在日本戰後初期，就天皇是否應當承擔戰爭責任的問題，整個思想界掀起了一場關於天皇制存廢的論爭。在廢止或護持（保留或捍衛）的激辯論戰中，文化學者和辻哲郎站在了「天皇制護持論」的陣營裡。他從歷史文化與傳統精神的角度，提出了天皇制應予以保留的歷史理據。簡言之，他將天皇的權力與權威進行分開處理，即他認為天皇在歷史上既曾長期地遠離權力中心，同時又始終佔據著不可取代的權威，進而提出天皇以及天皇制的本質和存在意義在於「國民全體性的表現」抑或是「國民統合的象徵」，從而為繼續保留天皇制的論點進行辯護。

At the start of the Postwar period in Japan, a heated debate arose as to whether the emperor should take responsibility for the war or not. Two main forces led the debate: those for retention of Mikado System and those for its abolition. Watsuji Tetsuro, a famous conservative philosopher and historian of modern Japan, considered from a traditional culture perspective that it was necessary to maintain the Mikado System. He took actual political power and moral authority as two independent matters, which meant that Tennoh didn't hold absolute political power in history in some periods even though he has kept sole supreme moral authority all the time. On that basis, Watsuji argued that the essence of Tennoh and the Mikado System lay in "the presentation of the whole nation" or "a symbol of national unity."