However, Naruhito will not become emperor of Japan until the stroke of midnight ... which has a sensitive position given the role his father Hirohito played in the country's militaristic past.

Even the Emperor, who had always wished to ... he was planning to deliver on the thirty-first, that Hirohito could retain his throne if Japan surrendered. Harry Truman, who had been in the ...

The Japanese writer and nationalist, a darling of the US far right, was haunted by the aesthetics of self-destruction.

Emperor Hirohito's scratchy penmanship will be on show for the first time with a collection of rare handwritten “waka” poems he composed in his waning years. The special exhibition at the ...

Any discussion of expanding the number of successors to the Chrysanthemum Throne, including proposals to open the way for a woman to become emperor, is off the table for now. A government panel ...

The life and death of acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima is a cautionary reminder of the complex, sometimes dangerous ...

The emperor does not have political power but has symbolic significance for Japan. Historically, World War II was fought in the name of Naruhito’s grandfather Hirohito. Over the decades since Japan’s ...

“Ohayou!” The cheerful morning greeting echoes around the grounds of Tokyo’s historic Nezu Shrine as bright-eyed pensioners ...

Before World War II officially began, Japan invaded China's Manchuria region (now called Guandong) in order to expand its ...