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Show 7 patoaBia HEN Yoshihlto became fripTT", the reigning sovereign v,;a I of JaPan he found him y'i R self ln a PsiUon com" V V 1 parable to that of no ti emperor on earth. Oth-j) Oth-j) er emperors, western I and eastern, arc but human. Yoshihlto in the eyes of his subjects is divine. The succession of other oth-er emperors is clouded and disconnected; that of Yoshihlto is complete and self-sufficient. One hundred and twenty-third twenty-third sovereign of his line, he traces his royal descent back to the mists of the world, back six hundred years and more, before the time of Christ, back, in fact, to the great heroic age of Japan, when two gods were called, upon to create a land from the liquid islands of the air and they created Japan. From these gods he claims descent, de-scent, and not even the most highly educated and scientifically minded Japanese will dispute it. That Is the chord of belief which no modern sophistication so-phistication can pierce. The dead Mutsuhito has taken his harborage with his fellow gods, and Yoshihlto, reigning, is of his blood. This, in part, explains the attitude of veneration in which the Japanese regard their ruler, explains the sentiment senti-ment which marks him forth from brother sovereigns. It is a sentiment which few Japanese will discuss. "It is a sentiment," said one to the writer, "which it is Impossible for a Japanese to analyze, and which If analyzed an-alyzed no foreign mind could comprehend. compre-hend. "It springs partly from the Intense idealism of the people and is really a peculiar form of patriotism. It is as if the Japanese nation were reverencing rev-erencing itself, for it believes that it, too, sprang from the gods and that it is of the family of the emperor. To a nation which reverences its ancestors, ances-tors, the emperor represents a link between the present Japan and everything every-thing that has gone before a link perhaps, between the material and the spirit world. He is at once an element of mysticism and the embodiment embodi-ment of material national strength. It Is as if," the Japanese gentleman paused "you could merge the sentiment senti-ment of a Roman Catholic for the pope and the affection of a people for a great king." "Will the present emperor preserve for himself the full sentiment which tbe people had for his father?" was asked. The Japanese shrugged. "In a measure, perhaps. Wholly, perhaps not," he answered. "That he will command a peculiar reverence is certain from the reasons I have , given, which are Inherent in the nation. That the affection of the people will be as great as that given to the late emperor is doubtful. You see, the last sovereign Inspired and controlled con-trolled Japan from Its growth from a feudal land to a world-wide nation. From the time the great princes or daimios surrendered their powers and estates to the granting of a modern and voluntary constitution in 1889, his was the initiative of each successive advance. ad-vance. He had done more even than the nation expected certainly more than ever had been accomplished for a nation before. That record was personal per-sonal to him and is responsible for the personal love with which he is regarded. regard-ed. We honor and reverence the new sovereign yes. He is emperor, he is the embodied spirit of Japan. But, love? Even an emperor must earn love for himself." So enters Yoshihlto, the new em-p-ror of Japan, upon his kingdom the recipient, in western eyes, of strange marks of Japanese respect. For if the race follows the precedents given to Mutsuhito, Yoshihito's name will not be pronounced by any of his subjects. "The sovereign," "the emperor," he will be; never Yoshihito. To call the name of Yo-shihito Yo-shihito will be sacrilege. It would be as if a shrine had been assailed. And that is only a small Indication of tbe respect which the Japanese will give him as a sovereign. No man or woman will sit before him. None, if convention be maintained, will speak directly to him. for it is the custom to address the emperor of Japan only through members of his household. In his presence even the greatest will look upon the ground, unless the emperor em-peror be placed at some elevation, I when it Is permissible that the eyes be raised, and even this Is a concession conces-sion to the new world of things in Japan. For Mutsuhito, the dead emperor, passed the first sixteen years of life, unseen by any foreigner, unseen by any but his personal attendants, who were of his family. In conference even with the greatest of those who served him, his face was never shown, for he sat hidden within a canopy, on the low throne-platform from which his orders came. Till sixteen years of age he had never walked and the art of walking was with him a stiff and harsh practice to the end. New, too, is the wild acclaim of innumerable innumera-ble "banzais" whenever