The Emperor Finally Comes to Call

Half a century ago, when he was 19, Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan boarded the battleship Katori for a six-month grand tour of Europe. The trip only whetted his appetite for more: in Paris, he told an American newsman that he hoped a visit to the U.S. would only be a briefly "deferred pleasure." It turned out to be a long postponement. Soon after he returned home in 1921, Hirohito was declared Prince Regent for his deranged father; by 1926 he was Emperor, and a few years later Japan embarked on the ill-starred experiment in expansionism that finally ended with the nuclear holocausts in 1945.

Now 74 and in the 50th year of his reign, the Emperor still has that urge to travel. This week he and Empress Nagako, 72, finally begin a sentimental and ceremonial journey to the U.S. Their 13-day visit will be a carefully orchestrated imperial progress, part state occasion, part tourist rubbernecking. For ten months, ever since President Ford formally extended a renewed invitation to the Emperor during his visit to Japan last year, U.S. and Japanese diplomats and security officials have worked over travel and protocol details that now pack a book two inches thick. The imperial couple will have plenty of help keeping to the schedule. They will be trailed by a retinue of 22, headed by Deputy Premier Takeo Fukuda and including the imperial household's grand steward, grand chamberlain, grand master of cerermonies and a covey of ladies in waiting.

Art Exhibit. The U.S. tour begins with a bow to the Bicentennial: the imperial party will go straight to the restored colonial town of Williamsburg, Va. Then they fly to Washington for full-dress reception and state dinner in the White House. Empress Nagako, an accomplished amateur painter, will view a specially mounted exhibit of Japanese art at the Smithsonian Institution's Frer Gallery (TIME, Sept. 29).

With the Washington ceremonies behind them, the imperial couple will fly to Cape Cod, where Hirohito, a respected marine biologist, will spend an afternoon at the famed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Next stop: New York City. The Emperor and his wife will stay in the Waldorf-Astoria's eight-room presidential suite and hold court in a gold-screened "throne room" set up in the Waldorf s grand ballroom. Also on their calendar: a meeting with General Douglas MacArthur's widow Jean, who lives at the Waldorf.

Early next week Hirohito and his wife will go to Chicago where they will lunch with the Windy City's Emperor Richard Daley, and then move on to Los Angeles. There they will begin a busy three-day California tour with a lunch given by Mayor Tom Bradley. A special guest, at Hirohito's personal request, will be John Wayne, whose old World War II movies with their caricatures of Japanese soldiers as villainous fanatics, were once campy favorites in Japan. A visit to Disneyland will be beamed by TV satellite to Japan. In San Francisco, the Emperor will drive through streets bedecked with chrysanthemums, the imperial emblem.

Triumphant Trip. Hawaii, which has become a mecca for vacationing Japanese, will be the imperial couple's last U.S. stop. There are no plans for a tour of Pearl Harbor. To Americans, such a visit would only seem penitential, while" many Japanese still look on the Dec. 7, 1941 attack as a glorious victory in the lost war. But Japanese officials are apprehensive about the possibility of an overeffusive welcome for the Emperor by the 15,000 Japanese nationals and 208,000 Japanese Americans who live in Hawaii. They are particularly unsettled by the prospect of cheers of "Banzai!" as the imperial DC-8 lands at Honolulu's Hickam Air Force Base.

But why not? As the Japanese see it, the Emperor's U.S. trip is a triumph, a fitting way to round out a life that has been spent almost entirely in patriotic duty. Most Americans who will see Hirohito can scarcely imagine the rigors of office that the Emperor knew from infancy. From the start, he was raised in a stiff, isolated world ruled by court teachers who even refused him childhood games they considered unbecoming to a Son of Heaven. Only once, after returning from his euphoric tour of Europe in 1921, did Hirohito try to step out of his court-ordered way of life. Seeking to emulate Edward, Prince of Wales, who had entertained him with considerable bonhomie in England, Hirohito threw a party for old school chums, who got uproariously drunk on a keg of choice Scotch and obeyed Hirohito's request to forget formalities. Next day an imperial adviser scolded him roundly for his breach of caste rules.

How much responsibility does Hirohito bear for Japan's entry into World War II? Hearing of pending war crimes trials, he once went to General MacArthur to plead that he alone should bear the blame for every act of war. More realistically, Hirohito reminds questioners these days that even in his prewar era of official divinity, he was a monarch hemmed in by a constitution, not to mention the military leaders who came to power in Japan after 1931. Even so, writes Author Frank Gibney in The Fragile Super Power (TIME, April 21), "He served as a symbol of militarism for two generations. The imperial presence at all those military reviews reflected his close contacts with Japan's military leaders. He was something more than a passive bystander."

Whatever his role, Hirohito ultimately recognized the futility of the war, even before the atomic bombs dropped in 1945. After the nuclear ultimatum, he counseled his people to "bear the unbearable" (surrender, that is). At the Allies' request, he publicly disowned the official myth that he was the divine descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, and he did not murmur when the conquerors stripped him of his $100 million fortune. When his people struggled against starvation early in the Occupation, he gave away American canned goods to old retainers and subsisted on brown rice and sweet potatoes.

As Japan returned to prosperity, so did Hirohito. His principal palace, burned down during an American firebomb raid in 1945, was replaced by a new one in 1968 at the cost of $36 million. Maintenance of the imperial household these days costs the government $6.7 million a year--handsome remuneration for a man whose role is defined by the postwar constitution as a ceremonial "symbol of state."

Yet the Emperor's rehabilitation was not complete, at least in the eyes of the many Japanese who cared, until he set out on his U.S. tour. Individually and collectively, most Japanese had already made peace with and won approval from their former enemies and current trading partners in the U.S. This week it is their Emperor's turn.

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