A commitment to keep negotiating coexisted with the continued dispatch of troops to Indochina. Hirohito explicitly favored diplomacy over war, and ministers promised to renew their negotiating effort. Tojo nevertheless distinguished that preference from a direct prohibition on military action. The episode returns to the central institutional problem: indirect imperial language could be read as permission by men already committed to expansion.
Notable Point · 1:10:33-1:11:24
Promising diplomacy while escalating in Indochina
A meeting that favors negotiation does not prevent escalation when officials interpret the emperor's words as falling short of a direct ban on war.