With shirtsleeves rolled up and rubber boots protecting his feet, the grey-haired man bent like a peasant to the task of planting rice shoots in the flooded paddy. That might seem plebeian labor for an emperor, but Hirohito of Japan, 75, has always shown deep sympathy for the farming millions of his subjects, and made it a royal duty to take a personal part in opening the rice-planting season. Come fall, the monarch will return to the same paddy in the imperial palace compound and harvest a crop of about 300 lbs., part of it destined for the Ise Grand Shrines...
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