Word: hirohito
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Hirohito was more successful when he decided to marry for love. Despite the opposition of the court, he chose a young noblewoman, Princess Nagako of the Satsuma clan, which was then outside the strict circle of families eligible for imperial matches. In due time she bore him five daughters and two sons, the eldest-born being Crown Prince Akihito...
...Emperor. In 1924, Hirohito became Regent. Four years later he formally ascended the throne, with all the pomp and circumstance of ancient, perhaps prehistoric, ceremony...
...Pearl Harbor in 1941. The totalitarian forces which had shaped his state shaped his place in it. The westernized elder statesmen and their successors-men like Prince Konoye and Baron Hiranuma-were pushed into the background by swashbuckling generals and admirals, like Kenji Doihara, Hideki Tojo, Isozoku Yamamoto. Hirohito's most intimate counselors in the Imperial Household, nobles like the Marquis Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and ex-Grand Chamberlain Kantaro Suzuki (now Premier), were denounced by chauvinistic young officers as bad influences around the throne. Some of them were murdered in the bloody mutiny...
Model Symbol. In Asia, Japan was making history whose consequences for the world are still incalculable. Through it all, Hirohito remained a model Shinto sovereign-conventional, secluded, aloof, a proper family man as well as national deity. He rose early each morning (6 or 7 a.m.), shaved himself, bowed before the little shrine of his ancestors in his copper-domed Tokyo castle, breakfasted in foreign style on coffee, bacon & eggs, shuffled through the papers on his desk. Thirteen times a year, clad in the white silk robe of high priest, he officiated at major Shinto rites. His wartime frugality...
...crimson Rolls-Royce, he passed in public parade across the moat around his castle. Almost always his subjects hailed him with traditional banzais and reverential bows. But in 1932 an unidentified assailant threw a bomb at the Emperor's carriage, slightly wounding two horses of the imperial stables. Hirohito sent eight pounds of carrots to console the animals. No doubt, he pondered the words of his Grandfather Meiji, who had once escaped an anarchist conspiracy...