to fight to the death against any invasion.
The Japanese military was, clearly since they went so far as to attempt a coup against the emperor to prevent his surrender[0]. I don't know that the Japanese population at large shared the same sentiment by the end of the war. They didn't exactly fight to the death as expected during the occupation.
>The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous.
That interpretation would seem to come from the modern, postwar Japanese constitution, in which the emperor is just a figurehead without real power.
At the time, however, the emperor derived power from a claim of divine lineage from the sun goddess Amaterasu.
>Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.
Not by much. The whole country was essentially a military dictatorship run by a religious cult overseen by a god-king. Common people tend not to have much influence over the policies of such regimes.
The Japanese military was, clearly since they went so far as to attempt a coup against the emperor to prevent his surrender[0]. I don't know that the Japanese population at large shared the same sentiment by the end of the war. They didn't exactly fight to the death as expected during the occupation.
>The emperor derives his power from the will of the populous.
That interpretation would seem to come from the modern, postwar Japanese constitution, in which the emperor is just a figurehead without real power.
At the time, however, the emperor derived power from a claim of divine lineage from the sun goddess Amaterasu.
>Saying they have zero control over their govt or the situation is overstating things.
Not by much. The whole country was essentially a military dictatorship run by a religious cult overseen by a god-king. Common people tend not to have much influence over the policies of such regimes.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident