Funeral for a Former God

By Awake! correspondent in Japan

After reigning for more than 62 years, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito died this past January 7. He was 87. Representatives from 164 countries attended his funeral on February 24. Yet, many agonized over whether to attend or not. Why? And what does Hirohito’s death have to do with the question on our cover: Is Your God Alive?

“EMPEROR HIROHITO was regarded as a living deity,” observed Japan Quarterly earlier this year. The Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan lists him as the 124th human descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, who is identified as the “chief divinity of the Shintō pantheon.”

So when Japanese soldiers were asked to sacrifice their lives for this “living deity,” they did so with astonishing zeal. There were no fiercer combatants during the second world war than Japanese devotees who fought for their god, the emperor.

Overwhelmed, however, by military forces of superior numbers, the Japanese lost the war. Less than five months afterward, on January 1, 1946, Hirohito, in a historic edict, repudiated before the nation the “false conception that the Emperor is divine.” He said that “mere legends and myths” had been responsible for this belief.

What a shock! Millions of Japanese people were deeply shaken. For over 2,600 years the emperor had been considered a deity!* And now he is not a god? This man once so exalted that people would not even raise their eyes to look at him, he is not a deity? Giving up the long-held belief that the emperor was divine was not easy. Indeed, several former imperial Japanese soldiers, in a centuries-old tradition, killed themselves upon learning of the death of Hirohito.

Really, who was this Hirohito? And what made his role in history so controversial? On February 24, 1989, as the hearse carrying his casket left the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and headed toward Shinjuku Gyoen park for the state funeral, millions of television viewers and some 200,000 roadside onlookers had opportunity to reflect on such questions.

The Person and His Reign

Hirohito, meaning “Broad-Minded Benevolence,” was the name given the son of Emperor Taisho at his birth on April 29, 1901. On Christmas day 1926, when his father died, Hirohito replaced him as emperor. The name chosen by court scholars for the era of his reign was Showa, or Enlightened Peace. So after his death, he came to be known, not as Emperor Hirohito, but as Emperor Showa.

Yet, the early part of Hirohito’s reign was anything but enlightened peace, considering the Japanese military ventures in Manchuria and China in the 1930’s, the invasion of French Indochina in 1940, and the attack on the United States in 1941. The name of Hirohito’s reign is especially ironic when one considers that during the early years, literally millions of lives were snuffed out by wars fought with his assumed approval.

Despite Japan’s postwar economic recovery, not everyone considers the period of peace that Japan has since enjoyed to be an enlightened peace. “When I look back on the Showa Era, I feel emptiness,” said 86-year-old Japanese author Sue Sumii. “Since Japan’s defeat in the war, I think the country has been in decline . . . Japan’s prosperity is an illusion.”

Mixed Feelings

Many of the countries that Japan dominated and fought against had to rationalize sending representatives to Hirohito’s funeral. The Koreans, for example, were still aware of ‘scars left on their country’ by Japan’s domination of the Korean Peninsula “in the name of the Emperor.” In the British press, there was a call for a boycott of the funeral. Many could not forget that some 27,000 British prisoners of war died at the hands of the emperor’s armies.

The situation was similar in the United States, where considerable blame for Japan’s military aggressions is placed upon Hirohito. As a New York Times editorial expressed it at the time of his death: “In his exalted position, he might have helped spare the world limitless tragedy.”

Even in Japan, where Hirohito has generally been glorified as a peace-loving emperor, some feel that he bears a heavy responsibility. Katsuro Nakamura recalls that on receiving word of his older brother’s death in the war, his father said: “My son was killed by that fellow Hirohito.” Another older Japanese man, Masashi Inagaki, explained: “For a long time I blamed him for the war in which we had to suffer so much.” But he added: “My bitter feelings began to fade away as I realized that the emperor himself had to carry the past all through his life.”

When Confidence Is Misplaced

It might be said that millions of Japanese offered their lives on the altar of this Shinto deity, not to mention the lives of millions of others that were offered on the same altar by the emperor’s armies. Those who believed were led into the labyrinth of militarism in the name of their god, only to learn later that he was not a god after all. As the Asahi Evening News said: “Millions of Japanese had been sacrificed over the misunderstanding.”

What was the reaction of believers when their god renounced his godship in 1946? One who had fought for the emperor said that he felt like “a boat that had lost its rudder in the midst of an open sea.” His reaction was typical. Those who survived the war “were suddenly abyssed into a vacuum,” laments Sakon Sou, a Japanese poet. How could they fill that vacuum?

“I had been completely deceived. I had fought not for God but for an ordinary man,” says Kiyoshi Tamura. “What was there for me to believe in after that?” Kiyoshi worked frantically to acquire riches, but these failed to bring consolation. When your belief is shattered, empty values may rush in to fill the vacuum.

A lesson can be learned from reflection on Emperor Showa and his funeral. It is that worshiping “what you do not know” is disastrous. (John 4:22) Whom do you worship? Do you have solid basis for believing that that person truly is God and that he is worthy of your worship?

All of us need to reflect on this matter, since even today some individuals, such as the Dalai Lama, are viewed as living Buddhas, and they are worshiped by their devotees. Many who profess Christianity have been taught to believe in a Trinity, and so they worship as God a triad supposedly made up of the Father, the Son, and the holy spirit. Consider in the next article how the Japanese were led to believe in a god who really is not God, and see what we can learn from this.

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 2]

Japanese character (above left) means “god, deity”

[Picture Credit Line on page 3]

Hirohito (opposite): U.S. National Archives photo