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Akihito and the Sorrows of Japan (2020)

Britain’s royal family is deplorable principally because it institutionalises the corrosive divisions of social class...

The last time this happened was in 1989 following the death of Hirohito, whose status as wartime emperor made him an object of resentment overseas and muted unease at home (Japanese radicals marked the succession by firing homemade rockets into the palace grounds, where they landed harmlessly among the squirrels and crows). Akihito’s​ reformation of the imperial institution was stealthy, covert and never announced or articulated in formal terms, but to those who had lived through the prewar period it was startling; none was more disconcerted than the group who regarded themselves as the emperor’s most loyal admirers – the loose alliance of politicians, academics, Shinto priests and lobbyists who compose the activists on the nationalist far right. These statements, short of direct apology but approaching it, were not the work of the emperor alone, or even his senior courtiers; they reflected the relatively centrist and internationalist tenor of the Liberal Democratic governments of the time, a stark contrast with the conservative nationalism of the party led by the current prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

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