It's not useful to paint Hirohito as a religious leader. Yes, he was technically the head of State Shinto, but he was not the one issuing orders.
Depending on how you look at it (and reams of paper have been expended on this topic), he was somewhere between a puppet and a symbol. Certainly not innocent, but also not the instigator.
I'm not arguing about how much blame he should get as a person, I'm stressing out that the country's god was in favor of the war, which puts the population in a completely different mindset than otherwise.
Depending on how you look at it (and reams of paper have been expended on this topic), he was somewhere between a puppet and a symbol. Certainly not innocent, but also not the instigator.