Word: emperor
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...Christmas gift order. It was always addressed to the same three people because, as he put it: "They need a clear, true, balanced story of the news more than any other three men in the world." The three were the late Adolf Hitler, the late Benito Mussolini, and the Emperor of Japan...
...Biographer Lin Yutang, Su Tungpo was "an incorrigible optimist, a great humanitarian, a friend of the people, a prose master, an original painter, a great calligraphist, an experimenter in winemaking, an engineer, a hater of puritanism, a yogi, a Buddhist believer, a Confucian statesman, a secretary to the emperor, a confirmed winebibber, a humane judge, a dissenter in politics, a prowler in the moonlight, a poet...
During his lifetime, Su wrote 1,700 poems, 800 private letters and at least 800 imperial edicts in his capacity as secretary to the emperor (he could have been premier had he not disliked the politics he had perforce to engage in). "What is the use of occupying a high position, while degrading one's character?'' he once wrote. The theme of his era, says Dr. Lin, is a "study of national degeneration through party strife, ending in the sapping of national strength and the triumphant misrule of the petty politicians...
Twice in his career, Su was deprived of all rank for "slandering" the Government (i.e., attacking politicians who ruled under the blind or benign eye of one emperor or another); once he was imprisoned, another time exiled to the island of Hainan off the South China coast. He was then an old man, and ill in health. He was set free in time to make his way home for the last time. Two weeks before he died at 64, he wrote his good friend the local abbot: "Life and death are mere accidents and not worth talking about...
Last week, at the International War Crimes trial in Tokyo, U.S. Chief Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan asked onetime Imperial Adviser Marquis Koicho Kido: "Is it not a fact that from the beginning to the end of your political career, you consistently opposed any move by the Emperor to bring about law and order?" Marquis Kido nodded sublimely. "Yes," he answered through an interpreter. But his Western judges seemed to misunderstand. He explained that he had meant: "Yes, it is not a fact...