Death and funeral of Hirohito

On 7 January 1989, Hirohito, the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, died in his sleep at 6:33 am after suffering from intestinal cancer for some time. He was 87. The late emperor's state funeral was held on 24 February, when he was buried near his parents at the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Hachiōji, Tokyo.

Illness and death

On 22 September 1987, the Emperor underwent surgery on his pancreas after having digestive problems for several months. The doctors discovered that he had duodenal cancer. The Emperor appeared to be making a full recovery for several months after the surgery. About a year later, however, on 19 September 1988, he collapsed in his palace, and his health worsened over the next several months as he suffered from continuous internal bleeding.

On 7 January 1989, at 7:55 am, the Grand Steward of Japan's Imperial Household Agency, Shōichi Fujimori, officially announced the death of Emperor Hirohito at 6:33 am, and revealed details about his cancer for the first time. Hirohito was survived by his wife, five children, ten grandchildren and one great-grandchild.[1]

"Departed Emperor"
NHK aired this card at 7:57 AM on 7 January 1989. It simply read "HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR HAS DIED" (Tennō Heika hōgyo).

Emperor Hirohito's death ended the Shōwa era. He was succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Akihito. With Emperor Akihito's accession, a new era began: the Heisei era, effective at midnight the day after Emperor Hirohito's death. The new Emperor's formal enthronement ceremony was held in Tokyo on 12 November 1990.

From 7 January until 31 January 1989, the late Emperor's formal appellation was Taikō Tennō (大行天皇, "Departed Emperor"). The late Emperor's definitive posthumous name, Shōwa Tennō (昭和天皇), was officially determined on 13 January and formally released on 31 January by Noboru Takeshita, the Prime Minister.

State funeral

On Friday, 24 February the Emperor Shōwa's state funeral was held, and unlike that of his predecessor, although formal it was not conducted in a strictly Shinto manner.[2] It was a funeral carefully designed both as a tribute to the late Emperor and as a showcase for the peaceful, affluent society into which Japan had developed during Hirohito's reign.[3]

Unlike the Emperor Taisho's funeral 62 years earlier, there was no ceremonious parade of officials dressed in military uniforms, and there were far fewer of the Shinto rituals used at that time to glorify the Emperor as a near-deity. These changes were meant to highlight that the Shōwa Tennō's funeral would be the first of an emperor under the postwar democratic Constitution, and the first imperial funeral held in daylight.[3]

The delay of 48 days between his death and the funeral was about the same as that for the previous Emperor, and allowed time for numerous ceremonies leading up to the funeral.[3] The late Emperor's body lay in three coffins; some personal items such as books and stationery were also placed into them.

The weather on the day of the funeral was cold; there was a grey sky that drenched Tokyo with a steady rain.[2]

Ceremony at the Imperial Palace

The ceremonies began at 7:30 a.m. when Emperor Akihito conducted a private Ceremony of Farewell for his father in the Imperial Palace.[2]

Funeral procession through Tokyo

At 9:35 a.m., a black motor hearse carrying the body of Hirohito left the Imperial Palace for the two-mile-long drive to the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, where the Shinto and state ceremonies were held.[2] High, piercing notes of reeds broke the silence as the hearse bearing the Emperor's coffin drove over a stone bridge and out through the Imperial Palace gates. The air shook with the sound of cannon and a brass band played a dirge composed for the funeral of Hirohito's great-grandmother in the late 19th century.[3]

The motor hearse was accompanied by a procession of 60 cars. The route of the cortege through Tokyo was lined by an estimated 800,000 spectators and 32,000 special police, who had been mobilized to guard against potential terrorist attacks.[2]

The path of the funeral procession passed the National Diet, the democratic core of modern Japan; and the National Stadium, where the emperor opened the 1964 Summer Olympics and heralded Japan's postwar re-emergence.[2]

Ceremonies at Shinjuku Gyoen Garden

The 40-minute procession, accompanied by a brass band, ended when it pulled into the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, until 1949 reserved for the use of the Imperial family and now one of Tokyo's most popular parks.[3]

