The Kyūjō incident

On 14 August 1945, a few hours after Emperor Hirohito had for the second time settled the dispute among his ministers and ordered the acceptance of the Allied surrender terms, a group of young officers from the War Ministry attempted a coup d’état. The conspirators, led by Major Kenji Hatanaka and Lieutenant Colonel Jirō Shiizaki, intended to seize the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, isolate the Emperor from his “treacherous” advisers, take possession of the recording of the surrender broadcast and prevent it from being aired. On the evening and night of 14–15 August they murdered the commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division, made use of a forged order and for several hours controlled the palace grounds. They did not, however, find the recording or win the backing of the army leadership, and towards morning the revolt was put down by the Eastern District Army. In Japan the events of that night are known as the Kyūjō incident (Kyūjō Jiken, “the palace incident”).

The incident is often summed up as an attempt by “Japanese military men and right-wingers to overthrow the government and prevent the inevitable surrender”; that description needs refining. The core of the conspiracy was a handful of staff officers from the War Ministry rather than a broad movement of soldiers and civilians. Nor was the aim to overthrow the government as such, but to stop the surrender by taking control of the palace and – as the conspirators hoped – carrying the whole army with them. Civilian nationalists appeared only on the fringes of these events: a group of students from a technical college in Yokohama, led by an army captain, set fire to the homes of the Prime Minister and other dignitaries in the early hours of 15 August.

Two “sacred decisions”

At the beginning of August 1945 Japan found itself in a position from which there was no military way out. On 6 August an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima; on 8 August the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and the next day its forces entered Manchuria; and on 9 August a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Yet the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War – the so-called Big Six – was evenly divided. Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō and Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai wanted to accept the Potsdam Declaration with a single reservation – the preservation of the Emperor’s position. The War Minister, General Korechika Anami, the Chief of the Army General Staff, Yoshijirō Umezu, and the Chief of the Navy General Staff, Soemu Toyoda, further demanded that Japan should disarm its own forces, try its own war criminals and not be occupied.

The deadlock was broken by the Emperor. At an Imperial Conference convened after midnight on 9–10 August in an underground shelter within the palace grounds, Hirohito backed Tōgō’s position. On the morning of 10 August the government offered to accept the declaration on condition that it did not prejudice the prerogatives of the Emperor. The reply of the US Secretary of State, James Byrnes, which reached Tokyo on 12 August, gave no such guarantee: it stated that the authority of the Emperor and the government would be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, and that the ultimate form of government in Japan would be determined by the freely expressed will of the people. For many officers this meant a threat to the kokutai – the “national essence”, a political order founded on the divine authority of the Emperor.

On 13 August the Big Six and the cabinet were deadlocked again. That day American B-29s dropped leaflets over Japan carrying the text of the Japanese offer and of the Allied reply. The Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kōichi Kido, the Emperor’s closest adviser, feared that news of the negotiations would reach the troops and provoke a mutiny. Before noon on 14 August Hirohito met first the field marshals and the most senior commanders – Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, commander of the Second General Army, whose headquarters was in devastated Hiroshima, admitted that he did not believe an invasion could be repelled – and then the full cabinet and the Supreme Council at another conference in the shelter. After hearing Anami, Umezu and Toyoda, the Emperor declared that his view had not changed and ordered a rescript to be prepared in which he himself would address the nation. The cabinet unanimously approved the decision, and the Foreign Ministry instructed the legations in Switzerland and Sweden to convey to the Allies Japan’s acceptance of their terms.

The conspiracy in the War Ministry

News of the Emperor’s first decision caused uproar in the War Ministry. Many staff officers, brought up in the belief that the Japanese army never surrenders, regarded capitulation as a disgrace and as a betrayal of the Emperor himself, committed by his “evil advisers”. This reasoning echoed the ideology of the young officers who in February 1936 had tried to seize power in Tokyo – when, as it happened, one of those seriously wounded was the then Grand Chamberlain, Admiral Suzuki.

