The call came before 5 a.m., summoning the chief court physician to the bedside of the ailing monarch. Since September, when the aging Emperor was first stricken with internal hemorrhaging, he had remained in a second-floor bedroom of his residence within the walled, moated and heavily wooded grounds of the Imperial Palace. A victim of duodenal cancer, he grew weaker each day. Dr. Akira Takagi rushed into the palace within minutes of the summons, followed closely by Crown Prince Akihito and his wife Crown Princess Michiko, then by Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. At 6:33 a.m. Emperor Hirohito, once worshiped by the Japanese people as a living god, died at the age of 87.
The longest-reigning monarch on earth, Hirohito was the last survivor of the leaders of the World War II era. He occupied the Chrysanthemum Throne longer than any of his recorded predecessors. During his 62 years as Emperor, ( Hirohito presided over a nation that soared to heights of military arrogance, plummeted catastrophically and rose again to become a formidable industrial power. Through it all, the slight, stooped Hirohito retained an unassuming tranquillity. As Japan's national television network flashed the words TENNO- HEIKA HOGYO (the Emperor passes away) last Saturday, some of the country's 122 million citizens wept, some prayed, some affected disinterest. All realized that an era of great change for their country, a period immortalized as the Showa era, or time of enlightened peace, was at an end.
Though the vigil for the Emperor lasted more than three months, the Japanese were not officially informed that Hirohito suffered from cancer until after he died. Within moments of the death announcement, mourners converged on the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. "Since he fell ill, I've been praying every day for his recovery," said office clerk Yuko Kitagawa, 32, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm just sad." The National Police Agency mobilized 15,000 police to patrol the Imperial and Togu palaces. Many flags flew at half-staff; others were adorned with black ribbons. Japan's stock and bond markets, regularly open on Saturday, were closed. Government offices were observing a six-day mourning period, and workers were requested to refrain from festive singing or dancing. Even a major sumo-wrestling tournament was postponed a day.
In a silent four-minute ceremony that took place less than four hours after his father's death, Akihito, 55, received the imperial and state seals and replicas of two of the imperial treasures that symbolize the throne. By legend, the actual treasures -- a mirror, a sword and a crescent-shaped jewel -- trace back to the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. The government chose a name for Emperor Akihito's reign: Heisei, the achievement of complete peace on earth and in the heavens.
To many Westerners, the idea of the Japanese monarchy seems a paradox in a country that has become the cynosure of the modern industrial world. Yet the institution, the oldest of its kind on the globe, lies at the center of Japan's national psyche, characterizing both the country's flexibility and its resistance to the shock of the new. As Akihito succeeds his father, the institution and the nation are at another beginning.