50 Fun Facts About Emperor Hirohito

Emperor Hirohito kept a laboratory in the Tokyo Imperial Palace to publish papers in which science?

Marine biology was his lifelong passion: he described several dozen species of hydrozoans, small relatives of jellyfish, that were new to science.

During a 1975 tour of the United States, Emperor Hirohito posed with the mascot of which California attraction?

Disneyland produced a smiling newspaper photo of the emperor beside Mickey Mouse, a striking image for a ruler who had once been at war with the United States.

What did most Japanese experience for the first time when Emperor Hirohito announced surrender in August 1945?

His voice had never been heard by ordinary subjects. The noon announcement was played from a phonograph record, in court language so formal that many listeners struggled to follow it.

On New Year's Day 1946, Emperor Hirohito issued a statement denying that the emperor possessed which attribute?

Divinity was the idea he set aside in what became known as the Humanity Declaration, saying his bond with the people rested on trust and affection rather than on legends and myths.

Which American general's photograph beside the much shorter Emperor Hirohito stunned the Japanese public?

Douglas MacArthur's staff released the picture of the pair's first meeting, and the sight of the emperor overshadowed by a far taller foreigner undermined the mystique of a ruler rarely seen in public.

Which record does Emperor Hirohito hold among all the historical emperors of Japan?

Longest reign belongs to him: he held the throne for more than six decades, and at his death in 1989 he was also the longest-serving living monarch anywhere in the world.

By which posthumous name, shared with the era of his reign, is Hirohito officially known in Japan?

Shōwa became his name on his death in 1989. By Japanese custom he was never referred to by his given name while he reigned, only as His Majesty the Emperor.

Which son succeeded Hirohito in 1989 and later became Japan's first emperor in two centuries to abdicate?

Akihito stepped down in 2019, the first abdication since Emperor Kōkaku's in 1817. Decades earlier he had broken another tradition by marrying a commoner.

By which name is the seat of Japan's monarchy, held by Hirohito from 1926 to 1989, commonly known in English?

Chrysanthemum Throne is a figure of speech for the monarchy itself, much like the Crown in Britain. The physical seat used at enthronements has its own name, the Takamikura.

Which office did Crown Prince Hirohito assume in November 1921, five years before he became emperor?

Regent, or Sesshō in Japanese, made him acting ruler at 20 because his father, Emperor Taishō, was too ill to reign. He held the post until his father's death in 1926 put him on the throne.

Japan's postwar constitution, in force from 1947, redefined Emperor Hirohito's role using which phrase?

Symbol of the state replaced the old idea of a sovereign with supreme political power. The new charter left him a purely ceremonial figure with no governmental authority.

Whom did Emperor Hirohito appoint prime minister in October 1941, weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Hideki Tōjō led Japan through most of the war and was hanged in 1948 after the Tokyo war crimes trials, at which the emperor himself was never charged.

Emperor Hirohito's 1945 surrender announcement cited which new enemy weapon as a reason to stop fighting?

The atomic bomb is described in the speech as a cruel new weapon of incalculable power. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had both been destroyed in the nine days before the announcement.

Which 1923 disaster devastated Tokyo and forced the postponement of Crown Prince Hirohito's wedding?

The Great Kantō earthquake and the fires it started killed more than 100,000 people. The delayed wedding went ahead the following January.

Which grandson of Emperor Hirohito ascended Japan's throne in 2019, beginning the Reiwa era?

Naruhito was born in 1960, while Hirohito was still on the throne, and later studied at Merton College, Oxford.

Which British king hosted Crown Prince Hirohito at a Buckingham Palace banquet during his 1921 tour?

George V put the nervous young visitor at ease, and Hirohito said decades later that seeing Britain's constitutional politics up close had shaped his own view of how a monarch should behave.

Which princess married Hirohito in 1924 and went on to be Japan's empress for more than six decades?

Nagako was empress from 1926 to 1989, longer than any other consort in Japanese history. In 1971 she also became the first Japanese empress consort to travel overseas.

Emperor Hirohito's death in January 1989 began which new Japanese era, unveiled at a government press conference?

Heisei, intended to mean peace everywhere, was announced by Keizō Obuchi, the cabinet official who later became prime minister.

Japan's formal surrender was signed on Emperor Hirohito's behalf in Tokyo Bay aboard which American battleship?

USS Missouri hosted a ceremony lasting just 23 minutes, at which Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed first, by command and on behalf of the emperor.

Which US president hosted Emperor Hirohito at the White House during a two-week state visit in 1975?

Gerald Ford's invitation led to the first visit of its kind in the history of the two countries, and the emperor's itinerary included Arlington National Cemetery.

In which US state did Emperor Hirohito meet President Richard Nixon during a 1971 refuelling stop?

Alaska was the setting because his jet paused at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. The journey made him the first reigning Japanese emperor ever to leave the country.

Which Tokyo shrine did Emperor Hirohito refuse to visit after 1978, when Class-A war criminals were enshrined there?

Yasukuni Shrine honours Japan's war dead. A memo published in 2006 confirmed that the enshrinement of the 14 men was his reason, and he never went back.

Emperor Hirohito raised no objection in 1931 when Japan's army staged the Mukden incident to invade which region?

Manchuria was seized after officers blew up a stretch of railway and blamed Chinese dissidents. Within months Japan had set up a puppet state there.

Which old court practice did Emperor Hirohito abandon, even when his first four children were all daughters?

Keeping concubines had given earlier emperors their heirs, and his own father was a concubine's son. Courtiers urged him to resume the custom, but he stayed monogamous.

How did Emperor Hirohito respond when junior army officers attempted a coup in Tokyo in February 1936?

He ordered it suppressed, called the officers rebels and even threatened to lead the Imperial Guard against them himself. The revolt collapsed three days later.