Already after the Emperor’s first decision some of the ministry’s officers began preparing a plan to use the troops stationed in the capital. Late on the evening of 12 August a group of officers – Major Kenji Hatanaka, Lieutenant Colonels Masataka Ida, Masahiko Takeshita (Anami’s brother-in-law) and Masao Inaba, and Colonel Okikatsu Arao, head of the Military Affairs Section – came to Minister Anami and asked him to do everything in his power to prevent the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. According to participants’ accounts, the coup was to rest on four pillars: the War Minister, the Chief of the General Staff, the commander of the Eastern District Army, General Shizuichi Tanaka, and the commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division, General Takeshi Mori. Anami, the strongest personality in the government of the day, heard the conspirators out but gave them no clear answer.

On the morning of 14 August the plan was put to Anami and Umezu; the Chief of Staff rejected the use of troops. When Anami asked him whether the war should be continued “even at the cost of a coup d’état”, he replied that there was nothing left but to submit to the Emperor’s decision. Takeshita pressed his brother-in-law either to resign – which would have brought down the cabinet – or to back the coup. Anami replied that the fall of the government would not stop the Emperor’s will.

After the conference with the Emperor the minister announced at the ministry that the army would submit to the Emperor’s decision. The most senior army commanders, gathered in an adjoining room – Anami, Umezu, Field Marshals Hajime Sugiyama and Hata, and the Inspector General of Military Training, Kenji Doihara – then signed, at the request of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Torashirō Kawabe, a brief declaration: “The army will act in accordance with the imperial decision to the end.” It was also signed by the commander of the army air force, General Masakazu Kawabe. This document cut the conspirators off from the army leadership. Hatanaka and Shiizaki nevertheless decided to act alone, counting on the rest of the army to follow if they seized the palace.

Meanwhile the broadcast was being prepared in the palace. The text of the surrender rescript was agreed after long arguments in the cabinet – Anami insisted, among other things, on replacing a sentence about the “ever-worsening situation” with words saying that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage” – and at around 7 p.m. it was copied out by the court calligrapher. At about 11.25 p.m., in one of the buildings of the Imperial Household Ministry, Hirohito recorded his address on gramophone discs – in two takes – in the presence of a team from the radio broadcaster NHK. The chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa hid them in a safe in the office of the Empress’s household. The radio had already announced that the Emperor would address the nation at noon on 15 August.

Night in the palace

On the evening of 14 August the conspirators went into action. Hatanaka and Shiizaki persuaded the commander of the 2nd Imperial Guards Infantry Regiment, Colonel Toyojirō Haga, whose battalion was guarding the palace, that the coup had the support of Anami, Umezu and the commanders of the Eastern District Army and the Guards – which was untrue. Hatanaka also tried to win over General Tanaka, but Tanaka refused and told him to go home. The attitude of General Mori, who commanded the troops in the palace, was crucial. At about 1 a.m. Hatanaka, Shiizaki, Ida and Captain Shigetarō Uehara of the air academy came to his office. Mori, who was talking at the time with his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Michinori Shiraishi of the Second General Army staff, refused to take part in the revolt. Hatanaka shot the general, and Uehara killed Shiraishi. These were the only fatalities in the palace grounds that night.

The conspirators used the dead commander’s seal to authenticate a previously prepared Guards strategic order no. 584. It ordered the reinforcement of the troops in the palace, the palace’s isolation from the outside world and the “protection” of the Emperor. The order was passed on by a divisional staff officer, Major Hidemasa Koga – son-in-law of the former prime minister Hideki Tōjō; sources differ on how knowingly he took part in the conspiracy. The Guards soldiers, convinced that they were carrying out lawful orders, disarmed the palace police, closed the gates and cut most of the telephone lines. They detained more than a dozen people, among them the NHK staff who had come for the recording and officials of the court.

For several hours the rebels searched the buildings of the Imperial Household Ministry. They were looking for the discs with the broadcast, and also for the Imperial Household Minister, Sōtarō Ishiwata, and the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kido, whom they regarded as chiefly responsible for the surrender. Both had hidden in an underground room beneath the palace. The search was hampered by the blackout, the maze of corridors and the courtly names of the rooms, which meant nothing to the soldiers. The chamberlain Tokugawa, threatened with a sword, did not reveal where the discs were. The Emperor himself remained all night in his Obunko residence, which the rebels did not enter.

