Word: emperor
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...Queen Victoria's reign, but man could always make his own. and give his own reasons. The "rainbow bridge" (1 mile, 1.705 yds.) across the Tay estuary, with its curving, spidery iron girders, was the wonder of an age of railways and engineering. European princes and the Emperor of Brazil visited the marvel. Queen Victoria in her widow's weeds trundled safely across. The railway company that built it (between 1871 and 1877) said it was "a structure worthy of this enlightened age." General Ulysses S. Grant, who on a ceremonial visit was obliged to walk halfway across...
...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...
There they heard the piercing wails of ancient reed pipes and flutes. Priests in multicolored robes raised high their offerings-bean cake, teal ducks, brightly polished apples, flasks of rice wine. A special envoy of Emperor Hirohito bore a green, silk-covered chest emblazoned in gold with the Imperial 16-petal chrysanthemum seal. The celebration's chief speaker, Kashihara's Mayor Saburo Yoshikawa, 41, who has exchanged his Japanese Imperial General Staff major's uniform for white gloves and morning coat, was in excellent form. "It is only human nature to love one's country...