Reyhan Silingar

Congratulations Hannah!!! So looking forward to reading it!!

I look forward to writing on her more.

This life beside Hirohito, rendered in the official chronicle, is valuable not merely as biography but as a lens on the shifting ideal of imperial womanhood in modern Japan - restoring depth to a figure long confined to silence and revealing quiet forms of agency where convention saw passivity.

あえて実録に記されなかった香淳皇后の発言・動静　宮内庁の説明は：朝日新聞 宮内庁が17年かけてまとめた「香淳皇后実録」は、本文と目次など計13冊からなり、歴代皇后の実録としては最も長い。しかし、通読した歴史研究者からは「あえて記されていないと思われる事績がある」との声もあ…

I first heard from Hara-sensei that the Imperial Household Agency would release the ‘official’ record of Empress Kōjun - consort of Emperor Hirohito and known in life as Empress Nagako. Now accessible: 97 years across four eras, from Meiji to Heisei. www.asahi.com/articles/AST...

Slowly chipping away - amid writing - at Iijima Naoki’s recent book on emperor-military relations, from the Meiji creation of the modern army and navy through the two world wars. It will be in my state-of-the-field review.

Crown Prince Hirohito at the Eiffel Tower, 1921.

I look forward to the book!

Fascinating. Thank you for sharing these finds - I miss the kind of academic community we once had on Twitter, and your posts keep that spirit alive. I have been following with real appreciation.

How wars end When the terms for ending a conflict are left undefined, a state can drift towards defeat, with the choice of peace arriving only when the power to shape it has gone.

Wrote a short piece on why Japan’s surrender came so late.
engelsbergideas.com/notebook/how...

Across 11 notebooks (Dec 1941–Mar 1946), Tsuboshima recorded the information reaching the throne and the Emperor’s questions in wartime - another invaluable source piling up for my next project.

Exciting to see the first volume (to end-1943) of the wartime diaries of Tsuboshima Fumio (1893–1959), aide-de-camp to Emperor Hirohito during the Pacific War, coming out soon.

Spoke on Saturday at ASCJ at Sophia University on Emperor Hirohito and the Cold War. A real pleasure to be part of such a thoughtful discussion - and many thanks to @rbjapan.bsky.social for organising it.

This corner, this calm.

「百武三郎日記」（全3巻） 内容案内 - 岩波書店 現代史の空白を埋める第一級史料、ついに公刊［編集］古川隆久・茶谷誠一［協力］NHK日中戦争勃発から太平洋戦争開戦を経て、日本の敗勢が決定的となる…

www.iwanami.co.jp/news/n114334...

『百武三郎日記 侍従長が見た昭和天皇と戦争 1 昭和11年11月～13年12月』 ("The Diary of Hyakutake Saburō: The Shōwa Emperor and the War as Seen by the Grand Chamberlain, Vol. 1 [Nov 1936-Dec 1938]"), edited by Furukawa Takahisa & Chadani Seiichi with NHK, is out in July from Iwanami.

(34 pages, dated 15 June–19 August 1945) are written from the back, detailing deliberations of the Supreme War Council and other high-level meetings.

Hirohito’s remark on 8 August 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing:

「三百年も経てば再起可能なるが如き条件も致し方なし」

昭和天皇「日本再起まで300年」――広島原爆後、厳しい講和条件覚悟　東郷茂徳の手帳全文判読で初確認　東大・加藤教授ら分析 日米開戦時と終戦時の外務大臣だった東郷茂徳（鹿児島県日置市出身）が、昭和天皇や当時の首相らとのやり取りを記録した手帳の全文を、東京大学の加藤陽子教授（６４）＝…

Tōgō Shigenori’s wartime notebook (91 pages) has been deciphered by Katō Yōko-sensei and a former specialist at the National Archives of Japan. Entries from the outbreak of the war begin at the front; end-of-war records 373news.com/news/local/d...

To sit here now - where he lived - matcha in hand, light falling just so - and reflect not to solve Konoe, but to sit with the contradictions: charisma and drift, ambition and regret. The house does not explain him. But it lets him linger.

Here is the dining room, where I was allowed to sit - on the very chairs where guests once gathered and were entertained. You can picture Konoe - distant but focused, speaking softly while power reorganised itself around him. He governed by tone as much as by vision.

Not a monument, but a space where ideals, contradictions, and history quietly reside. Less grandeur - more shadow and memory.

Designed by Itō Chūta, a leading architect, the villa fuses Japanese and Western forms - Taishō refinement with Shōwa shadows. Originally built in 1927 for Irisawa Tatsukichi, court physician to Emperor Taishō, it became a political crucible before turning into memory.

After his death, Yoshida Shigeru briefly stayed here. One dreamed aloud, the other managed what remained. Tekigai-sō held both.

He no longer recognised what he had helped create. Bureaucracy, ideology, mobilisation - forces once meant to stabilise Japan - now felt like they were closing in. His political imagination had outrun its grasp. The man of reform had become a man of retreat.

But those two visions were uneasy companions - and by war’s end, even Konoe seemed unsure where one ended and the other had led him.

Domestically, he saw state socialism as a way to stabilise society. Bureaucratic control, national mobilisation - it was the architecture of reform. Abroad, he envisioned Japan leading Asia.

It was here they laid the foundations for Japan’s alignment with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Weeks later, the Tripartite Pact was signed. The empire choosing its path - inside these walls.

He used this villa for political activity, forming his second and third cabinets here. In this drawing room, one of many important meetings he hosted was the Ogikubo Conference, held in July 1940. Konoe, Tōjō, Matsuoka.

Konoe saw himself as an intellectual-politician. Surrounded by scholars, he did not simply take their advice - he reshaped their ideas until they echoed his own. His brain trust served not as compass, but as filter. Intellect was his mode, but also his armour.

It was a gesture - to preserve honour. A final act to shield the imperial institution - and his lineage - from the humiliation of trial, and perhaps to withdraw from a world slipping out of his hands.

Since then, the room is said to have remained unchanged - exactly as it was.

This was the room - his study - where he ended his life on 16 December 1945, before GHQ could arrest him. For a man who once embodied Japan’s hopes for modern imperial leadership, it was not simply political escape.