Time Machine: A new era begins with Reiwa Emperor

This story originally ran in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji in 2019.

First in a two-part series

TOKYO — How times have changed. The last time Japan changed Emperors, when Hirohito died, the headlines abroad were celebratory and viciously condemning. To many in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and other parts of Southeast Asia, Emperor Hirohito was an evil, vicious man who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including those from his own nation.

During WWII Hirohito’s so-called “divine status” had been used “as a special tool to instill patriotism and wartime fanaticism.” Indeed, in the latter stages of the war it became so extreme it eventually caused, among other things, kamikaze pilots to fly to their deaths in the Emperor’s name. At war’s end the Occupying Americans kept the Emperor on the throne, redefining the Emperor’s role in the new Constitution as that of “symbol of the state and unity of the people,” in the belief his presence would calm an anxious nation, Hirohito underwent a transformation to a man of peace — a man who watched baseball at Korakuen Stadium, served as MC at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, visited Disneyland, and wore a Mickey Mouse watch, with which he was buried upon his death in 1990. But his former enemies never really bought into that concept.

The abdication of Akihito has triggered an entirely different reaction. Words of praise for the Heisei Era Emperor poured in from all over the globe: BBC, CNN, New York Times.