Episode 631 – The Pretender, Part 1

June 26, 2026 2 Comments

In January, 1946, a man came to the headquarters of the American occupation government of Japan and claimed to be Japan’s true emperor. Who was he, why did he do this, and how does his story connect to an obscure figure from a civil war that happened more than 500 years earlier?

 

Sources

Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII

A Cuttersguide.com scan of the entire original Life Magazine Article

Images

The original Daiichi Seimei building after the war.
Here’s what the building looks like today.
Kumazawa Hiromichi in portrait. It’s hard to see, but he’s wearing robes with the imperial crysanthemum on them.
A scan of the Life article that gives you a sense of the page layout.
A detail of the Kumazawa family portrait from Life. Missing is the eldest son, who was in a Russian POW camp when this was taken.

2 thoughts on “Episode 631 – The Pretender, Part 1”

  1. BEAT! (best episode of all time, is this a thing?)

    Fascinating that while Emperor Meiji was biologically descended from the Northern Court, he declared the Southern Court as the legitimate imperial line during the 14th-century schism, and baptized this a “restoration” like his own! I love these twists of history, like the resurgence of Masashige. It’s like how in the U.S., John Brown was once a state terrorist, now he’s on our coins.

    And thanks for the Imperial numerology trivia 🙂

  2. BEAT! (best episode of all time, is this a thing?)

    Fascinating that while Emperor Meiji was descended from the Northern Court, he declared the Southern Court as the legitimate imperial line during the 14th-century schism, and baptized this a “restoration” like his own! I love these twists of history, like the resurgence of Masashige. It’s like how in the U.S., John Brown was once a state terrorist, now he’s on our coins.

    And thanks for the Imperial numerology trivia 🙂

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