He used the phrase “symbol of the state” six times. It was a pointed reference to the dark time in Japan’s history where the emperor was not a symbol but the divine ruler of Imperial Japan. Under the pre-war constitution Japan waged wars of conquest in China, Korea and Southeast Asia, eventually fighting, and losing, the Second World War as a country devastated by the ferocious firebombings of Tokyo and other cities, and the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Prime Minister Abe wants to revive that pre-war constitution, and Abe, who understood the emperor’s message perfectly well, did not like it.
Abe read a short prepared speech to the press after the video was aired. He seemed irritated as he noted that the emperor had addressed “the people”—as if this direct appeal to the masses was the equivalent of going over his head.
