점령 초기 쇼와 천황의 시각적 변신— 맥아더 방문과 ‘인간선언’, 그리고 사진

초록

Under the allied occupation, the status of Shōwa emperor changed from a god to a human being, from an absolute political monarch and supreme commander to the Symbol Emperor. This transformation of Hirohito, led by GHQ with US government’s delegation, was realized on visual dimension, too. Hirohito’s visual metamorphosis was epitomized in the ‘emperor’s new clothes’. The new image of the Shōwa emperor in suit with a felt hat replaced his old image as generalissimo, and heavily contributed to hiding his war responsibilities. The photograph of Hirohito and MacArthur, though a reminder of the pains of the war defeat and a symbol of emperor’s fall from grace, also launched the production and distribution of the images of the emperor clad in new clothes. In that photograph, the Shōwa emperor was no more a living god. He was a victim suffering from the defeat of war, and a partner of US power separated from the Japanese militarists. With the ‘Humanity Declaration’ of Shōwa emperor, Ministry of the Imperial Household began to produce and distribute the photographs of the humanized emperor and imperial family. Those pictures presented Shōwa emperor not as a man of war, but as a model family man to the American public as well as to the Japanese people.

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