At the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, the funeral ceremonies for the Shōwa Tennō were conducted in a Sojoden, a specially constructed funeral hall. The funeral hall was constructed of Japanese cypress and held together with bamboo nails, in keeping with ancient imperial tradition.[2]

The official guests were seated in two white tents located in front of the funeral hall. Because of the low temperatures, many guests used chemical hand-warmers and wool blankets to keep warm as the three-hour Shinto and state ceremonies progressed.[2]

Palanquin procession

The Shōwa Tennō's coffin was transferred into a palanquin made of cypress wood painted with black lacquer. Attendants clad in long gray robes, narrow tall black hats and black outsized wooden sandals, bearing white and yellow banners, shields and signs of the sun and moon, led a 225-member procession. Musicians played gagaku, the atonal court music. Next came gray-robed attendants carrying two sacred sakaki trees draped with cloth streamers and ceremonial boxes of food and silk cloths to be offered to the spirit of the late Emperor.[3]

In a nine-minute procession, 51 members of the Imperial Household Agency, clad in traditional gray Shinto costumes, carried the 1.5 ton Sokaren (Imperial Palanquin) containing the three-layered coffin of the Shōwa Tennō into the funeral hall, as they walked up the aisle between the white tents with domestic and foreign dignitaries.[2][3]

Behind the coffin walked a chamberlain dressed in white, who carried a platter with a pair of white shoes that tradition says the deceased monarch will wear to heaven. Flutes, pipes and an occasional drum beat sounded as the procession entered the ceremonial grounds.[2] The new Emperor, Akihito, and Empress Michiko, carrying their own large umbrellas, followed the palanquin with other family members.[3]

The procession passed through a small wooden torii gate, the Shinto symbol marking the entrance to sacred space, and filed into the Sojoden.[3]

Shinto ceremony

The events in the Sojoden were divided into a religious Sojoden no Gi ceremony, followed by the state Taiso no Rei ceremony.[2]

When the procession entered the funeral hall, the Shinto portion of the funeral began and a black curtain partition was drawn closed. It opened to reveal a centuries-old ceremony. To the accompaniment of chanting, officials approached the altar of the Emperor, holding aloft wooden trays of sea bream, wild birds, kelp, seaweed, mountain potatoes, melons and other delicacies. The foods, as well as silk cloths, were offered to the spirit of the late Emperor. The chief of ceremony, a childhood classmate and attendant of Hirohito, then delivered an address, followed by Emperor Akihito.[3]

The funeral continued as the black curtain closed, signalling the end of the Shinto portion of the funeral.[3]

State ceremony

As the curtain parted again, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary opened the state portion of the funeral. At noon, he called for a minute of silence throughout Japan.[3] Prime Minister Takeshita delivered a short eulogy, in which he said that the reign of the late emperor would be remembered for its eventful and tumultuous times, including the Second World War and the eventual reconstruction of Japan.[2] One by one, foreign dignitaries approached the altar and paid their respects. Some merely inclined their heads; some bowed slightly.[3]

Ceremony at the Imperial Graveyard
Emperor Shōwa's tomb in the Musashi Imperial Graveyard, Hachiōji, Tokyo

Following the state ceremony, the Shōwa Tennō's coffin was taken to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in the suburban city of Hachiōji for burial. At Emperor Taishō's funeral in 1927, the trip to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard was carried out as a 3-hour procession, but at the Shōwa Tennō's funeral, the trip was made by motor hearse and cut to 40 minutes.[2] Several hours of ceremonies followed there, until the late emperor was laid to rest at nightfall, the traditional time to bury emperors.[3]

Visitors and guests

Summary

An estimated 200,000 people lined the site of the procession – far fewer than the 860,000 that officials had projected.[3] The Shōwa Tennō's funeral was attended by some 10,000 official guests. A total of 163 countries (out of 166 at that time) and 27 international organizations sent representatives to the event. More than 70 world leaders attended the funeral of the Emperor.

