JAPAN: Imperial Poetry

Attended by his Grand Chamberlain and a suite of 200 nobles. His Majesty the Emperor Hirohito, bespectacled Son of Heaven, presided augustly last week at the official tabulation of 34,769 poems entered by Japanese throughout the world in the Imperial New Year's Poetry Competition. The set theme for contestants this year was: Rocks at the Ocean's Fringe. Last week, before the tabulation of poems could begin, a choir intoned five times the Sub lime Emperor's own treatment of the theme, lines which, needless to say, will not be judged. With his royal...

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