Japan’s emperor hints at wish to abdicate in address to nation

Emperor Akihito of Japan has signalled to his country's citizens that he wants to step down as head of the world's oldest hereditary monarchy.

The 82-year-old said he increasingly feels the burdens of his age. “I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties,” he said in a taped message broadcast to the nation on Monday afternoon.

Increasingly frail and stooped, Akihito has survived pneumonia, prostate cancer and heart surgery. Without ever mentioning the word “abdication”, he said he had started to “reflect” on his official role in the days ahead.

Opinion polls show the vast majority of ordinary Japanese sympathise with the emperor’s desire to retire, but such a step would need changes to the law.

The emperor has already scaled back his official duties, a necessity that caused him “stress and anxiety”, said NHK, the nation’s quasi-official broadcaster, in the timorous language reserved for members of the Imperial family.

Abdication is rare in Japan and most expected the nation’s 125th emperor to stay on until he died. Akihito is the inheritor of Japan’s imperial line, supposedly dating back 2,600 years ago to Amaterasu, mythical goddess of the sun.

The emperor said he worried about the impact of his declining health on society, presumably a reference to the drawn-out death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, a quarter of a century ago.

Japan’s controversial wartime monarch, Hirohito collapsed from intestinal cancer in late 1988, putting the country into a state of suspended grief until he died three months later. The country ground to a halt during his state funeral in February 1989.

Hirohito’s reign coincided with the short, violent cycle of Japan’s modern transformation, from imperialist empire to economic powerhouse. By contrast, Akihito has overseen an era of gentle decline, and unease at Japan’s diminished capacities.

Embraced the job

Having watched his father yanked from his perch as living god by the victorious Americans after the second World War, Akihito has embraced the job of constitutional monarch.

The symbolic moments of this downsized role were caught on camera when he kneeled to comfort homeless victims of the natural disasters that blighted his reign. The sight of the sweating, jacketless monarch at eye level with his subjects surprised older Japanese.

For several years, Akihito has seemed at odds with the political drift of the nation. Liberal and Quaker-educated, he has repeatedly intervened in Japan’s tortured debate on its history, subtly rebuking the right-wing revisionists who ostensibly revere him.

Last year during a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender, he expressed "deep remorse" for the war in a message that was contrasted to the more ambiguous statement by Shinzo Abe, the prime minister.

Akihito’s broadcast comes a few weeks after a sweeping electoral victory by Mr Abe, who has pledged to revise the pacifist constitution. China, which overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy during his era, is rattling sabres on Japan’s borders.

Conservatives around Mr Abe want Japan to take a more active military role and to restore some of the powers taken away from the emperor after the war.

Among the issues that must be navigated by the emperor’s son and presumed successor, Prince Naruhito, is how to steer a course through the forces that swirl around the 2,600-year-old monarchy, and the people who would use it for their own ends.