Japanese Emperor Tenno and Yukio Mishima’s Perspective: Recovering Japanese Sense of Unity Again

Abstract

The Japanese royal family is the oldest dynasty in the modern world and the present emperor Naruhito (becoming the 126th emperor of Japan in 2019) is the only emperor in the world today. The royal family lives in the imperial palace in Tokyo and the Japanese emperor is widely supported by Japanese people. It is said that the unbroken line of the royal family from the great Sun Goddess Amaterasu continues to the present emperor from a thousand years ago. However, this idea comes from mythology. In fact, it is not clear when the real first emperor was born in Japan. In historical research, the 13th emperor Nintoku (Circa A.D. 313–399) has been believed to have existed in reality. In actual fact, it could be more reasonably argued that the existence of the first emperor Jinmu (Circa B.C. 711–585), who is regarded a grandson of a god and other mythological gods is more likely than not to be a fictional character. Japanese mythology is not the same as actual history, but it is true that the origin of Japanese royal family is considered to come in large part from such mythology.