Word: emperor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...days, Japanese jingoism centered around the strident, state-supported cult of Shinto. The big holiday for nationalist noisemaking was Feb. 11, known as kigensetsu (Foundation Day), solemnly determined by later scholars as the day in 660 B.C. when Japan's founder, Emperor Jimmu, great-great-great-grandson of the Sun Goddess, ascended the throne with the divinely sanctioned mission of making Japan "the center of the world...
...Foundation Day, schoolchildren in black robes were led out for compulsory rites honoring the God-Emperor, bowing toward the great walled palace in Tokyo as Moslems bow toward Mecca. Shops were closed, and throughout Japan's four main islands Shinto priests, stiff-backed, wearing their lacquered black horsehair headgear, intoned the virtues and divinity of Japan and its Emperor in high-pitched ululations understandable for the most part only to relatively few initiates...
Flutes for Founders. The U.S. occupation changed all this. The Emperor was divested of his divinity; Shinto was cut off abruptly and completely from state support. But many Japanese, uncertain about the future, seeking comfort in things past, were doubtful of the wisdom of this action. "The pull back," they liked to tell Western friends, "is much stronger than the push forward...
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a dear little emperor and his cosy family. They were all murdered. But a rumor soon spread: one of the dear little daughters hadn't died. Her name, they whisper, is Anastasia...
Japan's Emperor Hirohito, a sometime poet (TIME, Jan. 14) and marine biologist, was hailed for a pioneer bit of research in his scientific pursuits. A clam shell sent to him last fall from the Amami-Orshima Islands (between Japan and Okinawa) was painstakingly identified by the Emperor as none other than a Benishibori-Minomushi bivalve. Significance: never before, claimed the Imperial Palace, had this clam been found so far north. Japan's news agency gave an unrestrained banzai: "Through his personal keen interest in marine biology, His Majesty turned up a new discovery on the living habits...