Word: emperors
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...That is not true. Vietnam has had a strong democratic tradition for centuries. No single king or emperor has ever been feudal. "The order of the king must stop at the village gates," is an old Vietnamese saying. That represents a strong democratic tendency at the grass-roots level. Under my regime, even in wartime, we applied democracy in a Western style by having not only an elected national assembly and provincial councils but also at the hamlet and village level...
...accompaniment of drums, gongs and three cheers of "Banzai!" Emperor ; Akihito was enthroned in Tokyo last week. It was the first such ceremony to be conducted under the country's postwar constitution, which stripped the Emperor of political power. But the presence of princes and princesses, Presidents and Prime Ministers solemnified the occasion, and leftists enlivened things with a dozen fires at shrines, military bases and subway stations...
Akihito's accession had been meant to herald a new era in which the imperial office would be free of the controversy that surrounded his father, Emperor Hirohito, for his role in World War II. But it coincided with the publication in the magazine Bungei Shunju of some recently discovered notes on conversations between Hirohito and aides in 1946, in which he discussed his role prior to Pearl Harbor. "It was unavoidable for me as a constitutional monarch," he said, "to do anything but give approval to the Tojo Cabinet on the decision to start the war." Had he opposed...
COURTLY SPLENDOR: TWELVE CENTURIES OF TREASURES FROM JAPAN, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To celebrate the enthronement of Japan's new Emperor, Akihito, a selection of 60 objects -- among them scrolls, sculpture and a lacquered wood saddle with inlaid mother-of-pearl -- illustrating the court's role as a patron of the arts. Through...
...foreign defenders have saved Saudi Arabia from Saddam so far, but at the same time the influx of troops has underscored the country's vulnerability. Like the boy who called the bluff on the emperor's new clothes, the Iraqi leader made it plain that Saudi Arabia was not quite the muscular Arab power it appeared to be. "Saddam showed that we are a paper tiger," notes an economist in Riyadh. "Our ability to defend ourselves is a joke." That realization augurs a revamping of the Saudi military. Less easily fixed is the ! breach of the implicit contract between...