Japan The Longest Reign

The call came before 5 a.m., summoning the chief court physician to the bedside of the ailing monarch. Since September, when the aging Emperor was first stricken with internal hemorrhaging, he had remained in a second-floor bedroom of his residence within the walled, moated and heavily wooded grounds of the Imperial Palace. A victim of duodenal cancer, he grew weaker each day. Dr. Akira Takagi rushed into the palace within minutes of the summons, followed closely by Crown Prince Akihito and his wife Crown Princess Michiko, then by Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. At 6:33 a.m. Emperor Hirohito, once worshiped by the Japanese people as a living god, died at the age of 87.

The longest-reigning monarch on earth, Hirohito was the last survivor of the leaders of the World War II era. He occupied the Chrysanthemum Throne longer than any of his recorded predecessors. During his 62 years as Emperor, ( Hirohito presided over a nation that soared to heights of military arrogance, plummeted catastrophically and rose again to become a formidable industrial power. Through it all, the slight, stooped Hirohito retained an unassuming tranquillity. As Japan’s national television network flashed the words TENNO- HEIKA HOGYO (the Emperor passes away) last Saturday, some of the country’s 122 million citizens wept, some prayed, some affected disinterest. All realized that an era of great change for their country, a period immortalized as the Showa era, or time of enlightened peace, was at an end.

Though the vigil for the Emperor lasted more than three months, the Japanese were not officially informed that Hirohito suffered from cancer until after he died. Within moments of the death announcement, mourners converged on the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. “Since he fell ill, I’ve been praying every day for his recovery,” said office clerk Yuko Kitagawa, 32, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m just sad.” The National Police Agency mobilized 15,000 police to patrol the Imperial and Togu palaces. Many flags flew at half-staff; others were adorned with black ribbons. Japan’s stock and bond markets, regularly open on Saturday, were closed. Government offices were observing a six-day mourning period, and workers were requested to refrain from festive singing or dancing. Even a major sumo-wrestling tournament was postponed a day.

In a silent four-minute ceremony that took place less than four hours after his father’s death, Akihito, 55, received the imperial and state seals and replicas of two of the imperial treasures that symbolize the throne. By legend, the actual treasures — a mirror, a sword and a crescent-shaped jewel — trace back to the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. The government chose a name for Emperor Akihito’s reign: Heisei, the achievement of complete peace on earth and in the heavens.

To many Westerners, the idea of the Japanese monarchy seems a paradox in a country that has become the cynosure of the modern industrial world. Yet the institution, the oldest of its kind on the globe, lies at the center of Japan’s national psyche, characterizing both the country’s flexibility and its resistance to the shock of the new. As Akihito succeeds his father, the institution and the nation are at another beginning.

In many ways, Hirohito perfectly reflected his country’s fascination with the West. When Hirohito embarked on a six-month tour of Europe in 1921, he became the first member of the Japanese royal family to set foot outside his homeland. For the rest of his life, the Emperor treasured the Paris subway ticket that was his first purchase and a reminder of his first glimpse of freedom. He also took home a taste for Western food and clothes that he never lost. In 1975, 54 years after he expressed a determination to visit the U.S., Hirohito finally realized his dream. During his 15-day tour, he attended a football game, met John Wayne and visited Disneyland. For years thereafter, a Mickey Mouse watch could be seen on the imperial wrist.

From the beginning, the Emperor commanded more respect as a symbol than as a personality. Installed as Crown Prince at 15, he ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1926 as the 124th Living God in a dynastic line stretching back more than 26 centuries. Children were told they would be blinded if they saw Hirohito’s face; the very mention of his name was taboo. Yet Hirohito was well aware that he was to be as much pawn as ruler. Even as his advisers refrained from looking at him, they also refused to listen to him. His divine authority was not enough to suppress the military officers who began taking control of the country in the 1930s.

Hirohito’s reticence made it difficult to determine whether he was guilty of complicity in, or mere compliance with, the expansionism that characterized Japan during his first two decades as Emperor. Ultimately 2.3 million Japanese soldiers and 800,000 civilians died in World War II. But most of the evidence suggests that Hirohito was at heart a peace-loving man. At a Cabinet meeting in 1941, when his ministers agitated for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Emperor surprised them all by suddenly reciting a poem composed by his grandfather, the Emperor Meiji: “In a world/ Where all the seas/ Are brethren/ Why then do wind and wave/ So stridently clash?” With that, he fell silent.

Silence, however, finally proved untenable. In 1945, with Tokyo aflame, Hiroshima and Nagasaki reduced to rubble, and military officers still eager to fight, the Emperor insisted on announcing his country’s surrender. As he spoke, he publicly betrayed emotion for almost the only time in his life: his voice broke.

Later that month the poker-faced monarch humbly presented himself before a moved and astonished General Douglas MacArthur to accept full responsibility for all his country’s martial transgressions. In 1946 Hirohito renounced the “false conception that the Emperor is divine.” Commoners were no longer forbidden to look at his face. The state confiscated most of his $250 million fortune.

The shedding of divine status came naturally, perhaps, to a man who had never seemed at home amid the panoply of godhood. Instead of the ornate Imperial Palace, Hirohito chose to live in a nondescript two-story Western- style house deep inside the palace grounds. Rather than hold court in resplendent formal dress, he preferred to putter around in battered Panama hat and short-sleeved shirt. More than formal dinners, he relished quiet nights at home with Empress Nagako, now 85, a cheerful wife with whom he had two sons and five daughters.

Hirohito’s greatest pleasure was the study of marine biology, which he enthusiastically conducted in a laboratory built for him on his palace grounds. It was far more than a hobby: he published several books on the subject, and was a leading authority on jellyfish (medusae). The Emperor also kept himself busy by observing the ceremonial duties demanded of him by the postwar constitution. Despite his fondness for privacy, he diligently opened the Diet (parliament), welcomed foreign envoys and brushstroked his signature on about 1,200 state papers a year. The Emperor even bravely made the rounds of factories, though his shyness was so intense that he almost never ventured any comment except “A so desu ka? ((Is that so?))” Once, it is said, he was ushered into a receiving room to greet a visiting dignitary. The door was opened to reveal an empty hall. The Emperor peered into the chamber, bowed and turned to his aides: “Most interesting and pleasant. We should have more ceremonies like this.”

Most important, Hirohito, in his constancy and serenity, served as an inspiration and a comfort to his people. While gamely adapting himself to the wrenching changes of postwar Japan, he continued to incarnate many of his culture’s most ancient and hallowed customs. One of them required the Emperor to compose a traditional poem each year. In 1946, with his country broken and his role diminished, Hirohito took his leave of divine status with this calm verse: “Under the weight of winter snow/ The pine tree’s branches bend/ But do not break.” By 1987, he could write a different verse about his rebuilt land: “Year by year, as our country/ Has recovered from the war/ The dawn redwood has grown taller.”