TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/011689/01168900.032

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.7 KB | 73 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 32

Akihito: The Son Also Rises


    He is a slight, unprepossessing figure who has passed most
of his life puttering contentedly beyond the reach of history's
spotlight. His time has been spent writing monographs on the
goby (a spiny-finned fish of the Gobiidae family), playing the
cello and raising his two sons and one daughter. His official
duties have kept him fitfully in the public eye but not in the
popular imagination. As Crown Prince Akihito ascends Japan's
Chrysanthemum Throne, he remains a mystery to his countrymen
and a cipher to the world.

    Akihito was born on Dec. 23, 1933, the long-awaited first
son of Hirohito and Empress Nagako, who had already produced
four girls. In time-honored imperial fashion, the prince was
separated from his parents at about the age of three and raised
by nurses, tutors and chamberlains. Yet in a departure from
custom, at six Akihito was sent to school with commoners in
order to broaden him. When the Allies began closing in on Japan
during World War II, he and some of his classmates were
evacuated to provincial cities.

    The Crown Prince showed his mettle in 1959 when he chose for
his bride Michiko Shoda, the first nonaristocrat elevated to
royal consort. Apprehensive about becoming a member of the royal
family, she was at first reluctant to accept Akihito's proposal,
but his passionate wooing won her over. They were married amid
nationwide celebration.

    The couple set up house in the Togu Gosho, the Crown
Prince's unpretentious residence half a mile from the Imperial
Palace. But reports soon filtered out that Empress Nagako
resented the intrusion of a commoner into the family. The
situation was exacerbated when, in another break with
tradition, Akihito and Michiko chose to raise their children --
Prince Hiro, now 28, Prince Aya, 23, and Princess Nori, 19 --
at home. In 1986 they stepped further into workaday modernity
when they took their first subway ride.

    As Crown Prince, Akihito began his workday at 10 a.m.,
planning public appearances and receiving visitors. Later the
family would gather in the palace sitting room for tea and cake
-- and for Prince Hiro, perhaps a slug of whiskey, which he
learned to savor during two years at Oxford's Merton College.
The eligible Prince Hiro, an aspiring historian, overshadows
his father in the public mind because Japanese newspapers have
unleashed squads of reporters to cover the big story: whom he
will marry and when.

    Like Hirohito, who was an avid amateur marine biologist,
Akihito became an expert on fish. He is also a dedicated
musician, and the palace often resounds with impromptu concerts
of Mozart, Grieg or Beethoven; Akihito is a fine cellist and is
joined by his wife playing the harp, Hiro on viola, Aya on the
guitar and Nori at the piano. Says chief chamberlain Yasuo
Shigeta: "This is a family so full of sweet music."

    For all his majesty, Akihito has never projected a clear
public image. "His great natural dignity is combined with a
shyness which sometimes seems like hauteur; and the ability to
suffer fools gladly, which is so great an asset to any public
figure, is apparently missing," wrote Elizabeth Gray Vining in
her 1952 book Windows for the Crown Prince. Vining, a
Philadelphia Quaker, tutored the Crown Prince in English during
the late 1940s, but her description still seems valid: "He has a
better than average mind, clear, analytical, independent, with a
turn for original thought. He is aware of his destiny; he
accepts it soberly." Now, nearly four decades later, Akihito
and his destiny have finally come together.