THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Minutes before Emperor Akihito made his first-ever television address to his people, the Japanese public broadcaster NHK instructed its editors to cut into the speech if important news on the unfolding nuclear crisis broke.
In a country where the Emperor is treated with a reverence verging on the worshipful, both the public speech and the orders to show discourtesy to it if need be illustrate just how deep the cultural impact of Japan's earthquake and tsunami has been.
Dressed in a dark suit, and seated against a backdrop designed to evoke the appearance of a traditional paper screens, Emperor Akihito spoke in mannered but modern Japanese – not the formal courtly language which is incomprehensible to many of the country’s residents.
He expressed hope that the nuclear crisis would be resolved, and that lives could be saved. “I hope things will take a turn for the better,” Japan’s monarch said.
Akihito’s nuclear-crisis speech has a grim historical precedent. In 1945, it fell to his father, Hirohito, to announce to Japan’s people its surrender to the allies. He attributed the surrender, among other things, to “a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.”
The Emperor was referring to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed up to 246,000 people, the dawn of the nuclear age. (+ video) » | Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor | Wednesday, March 16, 2011