In total there were 55 heads of state, 12 heads of government, 19 deputy heads of state, 14 members of royal families, 30 foreign ministers and other officials present, all of which required placing Tokyo under an unprecedented blanket of security. Because of security concerns for the dignitaries and because of threats from Japanese left-wing extremists to disrupt the funeral, authorities decided to scrap many of the traditional events that normally accompany funerals for Japanese monarchs. Officials also overrode protocol to give US president Bush a front-row seat, even though tradition would have put him toward the back, at the fifty fifth seat[4], because of his short time in office. Bush, who arrived in Tokyo on Thursday afternoon, attended the funeral on Friday afternoon and departed for China on Saturday.[2]

Japanese officials said it was the biggest funeral in modern Japanese history, and the unprecedented turnout of world leaders was recognition of Japan's emergence as an economic superpower. The Shōwa Tennō was the longest-reigning emperor in Japanese history and the last of the major leaders from World War II. Many also viewed the burial of the Shōwa Tennō as the nation's final break with a militaristic past that plunged much of Asia into war in the 1930s.[2]. The late emperor's wife, the Empress Dowager Nagako, did not attend the ceremonies due to a lingering back and leg malady.[2]

The event hold records for the largest gathering of international leaders in world history at that time for a state funeral, surpassed the funeral of Josip Broz Tito in 1980. It would stand for the next 16 years until Pope John Paul II’s in 2005.

List

Source : [5]

Pardons

To mark the funeral, the government pardoned 30,000 people convicted of minor criminal offenses. The pardons also allowed an additional 11 million people to recover such civil rights as the right to vote and run for public office, which they had lost as a punishment for offenses.[2]

Protests

The late emperor's funeral, like the man it honored, was dogged by bitter memories of the past. Many Allied veterans of World War II regarded Hirohito as a war criminal and called upon their countries to boycott the funeral.[7] Nevertheless, of the 166 nations invited to send representatives, all but three accepted.[8] Some Japanese, including a small Christian community, constitutional scholars and opposition politicians, denounced the pomp at the funeral as a return to past exaltation of the emperor and contended that the inclusion of Shinto rites violated Japan's post-war separation of church and state. Some groups, opposed to the Japanese monarchy, also staged small protests.[3]

The Shinto rites, witnessed by official funeral guests and held at the same site as the state-sponsored portion of the funeral, prompted criticism that the Government was violating the constitutional separation of state and religion. This separation is especially important in Japan because Shinto was used as the religious basis for the ultra-nationalism and militaristic expansion of wartime Japan. Some opposition party delegates to the funeral boycotted that part of the ceremony.[3] During the funeral procession in Tokyo, a man stepped into the street as the cortege approached. He was quickly apprehended by police who hustled him away.[2] At 1:55 pm, half an hour before the hearse carrying the late emperor's casket passed by, policemen patrolling the highway leading to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard heard an explosion and found debris scattered along the highway. They quickly cleared away the rubble, and the hearse passed without incident. In total, the police also arrested four people, two for trying to disrupt the procession.[3]

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See also

References
  1. Hirohito's survivors
  2. Ronald E. Yates, World Leaders Bid Hirohito Farewell, Chicago Tribune, 24 February 1989 (online), accessed 13 Oct 2015
  3. Susan Chira, With Pomp and on a Global Stage, Japanese Bury Emperor Hirohito, New York Times, 24 February 1989 (online), accessed 13 Oct 2015
  4. Attali, Jacques, 1995, Verbatim, Volume 3, Fayard
  5. "Paying Respects: A Global Roll-Call". New York Times. 24 February 1989. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  6. Meredith, Martin. The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Revised and Updated), p. 308.
  7. Slavin, Stewart (20 February 1989). "Attending Hirohito funeral a touchy issue". UPI. United Press International. Archived from the original on 2 September 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  8. Schoenberger, Karl (24 February 1989). "World Leaders Pay Respects at Hirohito Rites". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 4 September 2016. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
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