Word: hirohito
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Curtain Down. Ever since he told his people, in a New Year's speech 15 years ago, that he was not really "a living god," Hirohito has been playing constitutional monarch with mixed success. Once, common folk were forbidden to gaze directly at his face, and train conductors lowered the blinds if the Emperor's private coach was due to pass, lest some passenger catch an accidental glimpse of him. Now, wearing the embarrassed look of a man intruding, he visited every prefecture in the country, climbing down mine shafts, trudging through factories, talking to peasants in paddyfields...
...took the Emperor's children to give the monarchy back its common touch. Crown Prince Akihito married the pretty and lively commoner, Michiko, and soon sired Prince Hiro, who was instantly Japan's favorite baby. Hirohito's daughter, Princess Suga, wed a commoner bank clerk, now whips around town shopping in her Japanese-made Cedric. Though traditionalists were horrified, the two girls became more popular than movie stars. One magazine, Ladies' Own, ran a feature story on one or the other of them every week last year but two. On an extensive good-will tour abroad...
...Socialists, though officially cool toward the monarchy, clamor just as loudly as conservatives for tickets to the Emperor's annual garden party. No outcry was raised at the spending of $600,000 last year to build a palace for Akihito and $500,000 this year to replace Hirohito's air-raid shelter at long last. By 1966 the Emperor will have a second $2,500,000 palace for official functions. The Diet will increase his personal budget from $140,000 to $168,000 this year. In reciprocal generosity, the Emperor plans to turn a third...
...attending 50 or more public functions on the palace grounds. He still keeps a properly royal reserve. At one affair, he was startled when a brash U.S. Congressman wanted him to autograph a 100-yen bill; he refused. A fussily frugal man who goes around turning out unneeded lights, Hirohito is fond of wandering in old clothes about the grounds with a trowel in hand in case he spots a choice sample of fungus. But the Emperor's real passion is the crab. On his days off, wearing a leather jacket, work pants and high boots, he boards...
...Hirohito's problem has been to convert adulation into affection. With the older generation, he seems to have succeeded. And with the new generation of princes and princesses coming into the limelight, the postwar antipathy of young Japanese for royalty seems to be changing to tolerance or even lukewarm approval. Emperor No. 124 of the 2,621-year dynasty looked secure in his seat, and there...