The Broom

Since his nation's surrender in 1945, Emperor Hirohito has been shifting from a divine to a human monarch. In his new role, the ex-god makes frequent tours among his people. Last week, as Hirohito visited the southern island of Kyushu, the changed relationship between the ruler and the ruled became increasingly and significantly apparent. Cabled TIME Correspondent Frank Gibney:

The smiling crowds spilled everywhere. The sidewalks and street corners of Nagasaki were blocked as far as eye could see with politel^ jostling people, carrying glossy paper Japanese flags, waiting for the first glimpse of Hirohito's aging maroon Packard.

Preceded by a modest automobile escort, it came at last down streets reverberating with banzais. At one place the crowd made a quick spontaneous rush from the curb, almost surrounding the imperial car. Nodding happily to them and waving his shapeless grey hat with the flourish of an old campaigner, Hirohito looked more like a successful and extroverted political leader than the scared sovereign he was in 1945.

Parents smilingly held children up to see him; schoolgirls giggled nervously. A middle-aged man in a grey kimono lustily waved a frayed pith helmet, a relic of the army's Pacific salad days, while tears coursed from his eyes. A gnarled old woman stared fixedly, saying over & over in a choked voice, "li des--it is good." The react! ~n. had been the same in farming villages, coal mines, industrial areas--wherever the glossy, chrysanthemum-decked imperial train chugged its way.

The Poised. Before the triumphal entry, the local folk spent long hours sprucing up the vicinity. Said an amazed G.I. jeep driver, noting that old holes in the road near Nagasaki had been filled in: "I hope this guy comes here more often. This is the first comfortable ride I've had." Schoolchildren swept streets and sidewalks with small brooms hours before the Emperor was scheduled to pass. This practice -; led Japanese Communists and many Americans to speak of Hirohito as hoki san, or "the broom."

Although to American soldiers' eyes the nervous, myopic little man with his bows and headshakings is still something of a comic figure, his Japanese subjects now call him ochitsuite (poised-and-at-his-ease)--a high personal compliment. Hirohito's /ords are few, but well chosen and sometimes surprising. To union bosses at Nagasaki's big Mitsubishi heavy-industry plant, he said warningly, "Thank you for your cooperation. I hope you will work for a healthy labor union." To coal miners, he appealed, "I should like to ask you to produce much more." To the children of the Catholic Holy Mother Orphanage at Omura, he admonished, "Work hard, pray to Jesus Christ, and grow to be good men."

Both Emperor and people enjoy the new freedom. Hirohito chafes at remaining restrictions. At Unzen, Kyushu's beautiful mountain resort, he spotted an odd type of moss growth in a pond. Botanist Hirohito began to wade in after it. His chamberlain tried to restrain him; it was too dangerous. But by this time Japanese photographers had jumped into the pond to take pictures of the Emperor at its edge. "If it isn't dangerous for them," protested Hirohito, "why is it dangerous for me?" Sighed the chamberlain: "If Your Majesty can find a newspaperman's armband to wear, please jump in."

The Sack Suit. The people are fascinated and curious to meet their ex-god in the flesh. Said a Nagasaki official: "No wonder the people are excited and happy. This is the first time they have really seen the Emperor. Before, we had to bow deeply when he passed. By the time we looked up he was already gone." In the country one old woman walked beside the Emperor for several minutes, staring at him in disbelief because he did not wear a uniform. Explained a Japanese journalist: "Now he is the sebiro no Tenno [Emperor in a sack suit]. Before we knew only the gunpuku no Tenno [Emperor in uniform]."

At Nagasaki's Urakami baseball field, packed with thousands, the Emperor said a few words: "I do not know how to offer sympathy to Nagasaki, which had to suffer the atom bomb. We should work with all our might to make a peaceful Japan which will be the cornerstone of world peace and culture." As the Emperor finished, a man stepped in front of the crowd. "Tenno Heika banzai--Long live His Majesty, the Emperor!" he yelled. "Banzai!" echoed the crowd in a booming roar. "Banzai!" the masses outside took up the cheer. "Banzai!" they cried, shaking their paper flags as the maroon Packard drove past the thin white pillar that notes the center of the atom blast. It looked as if defeat and a confused postwar world were transforming the Emperor of Japan into the Emperor of the Japanese.

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