Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Though one of the most hated World War II leaders, together with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, no one has ever written a full-length biography of Emperor Hirohito. Mostly due to the secrecy of Japanese society, where responsibility for war atrocities has still not been acknowledged, it is in large part a consequence of US spin-control after the armistice. Fearful of a civil war, General MacArthur invented the fiction of Hirohito as a peaceful emperor, whose symbolic power was abused by his war-hungry underlings.