To the accompaniment of drums, gongs and three cheers of "Banzai!" Emperor ; Akihito was enthroned in Tokyo last week. It was the first such ceremony to be conducted under the country's postwar constitution, which stripped the Emperor of political power. But the presence of princes and princesses, Presidents and Prime Ministers solemnified the occasion, and leftists enlivened things with a dozen fires at shrines, military bases and subway stations.
Akihito's accession had been meant to herald a new era in which the imperial office would be free of the controversy that surrounded his father, Emperor Hirohito, for his role in...
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