Obeisance

Bronze gongs throbbed softly and with stiff rustling of robes the Shinto priests bowed low to the ground, for in the confines of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tsugu-no-Miya Akihito, Crown Prince of Japan, last week was worshipping his illustrious ancestors. Utterly oblivious to the solemnity of the occasion was Tsugu-no-Miya Akihito, for His Celestial Highness last week was just three months old, a little round buttonhead of a baby, swaddled and lying on a brocaded pillow in the arms of his nurse. In solemn procession, Prince, pillow and nurse went first to the Koreiden shrine, dedicated to the spirits of the 123 Emperors of Japan who ruled before Emperor Hirohito; then to the Shinden, where they honored the "So myriad" deities of Shintoism; finally to the Kashikodokoro, the shrine of the Sacred Mirror of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, ancestress of the imperial family.

Before each ancestor the pillow swooped excitingly to the ground in obeisance. Prince Tsugu blinked his eyes but did not cry.

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