Emperor Hirohito survived a 1932 attack in Tokyo when Korean activist Lee Bong-chang threw which weapon?

A hand grenade failed to kill him, and Lee was executed that October. South Korea now remembers the would-be assassin as a martyr of its independence movement.

From 1989 to 2006, Emperor Hirohito's 29 April birthday remained a Japanese public holiday under which new name?

Greenery Day acknowledged his love of plants without naming the controversial wartime emperor. In 2007 it moved to 4 May, and 29 April was renamed after his era.

Japan's Three Sacred Treasures, confirmed as Hirohito's at his 1928 enthronement, are a mirror, a jewel and what?

A sword, named Kusanagi, stands for valour beside the mirror's wisdom and the jewel's benevolence. The regalia are deliberately kept from public view.

The era name of Emperor Hirohito's reign, which included the Second World War, is usually translated as what?

Enlightened peace is the usual reading, an irony for a period that opened with militarism and total war before delivering decades of the calm its name promised.

Emperor Hirohito's August 1945 surrender announcement accepted which Allied document, issued three weeks earlier?

The Potsdam Declaration, issued by the United States, Britain and China, demanded Japan's surrender. His ministers first wanted conditions attached, including a guarantee of his own position.

Under Emperor Hirohito, Japan joined the Axis powers in September 1940 by signing which agreement in Berlin?

The Tripartite Pact was a defensive military alliance of the Axis powers. He consented to it only after the German army's successes in Europe.

Which Japanese colony did Crown Prince Hirohito tour for twelve days in April 1923, a trip his father never managed?

Taiwan had been Japanese since 1895. The chefs who cooked his banquet were ritually purified for a week beforehand, and the stones he used to cross a hot-spring creek were later mounted as a monument.

In 1979 Hirohito became the world's only emperor when the Central African Empire and which other monarchy fell?

Iran's shah was toppled by revolution that year, leaving the Japanese sovereign as the last monarch on Earth to bear any version of the highest royal title.

As Japan's emperor, Hirohito was regarded as the foremost priest of which religion?

Shinto rites remained part of his duties after the war, though his 1989 state funeral, unlike his father's, was not conducted in a strictly Shinto manner.

In which former capital was Emperor Hirohito formally enthroned in November 1928, two years after his accession?

Kyoto's old imperial palace hosted the ceremony, just as it had for his father in 1915, even though both men lived and reigned in Tokyo.

Herbert Bix's biography Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan won which American honour in 2001?

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction went to a book arguing that the emperor took an active part in wartime policy and strategy, a reading some other scholars dispute.

Hirohito was born in 1901 during the reign of Emperor Meiji, who was which relative of the future emperor?

His grandfather Meiji died in 1912, when the boy was 11. That made Hirohito's father emperor and Hirohito himself the heir to the throne.

Ten weeks after his birth, the infant Hirohito was taken from court to be raised in whose household?

A retired naval officer, Count Kawamura Sumiyoshi, brought him up in his own home. Hirohito returned to court at the age of three, after the count died.

Hirohito donated the trophy now called the Emperor's Cup in 1925 to the champions of which traditional sport?

Sumo's top-division tournament winners still receive it. The trophy took its present name when he came to the throne in December 1926.

Which British chivalric honour was stripped from Hirohito in 1941 and restored during his 1971 state visit?

The Order of the Garter took down his banner at St George's Chapel when Japan entered the Second World War. Three decades later both the banner and the knighthood were back.

Which British Army rank did Emperor Hirohito hold on an honorary basis until Japan became Britain's enemy?

Field marshal is an honour Britain has extended to several foreign monarchs. He was one of only three to be stripped of it, alongside the wartime rulers of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Emperor Hirohito's 1989 state funeral was held in which Tokyo garden, once reserved for the imperial family?

Shinjuku Gyoen was closed to the public until 1949. Some 10,000 official guests gathered there in a specially built funeral hall, including delegations from 163 countries.

The young Hirohito began school in 1908 at which Tokyo institution founded to educate the children of the nobility?

Gakushūin, known in English as the Peers' School, went on to educate his son and his grandson, both future emperors, as well.

Which childhood title was the young Hirohito given before he became heir to Japan's throne?

Prince Michi was his title from infancy. The custom continued in later generations: his son was Prince Tsugu as a child and his grandson was Prince Hiro.

Which younger brother of Emperor Hirohito, nicknamed the sporting prince, gives his name to a Tokyo rugby stadium?

Chichibu studied at Oxford and championed rugby and skiing in Japan. He died of tuberculosis in 1953, and the stadium was renamed in his memory.

Which general, Hirohito's boyhood mentor, took his own life on the day of Emperor Meiji's funeral in 1912?

Nogi Maresuke, who captured Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, did not wish to outlive his master. He and his wife died shortly after the funeral procession left the palace.

Emperor Hirohito lies beside his parents in the Musashi Imperial Graveyard, in which city on Tokyo's western edge?

Hachiōji holds the wooded mausoleum complex where his father became the first emperor to be buried in Tokyo. The empress was laid to rest near her husband there in 2000.

Which Russian director portrayed Emperor Hirohito's last days of the war in the 2005 film The Sun?

Alexander Sokurov made it the third of his films about 20th-century rulers, after portraits of Hitler and Lenin. The emperor is played by the Japanese actor Issey Ogata.

Which newly inaugurated world leader was moved to a front-row seat at Emperor Hirohito's 1989 state funeral?

George H. W. Bush had been in office for barely a month, and tradition would have placed him toward the back. Officials overrode protocol to seat him at the front.

Emperor Hirohito's 1975 American visit began in which Virginia town, famous for its restored colonial streets?

Williamsburg was the first stop of a two-week itinerary that went on to Washington and New York before crossing the country to California.