Japan "With Grief, We Bid You Farewell"

Japan, once the world's enemy, now its envy. A ruler once a god, in fact a slight, shy man fond of jellyfish but devoted to imperial duty. The interment of Emperor Showa, called Hirohito in his lifetime, bringing together admirers of Japan's modern ascent with the rites of a hallowed but controversial past. The burial too of an era that will lay to rest a history of barbaric militarism and shattering defeat, freeing Japan to move into a new age of unapologetic economic supremacy. All in all, it was as haunting and impressive a funeral as the century is likely to see.

A steady, cold drizzle fell on the austere black hearse as it moved slowly off the grounds of the Imperial Palace and onto the streets of Tokyo. Thousands of Japanese watched its silent passage, some bowing, some weeping. At Shinjuku Gyoen, an imperial garden, the black-painted palanquin was hoisted by 51 members of the Imperial Guard. Above, silk curtains draped the coffin made of Japanese cypress. Within rested the body of Hirohito, the reluctant monarch who on Jan. 7, at 87, succumbed to cancer after occupying the Japanese throne for 62 years.

Somber drums banged, and flutes trilled a song of sadness. Shinto priests, accompanied by veiled artifacts too sacred to be seen, marched in solemn cadence. As 10,000 invited guests looked on, Emperor Akihito bowed. Facing the coffin of the man who was once revered by his people as a living divinity, Akihito intoned, "Filled with profound grief, we bid you farewell."