THE EMPEROR AND THE SUN GODDESS

Murray Sayle muses

at the enthronement of Emperor Akihito

Tokyo A BRAND-NEW Rolls-Royce two-door convertible, black, white leather seats, one careful owner — like so much else about his enthronement ceremony in Tokyo this week, the symbolism of Emperor Akihito's choice of vehicle for his progress through his capital was open to many interpreta- tions, much food for thought during the long wait for the imperial motorcade to pass at a brisk, but by no means reckless, indecorous or nervous pace.

Has Japan, at long last, decided to buy British? The emperor's police motorcycle escort all rode Hondas, while dashing, unmarried Crown Prince Naruhito travelled alone in the back seat of a Nissan and the press and distinguished guests viewed the proceedings on high-tech Sonys. Although Japan is supposed to be in the throes of an Import now! campaign, whoever orders for the palace motor pool clearly decided not to go over the top. Moderation, as Confucius advises us, in all things, and when in doubt support local industry.

An ostentatious show of Japan's new wealth? The careful Japanese Treasury has found a way to pay for the whole show, £60 million including the Roller, and still make a tidy profit to set against Japan's Gulf contribution — the crafty ploy of a com- memorative issue of 100,000 yen (£400) gold coins which each contain only 30,000 yen's worth of gold. Besides, the new royal Rolls is the smallest Derby produces, more of a runabout, really. The explanation may simply be that no Japanese company makes a four-seater open-top car with room for the imperial couple, their cham- berlain and a chauffeur, combined with a bureaucratic estimation that even Akihito, while personally cheerful, modest and un- assuming, might look a trifle infra dig. driving his Empress through Tokyo with one hand and waving to his subjects with the other. A friendly plug for an old ally of long ago, now fallen on hard times, may also have influenced the choice (Mercedes Benz and Cadillac make flashy open cars, too).

The Imperial procession through central Tokyo on a flawless autumn afternoon attracted a modest-sized crowd of loyal, carefully-frisked subjects who were, again, enthusiastic and respectful to their new Emperor without making a meal out of it. Disloyal subjects failed to make much impression at all, the biggest explosion being a feeble overnight bang in a park near a Ground Self-Defence (i.e. Army) installation a good 20 miles away from the palace. Other less than impressive protests included a muffled blast in a ladies' lava- It's been a wonderful whale-watch, but shouldn't we be getting back?' tory near the airport, an own goal scored by a radical group whose home-made mortar exploded prematurely and set their suburban hideout on fire, and students who snake-danced under police supervi- sion to the chanted slogan, 'Crush the Enthronement!' but took no further steps to do so.

On the right-wing side, nothing that could remotely be described as nationalis- tic fervour was in evidence and not even one sun-disc national flag was hoisted over the ceremonies, while the Japanese milit- ary played no part in the proceedings beyond a salute fired in blank by an artillery battery well away from the palace and a band endlessly performed the ele- giac, haunting national anthem.

In fact, Japanese radicals of all shades seem to have given up on Emperor Akihito — the extreme Left because of the realisa- tion that his pacifist views have general popular support and their inept terrorist tactics have none, the neanderthal Right having had to accept that, at 56, there is little hope that the Emperor will ever don a military uniform or act as front-god for an attempt at the reconquest of Asia or anywhere else.

A child of the 1930s who for years was driven to school through the bombed-out ruins of Tokyo, Akihito is in the centre of the Japanese generation who are hypersensitive to the horrors of war and anything that might lead Japan in that direction. The Emperor and his prime minister, Toshiki Kaifu, managed to men- tion peace five times during their one- minute speeches at the enthronement cere- mony. Supposing that Japan should de- velop a militaristic establishment in the foreseeable future, most unlikely on all present indications, then we have a pacifist and internationally-minded mole planted right at its core. To reinforce the point, Kaifu's government last Friday abandoned its attempt to send Japanese troops to the Gulf, when even its tame majority in the Lower House shied away from the propos- al.

