Word: hirohito
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Impassive as ever, Hirohito prefers jellyfish to politics...
...deserve his widespread reputation in Japan as an accomplished marine biologist, but as a budding ornithologist Emperor Hirohito may just have to feather his reputation some other way. During a recent visit to Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, the Emperor dropped in on a special, eight-month-old friend-her parents were a gift from former President Gerald R. Ford during Hirohito's state visit to the U.S. in 1975. But Japan's most famous young bird seemed unimpressed with her imperial visitor. Hoping to change the fowl's nonchalance, Hirohito studied the crane avidly, then moved...
...Germans have a deep national habit of earnest exaggeration. The Japanese, of course, practice a style of negative exageration-self-abnegation so elaborate as to be a kind of overstatement. On Aug. 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito observed in the imperial announcement of Japan's surrender: "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." The British exaggerate in the same direction, indulging in what grammarians call meiosis-understatement. It was an American (born in Wales), however, Henry Stanley, who produced the wonderfully meiotic: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume...
...most controversial event of the three-day visit was a 45-minute meeting with Emperor Hirohito, 79. Rabid right-wingers, distressed that Hirohito, a former Shinto god, would deign to meet with a Vicar of Christ, rode about town waving a sign proclaiming POPE IS A BEAST. Some of Japan's 700,000 Protestants protested the meeting as well. The Pope's visit, they felt, would en courage a resurgent movement to elevate Shintoism to status as a national religion. About 70 others, including left-wingers, four Japanese Catholic clergy men and some Buddhist priests, accused John Paul...
...that, when the two met in the Bamboo Room of Tokyo's stone walled Imperial Palace, Hirohito graciously told the Pope, "Japan a long time ago was benefited a great deal by the Catholic missionaries, who brought their culture to this country." There are still many missionaries. John Paul had a tearful meeting with one, an 87-year-old Franciscan and fellow Pole named Zeno Zebrowski, who is famed for creating at least 30 of what are called "ant towns," communities for the poor based on selfhelp...