In the years immediately after World War II, at the Peers’ School in Tokyo, a Quaker teacher named Elizabeth Vining liked to give English names to her
In the years immediately after World War II, at the Peers’ School in Tokyo, a Quaker teacher named Elizabeth Vining liked to give English names to her students, all children of the Japanese nobility.
“I was Eric,” recalls Masao Oda, one of Vining’s former pupils.
His roommate and classmate, a boy named Akihito, was given the name Jimmy. But Akihito pushed back.
“So he stood up and rejected this name given by Mrs. Vining, ‘Jimmy,'” Oda recalls. “‘I’m not a Jimmy, I’m a crown prince,’ he said.”
Akihito ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989, succeeding his father, Emperor Hirohito. On Tuesday, he is abdicating and stepping down, handing over the throne to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, and ending the postwar period formally known as Hesei, “achieving peace.”
“A hatred of war”
Emperor Akihito was born in 1933, two years after Japan invaded Manchuria in northern China, in a prelude to its role in World War II. Japanese troops fought in the name of Emperor Hirohito. Crown Prince Akihito was expected to grow to become the supreme commander of the nation’s military.
“He was educated and trained to be strong and tough,” recalls Mototsugu Akashi, a childhood classmate of Akihito. “My impression of Akihito, at that time, was that he was more selfish than kind.”
Japan’s defeat in World War II transformed young Akihito into a pacifist, Akashi says.
“That time produced in him strong feelings against war and its chaos. You could call it a hatred of war,” he says.
Akashi believes that the young Akihito spoke about the war with his father, the emperor.
On Jan. 1,1946, Emperor Hirohito declared he was a mortal, not a divine being. The following year, Japan’s U. S.-drafted postwar constitution took away sovereignty from the emperor and gave it to the Japanese people, keeping the monarch as a figurehead without political power.
