The widow of a former top aide to Emperor Hirohito said in a newspaper interview she decided to make public her husband's memorandum to tell the public that the Emperor was a talkative and humorous man.

Tomoko Tomita, the 81-year-old widow of former Imperial Household Agency Grand Steward Tomohiko Tomita, said in an article printed Friday by the Sankei Shimbun she was surprised by the strong reaction to the release of her husband's memorandum, which was published July 20 by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

She said her husband's memorandums and diaries were found in his bedroom in Tokyo after he died in November 2003 at age 83.

"They were very interesting . . . as if Tomita were alive," she said of the papers. She said her husband left no instructions on what to do with the papers after he died.

Despite the widely held view that Hirohito, known posthumously as Emperor Showa, did not say a lot, she said he "in fact loved to talk" and was a "humorous" man.

Asked about his criticism of Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka and other Class-A war criminals from World War II enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine, as reportedly cited in her husband's memorandum, she said the Emperor repeatedly made such remarks to her husband before he died.

Tomita recorded conversations with the Emperor in diaries dating from 1975 through 1986 and in memorandums from 1986 to 1997, informed sources said. Tomita served as Imperial Household Agency grand steward for 10 years from 1978.

The entry about Yasukuni Shrine, dated April 28, 1988, reportedly chronicled the Emperor's dismay at its decision in the late 1970s to include Class-A war criminals from World War II in the list of people honored there.

The memorandum confirmed speculation by some historians that the reason he refrained from visiting the shrine was because of its decision to honor the war criminals.