On Thursday evening, Japan's Emperor Naruhito will dress in pure white robe...
TOKYO - On Thursday evening, Japan’s Emperor Naruhito will dress in pure white robes and be ushered into a dark wooden hall for his last major enthronement rite: spending the night with a goddess.
Scholars and the government say it consists of a feast, rather than, as has been persistently rumoured, conjugal relations with the goddess. In a dimly-lit room he kneels by piled straw mats draped in white, said to be a resting place for the goddess, as two shrine maidens bring in offerings of food, from rice to abalone, for Naruhito to use in filling 32 plates made from oak leaves.
“Kingmaking is a sacred business, it’s transforming a man or a woman into something other than a man or a woman,” he said, pointing to mystical elements in Britain’s coronation functions. But Koichi Shin, the head of a group of 300 people suing the government to halt the ritual, and demand damages of 10,000 yen each for “pain and suffering”, says that would still not be satisfactory, as the private funds are still tax money.
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