Japan Dress Them In Mourning

As Japan went through the third week of its death watch over the failing 87- year-old Emperor Hirohito, government leaders canceled trips and local authorities called off annual festivals. Pop concerts and weddings were postponed. Television comedies were hastily rewritten to scrub out profanity and undue frivolity. Newscasters abandoned their designer clothes for unobtrusive gray suits to match the country’s somber mood. The Japanese call this jishuku (self-restraint), and they mean it.

Not even money seemed to matter. One TV network replaced a popular comedy show with a commercial-free program on baby elephants. The city of Nagoya dutifully passed up an anticipated $35 million windfall when it called off a grand celebration for its pennant-winning baseball team. Only the nation’s flagmakers were cashing in. “I’m not supposed to feel happy, but our sales have zoomed more than tenfold,” said Makoto Kobayashi, president of Hinomaruya, a Tokyo flag wholesaler.

As the diminutive, long-reigning Hirohito struggled valiantly behind the high walls of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, an emotional, almost atavistic nationalism swept the country. Nearly 4 million people signed their names in get-well registers. Although 60% of Japan’s 123 million citizens were born after the 1947 constitution stripped the monarchy of divinity, the national vigil demonstrated that the monarchy still meant something more than the chrysanthemum crest on a ceremonial curtain. “The Emperor is the center of Japan’s national psyche,” said Seisuke Okuno, a 75-year-old Liberal Democratic member of parliament. That sentiment was not restricted to the old or the far right. The Japanese press has depicted a nation united in sorrow over the impending loss of a great spiritual leader.

United, but not necessarily unanimous. There were scattered calls for an examination of the Emperor’s responsibility for World War II and complaints of undue reverence in reporting his current illness. Said Norikatsu Sasagawa, 48, professor of law at the International Christian University: “The Emperor’s health has been treated like a classified military secret. The current jishuku is just too much.” Leftist radicals showed their disgruntlement by setting two tiny bombs at subway stations only a few blocks away from the moated palace where Hirohito lay ill, and spraying red paint near the entrance to the tumulus of the Emperor Jimmu, who may be a mythical figure but is thought by many Japanese to be first in a dynastic line stretching back nearly 2,600 years.

The present government, meanwhile, was wrestling with some rare but pressing decisions. Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, for example, must choose a name for the next imperial era. All official documents except passports are now dated by the era Showa (Enlightened Peace), which began the day Hirohito became Emperor in 1926. Although some critics call the convention a remnant of the dead imperial past, they don’t wish to end it, only transfer to the people responsibility for choosing the new name.

Perhaps the most controversial pending ceremony is the daijosai, or enthronement, of Crown Prince Akihito, 54, as the new Emperor. In a Shinto ritual, he is supposedly transformed into a woman, then impregnated by the gods and reborn as a god himself. The $74.6 million rite poses a serious challenge to the postwar constitutional separation of religion and state. But for mourning Japanese, the ancient imperial extravaganza just might help retrieve their lost autumn.