Death and state funeral of Hirohito

Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa), the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, died on 7 January 1989 at the Fukiage Palace in Chiyoda, Tokyo, at the age of 87, after suffering from intestinal cancer for some time. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Akihito.

Hirohito's state funeral was held on 24 February at Shinjuku Gyo-en, when he was buried near his parents, Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei, at the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Hachiōji, Tokyo.

Illness and death
On 22 September 1987, Hirohito underwent surgery on his pancreas after having digestive problems for several months. Doctors discovered that he had duodenal cancer, but had refused to disclose to the Emperor about his condition as it was considered taboo to do so at the time. He appeared to be making a full recovery for several months after the surgery. About a year later, however, on 19 September 1988, he vomited blood, and his health worsened over the next several months as he suffered from continuous internal bleeding.

On 7 January 1989, at 5:40 am, members of the imperial family gathered at the Tokyo Imperial Palace, including Crown Prince Akihito and his wife Crown Princess Michiko, after chief court physician Akira Takagi rushed in to attend to Hirohito. He died less than an hour later, at 6:33 am. The death was officially announced at 7:55 am by the Grand Steward of Japan's Imperial Household Agency, Shōichi Fujimori, during a press conference in which he revealed details about his cancer for the first time. The Emperor was survived by his wife, five children, ten grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Succession and posthumous title


Hirohito's death ended the Shōwa era. He was succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Akihito. With his accession, the Heisei era began effective at midnight on 8 January 1989. The new Emperor's formal enthronement ceremony was held in Tokyo on 12 November 1990.

From 7 January until 31 January 1989, the late Emperor's formal appellation was "Departed Emperor" (大行天皇). His definitive posthumous name, Shōwa Tennō (昭和天皇), was officially determined on 13 January and formally released on 31 January by Noboru Takeshita, the Prime Minister.

State funeral
Emperor Shōwa's state funeral was held on 24 February 1989. Unlike that of his predecessor, although formal it was not conducted in a strictly Shinto manner. It was a funeral carefully designed both as a tribute to the late Emperor and as a showcase for the peaceful, affluent society into which Japan had developed during his reign.

Unlike Emperor Taishō's state funeral 62 years earlier, there was no ceremonious parade of officials dressed in military uniforms, and there were far fewer of the Shinto rituals used at that time to glorify the Emperor as a near-deity. These changes were meant to highlight that the Emperor Shōwa's funeral would be the first of an emperor under the post-war Constitution. It was also the first imperial funeral to be held in daylight. The delay of 48 days between his death and the state funeral was about the same as that for the previous Emperor, and allowed time for numerous ceremonies leading up to the funeral. The late Emperor's body lay in three coffins; some personal items such as books and stationery were also placed in them.

Ceremony at the Imperial Palace
The ceremonies began at 7:30 a.m. when Emperor Akihito conducted a private farewell ceremony for his father at the Imperial Palace.

Funeral procession through Tokyo
At 9:35 a.m., a black motor hearse carrying the body of Emperor Shōwa left the Imperial Palace for the two-mile-long drive to the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, where the Shinto and state ceremonies were held. The hearse was accompanied by traditional music played on the shō, a Japanese free reed aerophane; the crowd was largely silent as the hearse bearing the Emperor's coffin drove over a stone bridge and out through the Imperial Palace gates. A brass band played a dirge composed for the funeral of Emperor Shōwa's great-grandmother in the late 19th century, and cannon shots were fired in accompaniment.

The motor hearse was accompanied by a procession of sixty cars. The route of the cortege through Tokyo was lined by an estimated 800,000 spectators and 32,000 special police, who had been mobilized to guard against potential terrorist attacks.

The path of the funeral procession passed the National Diet (parliament) and the National Stadium, the site where the emperor opened the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Ceremonies at Shinjuku Gyoen Garden
The 40-minute procession, accompanied by a brass band, ended when it pulled into the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, until 1949 reserved for the use of the Imperial family and now one of Tokyo's most popular parks.

At the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, the funeral ceremonies for Emperor Shōwa were conducted in a Sojoden, a specially constructed funeral hall. The funeral hall was constructed of Japanese cypress and held together with bamboo nails, in keeping with ancient imperial tradition.

Official guests were seated in two white tents located in front of the funeral hall. Because of the low temperatures, many guests used chemical hand-warmers and wool blankets to keep warm as the three-hour Shinto and state ceremonies progressed.

Palanquin procession
Emperor Shōwa's coffin was transferred into a palanquin made of cypress wood painted with black lacquer. Attendants wearing sokutai and bearing white and yellow banners, shields and signs of the sun and moon, led a 225-member procession as musicians played traditional court music (gagaku). Next came gray-robed attendants carrying two sacred sakaki trees draped with cloth streamers and ceremonial boxes of food and silk cloths to be offered to the spirit of the late Emperor.

In a nine-minute procession, 51 members of the Imperial Household Agency, clad in traditional gray Shinto clothing, carried the 1.5 ton Sokaren (Imperial Palanquin) containing the three-layered coffin of the Emperor Shōwa into the funeral hall, as they walked up the aisle between the white tents where guests were seated.