At the same time, at about 4.30 a.m. on 15 August, Captain Takeo Sasaki, commander of a guard unit in Yokohama, at the head of a group of soldiers and students of the local higher technical school, fired on and set fire to the Prime Minister’s official residence in Tokyo. Not finding Suzuki there, the attackers drove to his private house and burned it down; the Prime Minister, warned in time, had managed to get away. The house of the President of the Privy Council, Kiichirō Hiranuma, who escaped by a side door, was also burned, and according to Japanese studies the group set fire to the homes of other dignitaries as well, including Kido.

Anami’s death and the end of the revolt

During the night Ida had become convinced that the army would not support the coup and tried to persuade Hatanaka to give up. At about 3 a.m. he told him that the Eastern District Army was marching on the palace. He then went to Anami’s residence. The minister was already preparing for death. At about 5.30 a.m. – according to the most frequently cited accounts – he committed seppuku in his residence; he died after nearly two hours. In his farewell note he wrote: “With my death I humbly apologise to the Emperor for the great crime.” It is still not known whether he meant the lost war, his indulgence of the conspirators, or both. Anami told Ida, who wanted to follow his example, to live and work for the country’s reconstruction.

Colonel Haga, meanwhile, realised that he had been deceived and ordered Hatanaka to leave the palace. Hatanaka went to the NHK broadcasting station and, pistol in hand, demanded airtime to explain his motives to the nation; he was refused. A little over an hour later, after a telephone call from Eastern District Army headquarters, he gave up and left the studio. At dawn General Tanaka came to the palace in person, rebuked the rebels for acting against the spirit of the army and sent the Guards soldiers back to barracks. By about 8 a.m. the revolt was over. The discs with the broadcast were taken out of the palace and driven to the broadcasting station.

For some time afterwards Hatanaka and Shiizaki rode through the streets of Tokyo – one on a motorcycle, the other on horseback – scattering leaflets explaining their cause. At about 11 a.m., an hour before the broadcast, both took their own lives in front of the palace. Major Koga committed suicide beside General Mori’s coffin.

What followed

At noon on 15 August the radio broadcast the Emperor’s address – the first in which most Japanese heard their sovereign’s voice. That day Prime Minister Suzuki resigned, and on 17 August a new government was formed by Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, a member of the imperial family and a general, whose task was to lead the army through the surrender. General Tanaka, called “the hero of 15 August”, shot himself in his office on 24 August, feeling responsible for the destruction of Tokyo and for the revolt among the troops under his command. Ida, who survived, was brought before a military court but convinced it that he had tried to dissuade Hatanaka from the coup.

The collapse of the putsch did not mean that the whole army and navy accepted the Emperor’s decision without resistance. On the afternoon of 15 August Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki led a suicide flight of dive bombers from Kyushu towards Okinawa. At Atsugi air base near Tokyo, Captain Yasuna Kozono, commander of the navy’s 302nd Air Group, called for several days for the fight to go on and scattered leaflets before his men were disarmed. In the following days there were several more small, quickly suppressed outbreaks by groups of soldiers and civilian nationalists. The Emperor and the government sent members of the imperial family to the headquarters in China, Manchuria and South-East Asia to deliver the surrender order in person. The Japanese armed forces – contrary to Allied fears – laid down their arms in the overwhelming majority.

The failed coup showed how little it would have taken for the end of the war to unfold differently. Had Anami placed himself at the head of the conspirators, or had Generals Mori and Tanaka supported them, the army might have split and the surrender been delayed. The Allies were already planning further strikes; on 14 August more than a thousand aircraft were operating over Japan, and Truman was considering a third atomic bomb. As it was, the very fact that the surrender was announced by the Emperor himself and that the army ultimately submitted to it made possible the signing of the instrument of surrender on 2 September and a peaceful beginning to the occupation of Japan. The night of 14–15 August entered Japanese memory as “Japan’s longest day” – the title of a celebrated book compiled by journalists and published in 1965, on which films were based in 1967 and 2015.