Official history of Hirohito dodges controversies

TOKYO (AP) — A 12,000-page history of Emperor Hirohito released in Japan on Tuesday includes childhood letters to his parents but steps gingerly around what many want to know: his thinking on issues such as his responsibility for World War II. The record took 24 years to create, but scholars and journalists say it is still incomplete.

The official annals released by the Imperial Household Agency, a tradition dating back 14 centuries, provide a detailed timeline of Hirohito’s life but don’t appear to shed much new light on a 62-year reign that spanned Japan’s brutal invasion of much of Asia and its reconstruction and emergence as a global economic power in the postwar years.