Quick question or questions rather I guess. I was wondering why the US, I say the country cause I'm not sure who exactly ordered this I believe MacArthur, force the Emperor of Japan to renounce his Godhood. Was it christian beliefs that drove them? Was it to weaken the Emperor's legitimacy. But then they made him a symbol of the Japanese people. This while I guess a step down from being reprieved a God is still a large amount of symbolic power at least to my understanding. So why did the US keep him around at all did they really have a choice that is did they have to keep him or did the Japanese negotiate to keep the Emperor in power?
Prior to the reformations under MacArthur, the Emperor was seen as "sacred and inviolable" meaning that his authority was not to be questioned in any sense. Although the Emperor was later sidelined by military authorities as far as actual leadership goes, the Emperor still possessed a great deal of hypothetical power and that worried the American Occupation Administration. The primary goal of occupation was to transform Japan into a stable democracy, and the American administration felt that having an infallible God-Emperor would prevent the Japanese people from thinking for themselves. Ultimately, the decision to keep Hirohito on the Chrysanthemum Throne was one of convenience and mutual necessity, cooperating with him gave the American administration legitimacy in the eyes of the Japanese people and made governing much easier.
𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬:
.Hunt, Michael (2013). The World Transformed:1945 to the Present. Oxford University Press. p. 79.
."5-3 The Occupation and the Beginning of Reform - Modern Japan in archives". Modern Japan in Archives. National Diet Library.
.Richard B. Finn (1992). Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan. University of California Press. pp. 112–114.