TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/011689/01168900.032

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 68 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.