Japan Emperor Akihito Steps Down in First Abdication in Two Centuries

Japanese Emperor Akihito ended his three-decade reign on Tuesday, voluntarily stepping down due to health concerns to make way for his son in the country’s first abdication of the Chrysanthemum Throne since 1817.

His 31-year imperial era known as Heisei, which can be translated as “achieving peace,” came to an end with a ceremony attended by about 300 political leaders and dignitaries at about 5 p.m. local time at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. On Wednesday, his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, 59, will ascend the throne in ceremonies also at the palace.

“It was a happy thing for me to be able to fulfill the responsibilities of the emperor with deep trust and love for citizens,” Akihito, 85, said in the ceremony, speaking on a white stage in a morning coat, with Empress Michiko by his side. “I appreciate with all my heart that citizens accepted and supported me as a symbol.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe thanked the emperor for his reign, saying that Akihito gave the Japanese people “courage and hope for tomorrow.”

Akihito helped modernize the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy. He was the first Japanese emperor to marry a commoner and the first to reign entirely under the U.S.-drafted postwar, pacifist constitution that made the role strictly symbolic.

His unprecedented apologies for the wartime aggression launched in the name of his father, Hirohito -- posthumously named the Emperor Showa -- helped ease often fraught relations with neighbors China and South Korea, which bore heavy blows from Japan’s militarism. Akihito spoke in ordinary Japanese, rather than the formal grammar employed by his father, the last emperor regarded by prevailing custom to be a living deity.

Akihito’s Heisei era started in 1989 when Japan was an economic juggernaut, its companies seemed unstoppable and its products flooded global markets. But the asset-inflated bubble economy came crashing down from 1991 and about 20 years after that, Japan’s once-impoverished neighbor China overtook it as the world’s second-largest economy.

Japan became the developed world’s fastest-aging country during his reign and it managed disasters that included the 1995 earthquake that devastated the Kobe area and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit the northeast coast, leaving about 20,000 people dead or missing. Akihito and his wife Michiko visited survivors at shelters and were seen by many in Japan as helping a battered nation recover through their compassion.

With public criticism of the emperor seen as a taboo and his public words often restricted to carefully prepared texts, Akihito has largely been shielded from scandal.

Television footage Tuesday morning in Tokyo showed Akihito, dressed in a traditional imperial outfit, walking in a palace hallway to conduct a religious ceremony. He is slated to deliver a speech in the evening.

President Donald Trump offered “heartfelt appreciation” to the imperial couple, saying in a statement that Akihito welcomed five U.S. presidents to Japan. Trump is scheduled to meet the new emperor during a state visit later in May.

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