Recently on the news, it was given out that a Japanese princess is pregnant again. If the embryo achieves the neonate state and beyond, he may be a future emperor. This got some of us to thinking why is the ruler of Japan called an emperor? One person said an emperor is someone who rules over various ethnic groups and/or territories outside of just one homogeneous land like a king (or queen, such as Queen Elizabeth of England). This explains all three emperors Napoleon and the Roman emperors, etc. However, the Japanese emperor has just ruled over Japan (except for a brief period in WWII that doesn’t count). Therefore, why he called emperor? (As a related question, for that matter, why was the emperor of China called an emperor, since all he ruled was mainly China (except for a period when China conquered Tibet and ruined all the monasteries in the communist takeover?)
It is very confusing, as in the 17th-century and around that time Sweden’s king might as well have been called emperor, since Sweden had hold of Latvia, Livonia, and Swedish Pomerania and parts of Germany, but Charles X,XI, and XII, for instance, never declared that they were emperors! And Hitler was just called a fuhrer, whatever that means, instead of Emperor of Europe. I guess nothing bears close examination, does it?
Interesting quotation: “I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO RULE THE WORLD!!!” Larry Tate on an episode of BEWITCHED.
Well, I can’t give you a reason the Emperor of Japan has that title, but the Emperor of China had the title “Emperor” because he ruled over a number of Chinese kingdoms and duchies. Fuhrer is a German word that means “leader”. Hitler’s official title was “Reichskanselor”, “Imperial Chancellor”…even though German got rid of its monarchy in 1919, the head of government still kept the title.
We had a thread on this earlier; why emperor for Japan? Basically, the answer seems to be that the Japanese title tenno derives from the Chinese t’ien-huang, which is translated into English as “heavenly emperor”. There’s another Chinese word, wang, which is normally translated as “king”. So, the Japanese monarch is called an emperor because they borrowed a more grandiose title from the Chinese, probably just in order to seem important and not be seen as being inferior to the Chinese. The Chinese monarchs were called emperors because China is a large, diverse country which has often been divided into multiple kingdoms, so calling it an “empire” instead just a single country or “kingdom” isn’t too much of a stretch.
In European terms, the title “emperor” has a lot of cultural and political baggage associated with it, including a notion of universal rulership dating back to Rome. If the Swedish kings had started calling themselves “emperors” it might have implied they were seeking general dominion over central europe. In fact, I believe they did intervene in the Germanies during the Thirty Years War; maybe they just never felt quite politically strong enough to go for imperial status.
You make the mistake of thinking that the countries we now know as China and Japan were always unified states. Both countries were formerly composed of several different states and kingdoms, with various warlords and noble families vying for power. The term “emperor” suggests that the leader in question was not the ruler of one of these smaller states, but was someone who ruled over a unified collection of several such states and had some sort of centralized power. This was not always literally true of every emperor, but that’s the general idea.
It’s the title, not the territory. The Byzantine Emperor in the last years of the Empire held less territory than some city mayors. The Japanese Emperor is such because his predecessors were so titled, and keeping it going maintains the dignity of the office and the country he represents.
I don’t know what his status is officially/constitutionally in modern Japan. Could the office be resigned, abolished by act of the Diet (parilment), or could he wake up one morning and decide he wants to abolish the rest of the government and rule autocratically? Could there be a ruling Empress? If he got Alzheimer’s or another incapacity, could there be a regency?
Unlike the U.K., modern Japan has a written constitution, which makes it pretty clear that the Emperor has no real power (“The advice and approval of the Cabinet shall be required for all acts of the Emperor in matters of state, and the Cabinet shall be responsible therefor”). I don’t see how they could stop an Emperor from resigning (or abdicating) if he really wanted to, at which point someone else would succeed to the office. It would appear that abolishing the monarchy would require a constitutional amendment; amendments to the Constitution are provided for in Article 96. The Emperor certainly has no constitutional power to abolish the government and rule by decree. I don’t know about Empresses; it would appear that that would be up to the Diet (“The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House law passed by the Diet”). There can be regencies (see Article 5).