Japan: Emperor's Year

The line began forming at midnight, though the weather was so cold that the imperial moat in the heart of Tokyo was glazed over with ice. Next morning, as the gates swung open, a crowd of 8,000 Japanese in holiday dress shuffled across the famed double bridge and onto the expanse of grass where the great wooden palace had stood until leveled by American bombs. Shyly smiling, stooped but trim, Emperor Hirohito stepped to the front of a white platform and waved a languid New Year's blessing to the crowd.

Eight times the park emptied and filled, bringing 174,000 Japanese into the royal presence—33,000 more than the year before. There were few of the old banzais but plenty of lively curiosity: "The Empress has lost weight," the women whispered. In auspicious 1961 (like 1901, when the Emperor was born, it is "the Year of the Ox"), monarchy was enjoying a resurgence of popularity in Japan.

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. He won wide respect for continuing to live in a damp, one-story, concrete air-raid shelter on the palace grounds. "The people are suffering too from lack of housing," he declared. But when the occupation ended in 1952, the seven zealous chief court chamberlains again rang down the Chrysanthemum Curtain between the Emperor and his people. Only rarely was he allowed to leave the palace grounds, to attend a sumo (wrestling) tournament, to plant a tree in Arbor Week.

It 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 last year, the crown prince and Michiko won high marks for poise and charm.

These days the 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 of his 275-acre grounds into a public park.