It&#x27;s really complicated.  Many centuries before the Emperor had became a token, if you held him (I think it was all men by then), that helped your case for legitimacy.  The Emperor got a bit of a rehabilitation in the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate (&quot;military government&quot;), the other side rallied around the name of the Emperor, and I guess he was given something of a position in the following fatally flawed constitution; things were so fluid then any strong man could make a difference.<p>Fatally flawed in that you couldn&#x27;t form a government without a member each from the Army and Navy, and the Army abused this.  Plus in the 20s or so a culture of acceptable political assassination developed.<p>In this context, I&#x27;m sure Hirohito, who would have much rather focused on marine biology, knew very well something unpleasant would happen to him if he didn&#x27;t go along with the ultranationalists, there&#x27;s way too much old and new Japanese history telling him exactly that.<p>I seriously doubt he could have prevented the war, especially since the genesis was so long in forming, e.g. without their depredations in China stretching back years, and of course the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, it&#x27;s very unlikely things would have come to a head like they did.  And why not go back to their turn of the century war with Russia and occupation of Korea?  Not all that many people are upset with the former, even today, although it helped set the stage for the Bolsheviks and most of the bloodletting of the 20th Century.<p>Repeating a bit about what I&#x27;ve read especially in <i>Hell to Pay</i> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10685585" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10685585</a>), while we can debate his being able to influence things earlier, we, the peoples of East Asia, etc. can be very thankful that he was able to throw his weight behind surrender after the two bombs and the Soviet entry in the war, in a situation where the cabinet was still bloody minded enough to stay the course.  And I&#x27;m not so sure they wouldn&#x27;t have &quot;won&quot;, they were quite willing to sacrifice 20 million of their own people in the process, a mere 1&#x2F;5-1&#x2F;4th.<p>Counterfactuals to that could include Hirohito trying earlier and being replaced by a pliable Emperor who wouldn&#x27;t have dared try or have had the stature to make that utterly critical move when it most counted.