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Have a good weekend everyone. Here's our Friday night note...... TERROR TRIALS/KSM TO NY-Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self proclaimed “architect†of the 9/11 attacks and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be brought...
Obama bows to emperor, world reels?
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama has bowed to royalty, with a greeting for the Japanese emperor that erases any doubts about what the president's posture was -- remember that bow to the Saudi king that was not really a bow?
And some people are falling over backwards today.
Our colleague, Andrew Malcolm, at Top of the Ticket, muses on the president's meeting with Japanese Emperor Akihito today, and suffice it to say that the article will light a brush fire of commentary stoked by the hot winds of the Drudge Report's headline.
See the Ticket's report there or read it here:
(And stick around for some comments below.)
The photo above is by Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty, Reuters All of this brought to mind our snapshots from our trip to Japan with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, and his meeting with the emperor, in February 2007. Our own photos suffer from a certain lack of light in the ceremonial arrival room at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and distance from subjects, but the closest we recall Cheney coming to a bow was that certain lean of his. These photos by Mark Silva:
by Andrew Malcolm
Top of the Ticket, Los Angeles Times
How low will the new American president go for the world's royalty?
This photo will get Democrat President Obama a lot of approving nods in Japan this weekend, especially among the older generation of Japanese who still pay attention to the royal family living in its downtown castle. Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference to a superior.
To some in the United States, however, an upright handshake might have looked better. Remember Michelle Obama casually patting Britain's Queen Elizabeth on the back during their Buckingham Palace visit? America's royalty tends to make movies and get bad reviews and lots of money as a sign of respect.
Obama could receive some frowns back home as he did for his not-quite-this-low-or-maybe-about-the-same-bow to the Saudi king not so long ago. (See photo here)
Akihito, who turns 76 next month, is the eldest son and fifth child of Emperor Showa, the name given to an emperor and his reign after his death.
Emperor Showa is better known abroad by the life name of Hirohito. He became emperor in 1925 and died in 1989, the longest historically-known rule of the nation's 125 emperors.
Hirohito presided over his nation's growth from an undeveloped agrarian economy into the expansionist military power and ally of Nazi Germany of the 1930's.
And, later, Japan became a global economic giant. Hirohito, along with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who authorized the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, were much reviled abroad during World War II.
Historically, debate has simmered over how much of a political puppet Hirohito was to the country's military before and during the war.
Even after Democrat President Harry Truman ordered the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, there were strong forces within Japan that wanted to continue to fight the Americans in the spirit of kamikaze suicide pilots.
But Akihito's father went on national radio, the first time his subjects had ever heard Hirohito's voice, and without using the inflammatory word "surrender," pronounced that the country must "accept the unacceptable." It did.
As the conquering Allied general and then presiding officer of the U.S. occupation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, decided to allow Japan to keep its emperor as a ceremonial unifying institution within a nascent democracy.
Tojo, on the other hand, was hanged.
MacArthur treated Emperor Hirohito respectfully but, as his body language in this black and white postwar photo demonstrates, was not particularly deferential.
(But then MacArthur was not known as a particularly deferential person, as Truman discovered just before firing him later. But that's another war.)
Akihito was born during Japan's conquering of China and was evacuated during the devastating American fire-bombing of Tokyo, which was built largely of wood in those days.
The future emperor learned English during the U.S. occupation, but, inexplicably, his father ordered that his oldest boy not receive an Army commission as previous imperial heirs always had.
Akihito assumed the throne on Jan. 7, 1989. Within weeks he began a series of formal expressions of remorse to Asian countries for Japan's actions during his father's reign. In 2003, he underwent surgery for prostate surgery.
In 1959, Akihito married Michiko Shoda, the first commoner allowed to enter the Japanese royal family. That was two years before the birth of Akihito's future presidential guest, Barack Obama.
President Obama Brings Personal Ties To Asia Tour
President Obama is vowing to strengthen U.S. ties to Asia in an effort to address global challenges such as climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. Speaking in Tokyo Saturday, Obama also tried to sell renewed relations with Asia as a key to job growth here at home.
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