Behind the coffin walked a chamberlain dressed in white, who carried a platter with a pair of white shoes, as it is traditionally held that the deceased Emperor would wear them to heaven. His son and daughter-in-law, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko carrying their own large umbrellas, followed the palanquin with other family members.

The procession passed through a small wooden torii gate, the Shinto symbol marking the entrance to sacred space, and filed into the Sojoden.

Shinto ceremony
The events in the Sojoden were divided into a religious Shinto ceremony (葬場殿の儀), followed by a state ceremony (大喪の礼).

When the procession entered the funeral hall, the Shinto portion of the funeral began and a black curtain partition was drawn closed. It opened to reveal a centuries-old ceremony. To the accompaniment of chanting, officials approached the altar of the Emperor, holding aloft wooden trays of sea bream, wild birds, kelp, seaweed, mountain potatoes, melons and other delicacies. The foods, as well as silk cloths, were offered to the spirit of the late Emperor.

The chief of the ceremony, a childhood classmate and attendant of the late Emperor, then delivered an address, followed by Emperor Akihito.

The funeral continued as the black curtain closed, signalling the end of the Shinto portion of the funeral.

State ceremony
Chief Cabinet Secretary Keizō Obuchi opened the state portion of the funeral. At noon, he called for a nationwide minute of silence.

Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita delivered a short eulogy, in which he said that the Shōwa era would be remembered for its eventful and tumultuous times, including World War II and the eventual reconstruction of Japan. Speaker of the House of Representatives Kenzaburo Hara, President of the House of Councillors Yoshihiko Tsuchiya and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Koichi Yaguchi also delivered short eulogies.

Foreign dignitaries approached the altar one at a time to pay their respects.

Internment at the Imperial Graveyard
Following the state ceremony, the Emperor's coffin was taken to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in the Hachiōji district of Tokyo for burial. At Emperor Taishō's funeral in 1927, the trip to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard was carried out as a three-hour procession. The trip for the Emperor Shōwa's coffin was made by motor hearse and cut to forty minutes. Several hours of ceremonies followed there, until the internment took place at nightfall, the traditional time to bury emperors.

Visitors and guests
An estimated 200,000 people lined the site of the procession – far fewer than the 860,000 that officials had projected. The Emperor's funeral was attended by some 10,000 official guests, including foreign representatives from 163 countries and 27 international institutions. This required placing Tokyo under an unprecedented blanket of security. Because of security concerns and threats from Japanese left-wing extremists to disrupt the funeral, authorities decided to scrap many of the traditional events that normally accompany funerals for Japanese monarchs. Officials also overrode protocol to give United States President George H. W. Bush a front-row seat, even though tradition would have placed him toward the back, because of his short time in office. Bush, who arrived in Tokyo on the day before the funeral, attended the funeral on 24 February and departed for China the next day. Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita held meetings with roughly forty visiting world leaders, in what was described as an act of "funeral diplomacy".

Japanese officials said it was the biggest funeral in modern Japanese history, and the unprecedented turnout of world leaders was recognition of Japan's emergence as an economic superpower. The late emperor's widow, Empress Nagako, was unable to attend due to a lingering back and leg illness.

Pardons
To mark the funeral, the government pardoned 30,000 people convicted of minor criminal offenses. The pardons also allowed an additional 11 million people to recover such civil rights as the right to vote and run for public office, which they had lost as a punishment for offenses.

Reactions
The government observed a mourning period of six days as flags flew at half-mast or were decorated with black ribbons. With virtually all television stations suspending normal schedules within the first few days of the Emperor's death, major Japanese video rental stores saw a surge in customers. The stock market was shut down on the day of the funeral.

Many viewed the burial of the Emperor, the last remaining major leader during World War II, as the nation's final break with a militaristic past that plunged much of Asia into war in the 1930s. Many Allied veterans of World War II regarded Emperor Shōwa as a war criminal and called upon their countries to boycott the funeral. Many South Koreans called on the Japanese government to issue an official apology for the Japanese colonial rule of Korea. Nevertheless, of the 166 foreign states invited to send representatives, all but three accepted.

Some Japanese, including a small Christian community, constitutional scholars and opposition politicians, denounced the funeral ceremonies and the Shinto-based portion of the funeral as a return to past imperial exaltation, arguing that the inclusion of Shinto rites violated Japan's post-war separation of state and religion. This separation had been especially important in Japan because the Shinto faith was used as a religious basis for the ultra-nationalism and militaristic expansion of wartime Japan. Some opposition party delegates to the funeral boycotted that part of the ceremony. Some anti-monarchy groups also staged small protests.

During the funeral procession in Tokyo, a man stepped into the street as the cortege approached. He was quickly apprehended by police who hustled him away. At 1:55 pm, half an hour before the hearse carrying the late emperor's casket passed by, policemen patrolling the highway leading to the Musashi Imperial Graveyard heard an explosion and found debris scattered along the highway. They quickly cleared away the rubble, and the hearse passed without incident. In total, the police also arrested four people, including two for trying to disrupt the procession.