the emperor's emper-or's presence is observed by the people peo-ple for it came into Japan within the last fifteen years and in the skirts of progress. Before that time a dead silence had spoken national respect a dead silence and eyes lowered and the shuttered windows of houses along the street. Yoshihito will undoubtedly be viewed by his subjects as closer to the human species than any of the emperors that preceded him. For even his father began his reign as the practical prisoner of his own deification. deifi-cation. Prior to 1868 he as were his predecessors for hundreds of years was the splendidly isolated but practical prac-tical prisoner of the shogun, in whose hands the real administrative power lay. The generalissimo of the forces, the shogun, also controlled the administrative ad-ministrative functions of government, while the emperor himself was merely mere-ly a splendid figure too sacred by far to indulge ln the ignoble occupation occupa-tion of "doing things." And the personality of this new ruler, rul-er, who commands medieval respect from a nation so ultra-modern as the Japanese? A slight, small-chested figure, of in-expansive in-expansive shoulder and somewhat frail build a figure with a head abnormally ab-normally large, coal black eyes, the coarse black hair, the somewhat sombre expression, and the undershot sensitive to nervous diseases. He Is spoken of as serious and bright and with some pretense to social Isfltincts unpossessed by his parent. Third among the sons, and one among the twelve children of the late emperor, Yoshihito had no greater reason to expect a succession to sovereignty sov-ereignty than had any of his brothers, broth-ers, had they lived, for it is the custom of the emperor to nominate his successor suc-cessor from the most likely material only being limited by the fact that he must be of royal blood. The death of his two elder brothers, however, opened up vast royal perspectives to Yoshihito, and in 1887 he was nominated nom-inated heir apparent, being proclaimed pro-claimed crown prince in 1889. Yoshihito's life in its earliest yeari reflected the changed condition of Japan. He was brought up democrat ically, and attended school In the College Col-lege of Peers, which is intended for the education of princes and nobles, but which is open to all. Here he worked with the rest, possessing no privileges unpossessed by the most obscure, and with a punctuality Insisted In-sisted upon from even him, the descendant de-scendant of the gods. In this way came the comparative development of his social instincts, (or, unlike Mutsuhito, Mut-suhito, he prefers to talk directly with his company than through the august intermediary of court officials. Later, however, he came under the care of a tutor, General Oku, who was assisted by a Mr. Adachi, who seems to have been linguistically Inclined, for the present emperor speaks English Eng-lish and French, as well as German. From General Oku he studied military mili-tary tactics and early proved that ln Japan royalty is something of a talisman. talis-man. At thirteen he waB a lieutenant, lieuten-ant, at sixteen colonel of the Japanese army. In these early years, from our western viewpoint, he lived a life of r- 1 " - it. Acw x i 'i I t " 1 i & J ' . A?t ii' '- - , t, I t X V A EMPEROR YOSHIHITO. jaw of the great emperor, his father. In his august position today he seems somewhat of an anomaly to the western west-ern eyes, for he Is not the son of the empress of Japan, but of one of Mutsohito's lesser wives, the Countess Yanagaware, and chosen by the last emperor as that sovereign's successor under the law of Japan. He is thirty-one years old, and with the exception excep-tion of a slight illness, hardier than be has ever been. For Yoshihito has been a frail figure fig-ure since infancy a sufferer from a constitutional complaint which carried car-ried off his elder brother, and which the unusual size of his head sufficiently suggests. He is a sufferer from water wa-ter on the brain, which, however, Impairs Im-pairs his mental faculties not the least, but only renders him unusually remarkable Independence of parental control. He occupied, almost from infancy, in-fancy, a palace of his own, not, however, how-ever, distant from the emperor's.' With all this atmosphere of the feudal, however, Yoshihlto is thoroughly thor-oughly in accord with the modern spirit of his country. In many respects re-spects he is tinged with European habits to a degree not even ' approached ap-proached by his father. in 1906, when his three-storied palace pal-ace was built at a cost of $300,000, It was European rather than Japanese in character. Even ln his unofficial moments, too, he uses European dress. Such Is a slight portrait of Yoshihito, Yoshi-hito, new emperor of Japan, who, presumably, pre-sumably, will desert his own palace and Inherit that in which the late emperor em-peror lived. |