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Hirohito was more successful when he decided to marry for love. Despite the opposition of the court, he chose a young noblewoman, Princess Nagako of the Satsuma clan, which was then outside the strict circle of families eligible for imperial matches. In due time she bore him five daughters and two sons, the eldest-born being Crown Prince Akihito, now II.
The Emperor. In 1924, Hirohito became Regent. Four years later he formally ascended the throne, with all the pomp and circumstance of ancient, perhaps prehistoric, ceremony.
He donned the ritualistic orange raiment of his forebears. From Tokyo he rode in a crimson carriage to the old capital at Kyoto. There, in a confident, resonant voice, he read his imperial Rescript, announcing his ascension. Alone, save for two attendants, he appeared, once before midnight and once after, at the shrine of his ancestress the Sun Goddess and offered her a sacrifice of holy rice.
Then he buckled down, with clerklike industry, to the job of God-Emperor. As custom decreed, he chose a name for his reign. It was Showa, or Enlightened Peace. He explained his selection: "I have visited the battlefields of the World War, and in the presence of such devastation, I understand the need of concord among nations."
This understanding did not deter him from sanctifying the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the invasion of North China in 1937, the blow at Pearl Harbor in 1941. The totalitarian forces which had shaped his state shaped his place in it. The westernized elder statesmen and their successors—men like Prince Konoye and Baron Hiranuma—were pushed into the background by swashbuckling generals and admirals, like Kenji Doihara, Hideki Tojo, Isozoku Yamamoto. Hirohito's most intimate counselors in the Imperial Household, nobles like the Marquis Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and ex-Grand Chamberlain Kantaro Suzuki (now Premier), were denounced by chauvinistic young officers as bad influences around the throne. Some of them were murdered in the bloody mutiny of 1936.
Model Symbol. In Asia, Japan was making history whose consequences for the world are still incalculable. Through it all, Hirohito remained a model Shinto sovereign—conventional, secluded, aloof, a proper family man as well as national deity. He rose early each morning (6 or 7 a.m.), shaved himself, bowed before the little shrine of his ancestors in his copper-domed Tokyo castle, breakfasted in foreign style on coffee, bacon & eggs, shuffled through the papers on his desk. Thirteen times a year, clad in the white silk robe of high priest, he officiated at major Shinto rites. His wartime frugality set an example to all. He had his underwear thriftily mended, cut imported cigarets and wine from the palace list.
Sometimes there were quiet evenings when he turned to his favorite pastime —the study of biology, particularly the laws of Mendel, under the microscope. (When his third daughter was born and he still had no male heir, he assuaged his disappointment by collecting fungi in the palace park.)
He also composed tankas, the evocative 31-syllable poems of Japan. The theme of peace, like the threnody of frustration, haunted them. While his armies trampled on China and war clouds gathered above Europe, he wrote:
Peaceful is morning in the shrine garden.