This well-researched and scholarly study by Ben-Ami Shillony of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will interest not only students of Japanese history but also all those concerned for the future of the Imperial institution in Japan. The book, which evolved out of earlier research first published in Japanese under the title of "Haha Naru Tenno," covers the political, cultural and religious background to the "emperor" system in Japan from mythological times down to the present day. I have put the term "emperor" in quotes as whatever else they were, Japanese emperors were never equivalent to emperors in China or Russia. Nor were they ever emperors in the Roman sense of the term "imperator" or generalissimo.
Shillony emphasizes that "The political weakness of the Japanese emperors was balanced by the extraordinary stability of their dynasty. The effete emperors occupied an unchallenged throne. An emperor could be deposed, exiled or even murdered, but his institution could never be abolished and his family could not be replaced."
He concludes that the "strange survival" of the dynasty was due to the fact that Japanese emperors combined sanctity with passivity to such an extent that they were "too subservient to rule, but too sacred to be deposed." These conclusions are based on his study of how the emperors behaved over the centuries.
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