Word: hirohito
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...inspecting biological specimens. His evenings are generally spent at home with his wife watching soap operas and sumo wrestling on TV. In conversation, he rarely ventures anything more voluble than "Ah so desu ka [Is that so]?" Such are the salient features of the still, shy life of Emperor Hirohito, born as the 124th Imperial Son of Heaven in an unbroken line stretching back 2,643 years. Schooled since birth in the remoteness and reticence that become a deity, Japan's 82-year-old monarch remains to this day as impassive and impenetrable as the stone walls of Tokyo...
Only twice in his life, indeed, has Hirohito publicly displayed emotion: in 1936, when the military assassinated two of his most trusted aides, and again in 1945, when he announced Japan's surrender by declaring, with broken-voiced dignity, "We must bear unbearable...
With the war Hirohito lost all but symbolic power. Installed as Crown Prince in 1916 and enthroned as Emperor ten years later, he was pressed by General Douglas MacArthur to relinquish his claims to divinity in 1946. Under the 1947 constitution the Emperor was identified as nothing more than "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." Commoners were no longer forbidden to speak his name or look at his face; 90% of his wealth, estimated at $250 million, was confiscated. Characteristically, the bespectacled monarch absorbed such indignities without comment, let alone complaint. Taking cheerfully...
...Hirohito now seems to relish his restricted but ritualized duties. Each year, he symbolically plants seedlings of rice on the 284-acre palace grounds; at least 20 times annually he dons flowing traditional costume as the nation's highest-ranking Shinto priest. In addition, each weekday he diligently repairs to his office to rubber-stamp government appointments, welcome foreign envoys and brushstroke his signature on an annual flood of 2,000 state papers. In return, the state devotes $41.1 million a year to the upkeep of palace property, including a taxable stipend of $936,000 for the Emperor...
...Hirohito's other favorite subject is his 1921 voyage to Europe, which made him the first member of the Japanese royal family to set foot outside his homeland. During that trip the 20-year-old Crown...