The enthronement ceremony itself was visually magnificent, a woodblock print come to life (and another supposed British monopoly, pomp and circumstance, goes East). Conforming to the ironclad Japanese principle of ladies last, the Emperor in sunrise-coloured silk robe and pill-box priest's hat mounted his six-ton curtained throne, followed by his Empress, the former Miss Michiko Shoda, daughter of a soy-sauce manufacturer without a single dash of nobility in her pedigree, who ascended a slightly smaller and lower utility model, her sumptuous 12-layered kimono beyond doubt the fashion state- ment of the week, if not of the millennium. This formal elevation of a genuine com- moner to the purple was perhaps the day's most striking indication of how far Japan has travelled down the democratic road. Emperor Akihito's speech was short and to the point. He announced that he had now succeeded to the throne, and intended to respect the constitution and follow in the footsteps of his father, 'who had shared the joys and sorrows of the Japanese people for more than 60 years', and work for the peace and prosperity of mankind. Mr Kaifu bowed respectfully but not obse- quiously and pledged that the people of Japan, 'with new resolve', would follow the Emperor in doing their utmost to build 'a Japan open to the world, vigorous and culturally rich, and in promoting world peace and the well-being of mankind'. The Emperor smiled his approval and bowed back. Both spoke plain Japanese with a minimum of honorifics, unlike the stilted and incomprehensible mediaeval court lan- guage favoured by the late Emperor Hiro- hito. The exchange was exactly what would be expected between a constitutional monarch and his duly elected head of government — rather warmer, in fact, than an equivalent British one might be at the moment — with no suggestion that either Party enjoyed more than human status. Prime Minister Kaifu then called for three cheers for the Emperor and led the cheer- ing himself with the traditional Japanese words, 'Tenno Heika BanzaiP This simply means 'Long live his Majes- tY!' but Japanese soul-searchers and nit- Pickers who have been enjoying a festival of their own have pointed out that this was the slogan shouted by kamikaze pilots as they dived on to their targets, and were, indeed, the last words uttered by the wartime prime minister and convicted war criminal, General Hideki Tojo as he step- ped up to the gallows on Christmas Eve, 1948. One foreign commentator on Japanese affairs has charged that the phrase is the equivalent of shouting 'Heil Hitler!' and as such inappropriate for a public occasion, let alone an enthrone- ment.

The analogy is, even on first inspection, far from exact or really useful. Unlike his father, Emperor Akihito has never been accused of any personal involvement in Japan's lost war, having been three years old when it began in China. A more useful comparison, it has been suggested, is with Germans singing 'Deutschland Ober Alles', or, more pointedly, if they took for some unfathomable Teutonic reason to shouting `Heil Kohl!' in recognition of their Chan- cellor's efforts towards the reunification of their country. Guilty men are one thing, but the search for guilty words or even guilty turns of phrase is likely to be less productive, es eciall ones that have long been in harmless y ess common use. It may even end in absurdity, such as the proposal of one of General MacArthur's aides that the Japanese should be compelled to speak English at all times 'so that we'll know what they're talking about'. At some point a new page has to be turned, and declared !limed, and the accession of a new and blameless Emperor (or for that matter Chancellor) would seem to make, as they say in television, a suitable natural break.

THIS generous thought has collided with the other major ceremony associated with the enthronement, the Daijosai, or Great Food Offering, which Emperor Akihito is due to perform next week on the night of 22-23 November. During this week's state enthronement the Emperor was invested with two items of the Japanese imperial regalia, the sword of state and the imperial jewel, but not with the third, the ancient bronze mirror which is the symbol of and is said to have been handed down from Ameratesu Omikami, the Sun Goddess and reputed ancestress not only of Akihito but of all the Japanese race. As Japan's present, American-written constitution en- joins the separation of state and religion as advocated by the French philosophes and their pupil Thomas Jefferson, it was thought wiser for this first post-war en- thronement that the goddess's mirror should remain in her shrine in the grounds of the Tokyo palace for transfer during the later, purely religious ceremony.

