JAPAN: Son of Heaven, ’54

Emperor Hirohito, Son of Heaven, last week took his first airplane ride. Dressed in light blue with a red polka-dot tie, he sat diffidently through the flight in a curtained-off compartment opposite his little, moonfaced Empress Nagako and pored studiously over an airline map, nodding from time to time as a stewardess announced the landmarks passing below.

He was returning from his first visit since the war to Japan’s northernmost islands of Hokkaido and Honshu. Two hours and one minute after taking off, the Emperor stepped again on terra firma at Tokyo, looking much less nervous than he had before. Crowds of his smiling subjects greeted him with banzais, while news photographers, perched on ladders high above the Emperor’s head, told him when to take off and put on his straw skimmer hat.

The gentle smile that flickered over Hirohito’s bespectacled face gave no indication that he was anything but pleased at the democratic display. The celestial mystique that Japan’s U.S. -dictated Constitution sought to destroy had been replaced by a new mystique; Hirohito’s 18-day tour was dramatic proof of the change. Too Human. Some Japanese conservatives today would like to restore the old imperial symbolism and put Hirohito behind a bamboo screen like his great-grandfather Komei, who used to sit hidden, with only his bony knees and frail legs showing when he conferred with members of the state council. But the fact is that Hirohito himself, a constitutional mon arch without real power, has become far too human to be easily raised again to semidivine status. In the years since the war, he has grown paunchier, more stooped, and greyer at the temples. His walk more than ever resembles that of a duck. But the huge crowds who gathered to greet him with paper flags, banzais and sometimes tears in Hokkaido were not the awed, head-lowering crowds before the war. They offered Hirohito something they had never offered his ancestors—plain affection.

At Sapporo, the Emperor watched a schoolroom full of crippled children struggling painfully to their feet to greet him, and he bowed deeply to the children before they could bow to him. At Kushiro he ate the plain buckwheat noodles and mackerel of the local villagers. When his glasses needed wiping, he handed his straw hat to his Empress, who held it obediently.

Too Poor. Since Japan’s imperial palace burned down in 1945, Hirohito and Nagako have lived on the palace grounds in an unimpressive, unpretentious 14-room house that began its life as an airraid shelter. Each day they breakfast on oatmeal, toast and bacon, have chicken or steak for lunch and only consent to Japanese dishes at supper. The Emperor’s favorite food is persimmons, and he keeps careful track of every persimmon that enters the palace lest someone make away with it. A teetotaler who hates tea, Hirohito cheers himself with lukewarm water when guests are imbibing stronger drink.

Many of the palace’s fine gardens and lawns are now overgrown and gone to seed, and with only a $100,000-a-year allowance to cover all his expenses, public and private, the Emperor can no longer afford to keep them neat and trim. But each year some 25,000 volunteers, mostly women, show up like obliging weekend guests to rake his leaves, cut his lawns and generally spruce up the imperial surroundings. Their invariable reward: five cigarettes embossed with the imperial chrysanthemum.

Perhaps the most striking example of the changed order is the freedom Hirohito has granted his personal servants to gossip about him to the press. His cook, his barber, his valet, his shoemaker and his doctor have all held press conferences with startling candor. His cook reports that he will eat anything put before him and never complains. His doctor says he doesn’t understand jokes and always asks, “What is everyone laughing at?” when a joke is cracked on the radio. His cobbler reports that he hates to buy new shoes and will go on having old ones re-soled until they fall apart. His barber says: “I do the best I can, but every time I come back, the Emperor’s mustache is out of shape again.”