Toward Fuji

No other monarch of a great power is so important to his subjects as the Emperor of Japan. To them he is a descendant of the Sun Goddess, and thus actually possessed of Godhood. Moreover, only one dynasty has reigned* and still reigns in Japan. All spiritual and temporal good flows from the Emperor. Even the greatest of all Japanese victories, the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Togo (1905), was officially ascribed to "the virtue of the Emperor." Therefore last week when the people of Japan set about the funeral of the late Emperor Yoshihito (TIME, Jan. 3), they very properly proceeded as though they were escorting a god to his last rest. Expense. Four million yen ($2,000,000) was spent on the funeral. Pomp. Red and gold automobiles for members of the Imperial House, two special railway stations, innumerable hand-tooled pavilions, a funeral railway car, a vast funeral hearse (TIME, Jan. 10), and some 20 miles of road and railroad were built--will never be used again. Numbers. Princes, ambassadors, nobles, and army and navy officers to the number of 12,000 participated in the funeral, while two million commoners looked on. Pageant. At 4 p. m. the streets of Tokyo were closed to traffic of any sort. At 6 p. m. the present Emperor, Hirohito, the Dowager Empress and the three brothers of the Emperor, emerged from the Imperial Palace in their red and gold motors. All electricity was shut off, and in the gathering dusk thousands of lanterns winked and iron braziers flared along the funeral way. The hearse, 23 ft. long, 12 ft. high and 12 ft. wide rumbled forth, drawn by oxen, and emitting from its wooden wheel-hubs four differently pitched notes: "the sacred mournful sounds." When the great funeral pavilion was reached, the body was placed upon an altar and the Emperor bowed low before it. Picking up a branch of evergreen he placed it on the altar, beside the body, thus symbolizing that the dead Emperor had gone to everlasting life. Three times His Majesty sprinkled incense upon live coals. Three times he bowed to his dead father. Then, at last, he turned to his people and read a short message, proclaiming the national grief, and announcing himself as the new Emperor. One by one the Dowager Empress, the Imperial Princes, the Ministers of State and other high dignitaries then ascended the altar, laid evergreen beside the body, sprinkled incense and turned away. With this simple ceremony the funeral itself was over. Then came relays of 120 pallbearers, great men thus greatly honored, who bore the coffin to the special funeral railway station, and placed it on the funeral car. . . . At dawn, the Emperor was entombed in a cement vault set into a hill overlooking Fujiyama, beloved and sacred mountain of Japan. Workmen at once began to heap up an immense tumulus over the vault; and since no human foot is allowed to tread above an Emperor, the workmen had to be "purified" by a peculiar rite. After this rite they become officially "no longer men, but white winged birds which fly with earth and sand in their beaks" to complete the tumulus.

* It has not always ruled. The shoguns or tycoons ("high princes") ruled from 1603 to 1867; but the imperial family continued, technically, to reign.