The Great Food Offering has, in fact, been responsible for the timing of the cycle of this enthronement, being a festival of thanksgiving for the new harvest of a type held in autumn in many countries and cultures. The Japanese ceremony has, however, over the years acquired a politic- al significance not easily read into the piles of marrows and corncobs to be admired in many a Western chancel about this time of the year.

Controversy has often surrounded the Great Food Offering in the past, and this one is no exception. The food in question is of course rice, but not the common or paddy rice to be had for exorbitant prices in any Japanese supermarket. The offered rice has been specially grown in two widely separated provinces of Japan, Akita and Oita, selected earlier this year by imperial soothsayers using an ancient Chinese method of divination, heating the shells of turtles and reading geographical clues into the resulting pattern of cracks. Mean- spirited critics have, however, already hinted that the shells were fixed to produce the names of provinces with governors elected from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to avoid unseemly altercations with anti-Emperor socialist governors, and in- cidentally to suggest that the LDP has support in surprisingly high places.

Nor has the bill of fare been the only part of the projected ceremony to come under attack. The Great Food Offering takes place at night in a darkened shrine, lit only by flickering candles, and in the presence of no one except the Emperor, the Sun Goddess and two female atten- dants (the Empress stays at home). The official programme states that the Emperor will offer rice to the goddess and will, as it were, dine 4 deux with the 'ancestral deity', while her attendants maintain a respectful distance. The rite, it seems, involves twin `couch-thrones' (one hardly used). The exact nature of the rite has, however, never been described. The New York Times Magazine reports rumours allegedly circulating in Shinto circles that the monarch will engage in post-prandial simu- lated sex with one of the parties present, presumably the goddess (a rumour cate- gorically denied by a palace spokesman under questioning last week by a repre- sentative of the prurient Western press).

The difficulty here for broadminded Japanese at least is not that the Emperor may be infringing either the seventh com- mandment or the Prohibited Degrees of Consanguinity, but the suggestion that at some point during the proceedings he absorbs part of the divine nature of his ancestors and emerges into the light of common day as a god himself, thus raising 1 believe you have ri book you'd like to tell us about.' the problem of his father's supposed (and later renounced) divinity and the part it may or may not have played in the out- break and conduct of the second world war. We should, on this matter, keep our heads, and beware of projecting our own religious and political assumptions on to an alien culture at least as old as our own.

Carrying on with the sun or any other goddess predictably does not meet with the approval of rock-ribbed republicans such as write and read the New York Times, but with our own sacred orb, holy anointing oil and the mysterious Stone of Scone which saw who knows what goings-on in paleolithic Scotland, we are on much weaker ground in sniffing at other people's time-mossed rites of accession. Anglicans, in particular, write from a glass letterbox in advocating the separation of Japanese church and state.

The two cases are not, from a theological point of view at any rate, really compara- ble. QE2 is only the temporal head of the CofE faute de mieux, because her much- married Tudor ancestor who was already the duly anointed sovereign denied that the current Pope was the temporal head and somebody had to take the responsibility. Akihito is, on the other hand, the heredit- ary high priest of the cult of the Sun Goddess, a distinction his remote ancestors brought with them from Central Asia some 2,000 years ago. It is because of his priesthood that he is Tenno, the Son of Heaven or, as we translate his title, the Emperor. He cannot therefore lay lawful claim to his throne without carrying out his duties to the goddess, of which the Great Food Offering is held to be the most important, performed once every reign.

Does this make Akihito a god, and does it matter? Here we have to divest ourselves of a cultural bias. People from the Judaeo- Muslo-Christian tradition acknowledge only one god, and a jealous one at that, and tend to be shocked that any mere mortal should be deified. Japanese are, however, mostly Buddhists, and in every Buddhist country the original animist reli- gion lives on, because Buddhism sees no reason why it should not. Shinto is the home-grown Japanese faith and it is un- usually free-and-easy about awarding di- vine status — there were seven million Japanese gods at last count, including an early Lawson, a seventh-century treasurer who managed to balance the budget, Admiral Togo who sank the Russian Baltic fleet in 1905 (his Tokyo shrine is a popular venue for weddings) and a humble fox god who lives in my own backyard.

