Hirohito. Born on 29 April 1901, Hirohito is the 124th sovereign of Japan since the mythological founding emperor of Japan, Jimmu, who is alleged to have reigned from 660 to 585 BCE. Having acceded to the "sun throne" in 1926, Hirohito (the Showa emperor, or Showa Tenno) has had the longest reign of any Japanese emperor whose birth and reign dates have been historically verified (Those from the sixth century CE onward).

The eldest of four sons born to Taisho Tenno (1879-1926, r. 1912-1926), Hirohito was reared and educated in a manner befitting both a Japanese sovereign and a modern world-monarch. Formal education at the Peers School and private tutoring included Japanese and Chinese history as well as world history and French language, and the Chinese classics and poetry as well as economics, natural history, and military affairs. He was especially interested in biology, and later became an authority on marine organisms and certain forms of plant life, publishing books on both subjects. Those entrusted with his overall education were for the most part prominent naval and army officers, such as Admiral Togo Heihachiro (1847-1934). Although instilled with virtues appropriate to his constitutional position as commander in chief of the imperial armed forces in pre-World War II Japan, Hirohito was not a military person either by temperament or by physical bearing.

Hirohito was installed as crown prince in 1912, and his engagement to Princess Nagako, daughter of Imperial Prince Kuni Kunihiko, was made public in 1919. Although a controversy arose over alleged color blindness on Princess Nagako's maternal side, the marriage took place in 1924. The marriage signaled the end of the ancient system of court ladies and the establishment of monogamy in the palace.

In 1921, after completion of his formal education, Hirohito toured Britain and Western Europe, the first crown prince in Japan's history to go abroad. When he returned that year he was made regent for his father, who had suffered ill health almost from birth; Taisho Tenno died on 25 December 1926.

Hirohito's reign was designated Showa, "enlightened harmony." The first half of his rule was far from harmonious, however, both domestically and internationally. His enthronement in November 1928 took place in the midst of the Zhang Zuolin affair, which marked the point of no return for Japanese militarism in China. Assassinations, culminating in the 26 February 1936 coup attempt, which paralyzed Tokyo for over four days, ended the promising start of party government made in the late 1910s. War with China in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941 led to Japan's defeat in 1945 and to the unprecedented occupation of Japan by foreign troops from 1945 to 1952.

During this tumultuous period Hirohito remained a moderate, insisting that the precepts of constitutional government set down by his grandfather, Mutsuhito, the Meiji emperor, be followed. Hirohito's opposition to the militarist coup of 26 February 1936 was instrumental in its suppression. In August 1945 he broke the deadlock among his ministers and accepted the Potsdam Declaration, thereby surrendering Japan to occupation by Allied forces. His radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender to his subjects paved the way for their acceptance of the Occupation.

During the Occupation, Japan's constitution of 1889 underwent a drastic revision under which the emperor lost all political power. Sovereignty was vested in the people and the emperor was made "symbol of the State and of the unity of the people." Apparently with the endorsement of Hirohito, some members of the imperial family, and the palace bureaucracy in general, a massive public effort was made to "democratize" and popularize the emperor and imperial institution. Touring his war-torn country in a worn and baggy Western suit, Hirohito was no longer seen as the sacrosanct glory of Japan but as an all-too-human monarch symbolizing defeat and failure. Since then, the government, palace bureaucracy, and mass media have portrayed Hirohito and his family as somewhat idealized human beings; they are presented to the public as warm, close, "modern," and devoted to their people. Japan's efforts at a new and peaceful internationalism were symbolized by Hirohito's visit to Western Europe in 1971 and his visit to the United States in 1975; he is the first reigning emperor of Japan to have traveled abroad.

Hirohito has reigned over possibly the most momentous period in Japan's history, witnessing the rise of a potential parliamentary democracy in the 1920s, the bureaucratic fascism and militarism of the 1930s and the Occupation of the 1940s, and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy with the world's second-largest gross national product. A man of frugal habits, scientific interests, and disciplined attention to public duties throughout his reign, he perhaps symbolizes more than any other person or institution the trauma of Japan's emergence as a modern democratic state.