Word: emperor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seashore inspecting biological specimens. His evenings are generally spent at home with his wife watching soap operas and sumo wrestling on TV. In conversation, he rarely ventures anything more voluble than "Ah so desu ka [Is that so]?" Such are the salient features of the still, shy life of Emperor Hirohito, born as the 124th Imperial Son of Heaven in an unbroken line stretching back 2,643 years. Schooled since birth in the remoteness and reticence that become a deity, Japan's 82-year-old monarch remains to this day as impassive and impenetrable as the stone walls...
With the war Hirohito lost all but symbolic power. Installed as Crown Prince in 1916 and enthroned as Emperor ten years later, he was pressed by General Douglas MacArthur to relinquish his claims to divinity in 1946. Under the 1947 constitution the Emperor was identified as nothing more than "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." Commoners were no longer forbidden to speak his name or look at his face; 90% of his wealth, estimated at $250 million, was confiscated. Characteristically, the bespectacled monarch absorbed such indignities without comment, let alone complaint. Taking cheerfully...
...repairs to his office to rubber-stamp government appointments, welcome foreign envoys and brushstroke his signature on an annual flood of 2,000 state papers. In return, the state devotes $41.1 million a year to the upkeep of palace property, including a taxable stipend of $936,000 for the Emperor...
...royal couple lives in the modest 15-room Fukiage Palace near the sumptuous $36.1 million official palace. Their compound includes a two-story lab in which the Emperor pursues his one consuming passion: marine biology. As the world's leading authority on hydrozoans (jellyfish and related creatures), he has written 16 books in the field...
...respected historian, successfully incorporates historical events, revitalizing the struggle between the Pope, the Emperor and the many orders of priciest in a way that is guaranteed to bring a smile of recognition to any medievalist or to provide a pleasant introduction to medievalist history for the uninitiated. In addition, since Professor Eco is an expert in semiotics, his first novel became an intriguing interplay of signs and symbols. The reader is free to choose at which level he wishes to enter the game and play along. The book can be read simply as a good mystery story, but a more...