Being a Japanese god or, more strictly, a kami, 'a person or thing of more than ordinary spiritual significance', is therefore no big deal. Our demagogic Western politi- cians, after all, make much the same claim about themselves. Japanese viewers who have been exposed to pundits expounding the fine points of the subject in the past week have quickly turned to more interest- ing channels (and the Sun Goddess herself, had she visibly attended the enthronement would have run a bad second to Princess Di on television coverage). But the arrange- ment did give Japan 700 years of military dictatorship, already a world record with- out the calamitous extra dose up to 1945, and thoughtful Japanese are right to be concerned about the matter.

BY AN ODD, possibly divinely inspired coincidence Emperor Hirohito himself made an important contribution to the subject of his divinity only last week, speaking as it were from his mausoleum in suburban Tokyo. He took many secrets there, but just after the war, it seems, Hirohito unburdened himself of some of them in eight hours of conversation with a group of trusted retainers, one of whom, his English interpreter Hidenari Terasaki, made notes which have just come to light in his widow's papers.

In his 1946 conversations Hirohito, we learn, said that he knew perfectly well all along he was not a god, and informed his ministers that he found it 'a nuisance' re- sponding to divine honours. His son, who shares his father's scientific interests, is of the same opinion. On the brushing of his signature to the declaration of war on the United States and Britain Hirohito con- firmed what had long been suspected, namely that he interpreted Japanese pub- lic opinion as demanding to know 'why Japan should bow to the United States [with the ultimatum to get out of China] despite having a well-trained army and navy'.

. 'Damned gypsies!' He therefore agreed to the declaration of war, Hirohito said, because if he had refused he would have been deposed in a coup d'etat and Japan would have been torn by a civil war probably more destruc- tive than the eventual defeat. In this sense, said Hirohito, even in 1946 he could not regret his decision to sign.

The late Emperor was here displaying a very Japanese set of values, which makes it the supreme duty of individuals, even emperors, to preserve the unity of the collectivity at the expense of whatever personal sacrifice, shame or dishonour might be necessary. From here to the deceived young kamikaze pilots who died, they were told, that the nation might live is a very short step. Hirohito's remarks are, however, even more illuminating on the subject of monarchy, divine or otherwise, and the dangers inherent in all forms of charismatic, non-hereditary leadership.

It is clear that the Japanese people wanted war in 1941, not because they believed in the Sun Goddess or Emperor Hirohito, but because they had faith in their new Zero fighters, the 65,000-ton super-battleships and the invincible Japanese army which had for half a century scored a dazzling (to Japanese), unbroken series of victories against such pushovers as Imperial China and the Czars' Russia not forgetting the advantage that theoreti- cally goes to the side which gets its sur- prise, knockout blow in first. It is here, I submit, that the fortunes of the Japanese monarchy have a lesson for us all, particularly those who acknowledge a human sovereign whose name begins with an E. Monarchy is certainly a viable and often a durable, though not necessarilY eternal, form of government — Akihito is the 125th Japanese emperor, Louis XVI was the 66th king of France. Republics may well fiave a certain theoretical rationality — the citizens choose a worthy magistrate who rules wisely in their name and under their supervision — but political outcomes are not always rational. Stalin, Mao and Hitler presided over republics, while Presidents Nicolae Ceaucescu, Samuel Doe, Pol Pot and Hang Seam were all notable absentees from this week s turnout in Tokyo. (Cambodia sent no one at all, and Saddam Hussein's invitation Was cancelled at the last minute.) We should not expect too much from monarchy. It has its good points but like any other form of government it can be sidelined, outmanoeuvred or overruled, particularly on such momentous matters as peace and war. Every generation, it seems, has to learn afresh that there is no such thing as a predictable war or an assured victory. If a duly constituted political lead- er is bent on war and has managed to persuade public opinion that this one will be costless, just, short and certain, then there is nothing much a constitutional monarch can do to restrain him. Or her, come to that.