Addressing the opening session of the eighty-eighth Imperial Diet on September 4, Higashikuni lavished praise on the emperor for having paved the way “for the establishment of an eternal peace in order to save the people from hardships.” “We deeply regret,” the prime minister exclaimed, “to have caused Him so much anxiety.”21 An alien from another planet listening to these speeches might easily have concluded that Emperor Hirohito had ascended the throne in August 1945, just in time to end a terrible war, and that no one’s feelings other than his mattered.
