Episode 631 – The Pretender, Part 1

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.

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