An Emperor Under a Constitution That Separates State and Religion

The throne Akihito came to in 1989 had been redefined twice within living memory. The 1947 constitution makes the emperor the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, with no powers of government, and its twentieth article forbids the state from engaging in religious activity or granting privileges to any religious organisation. His father had renounced the claim to divine descent in a statement issued at the beginning of 1946, and the occupation directive of the previous year had already separated Shinto shrines from state support.

The rites of the throne are Shinto rites, which puts them in direct tension with that settlement, and the accession made the tension concrete. The Daijosai, the great thanksgiving festival performed once in a reign, in which the new emperor makes an offering of the first rice and shares it, was carried out in 1990 and funded from the imperial household private allowance rather than from public money, precisely so that it could be characterised as a private religious act of the family rather than an act of the state. Lawsuits argued that public involvement in the associated ceremonies breached the constitution anyway. The atlas records the arrangement as an unresolved accommodation rather than a settled position, because that is what it is.