The institution of Emperor is closely tied-up with rightwing Japanese nationalism, whatever the imperial flavour-du-jour is. I fear and dislike all rightwing nationalism. But an "emperor" is a byword for invading and dominating your geographical neighbours. An emperor that is also a god seems like a particularly bad idea.
English isn't the universal language, its semantics aren't enough to describe all of humanity's reality.
The Old French connection is interesting - thanks. I guess most English words derived from Latin arrived via Old French. But this doesn't shed any light on why the Japanese Emperor is called an emperor in English. He's called an emperor because he rules an empire.
As I understand it, the emperor of Japan ruled over a number of subordinate, regional rulers, right up until the late 19th C. I understand "emperor" to mean a person who rules over kings, which is what the Emperor of Japan did. Why do I need to get involved with Japanese semantics, when the word we are discussing is an English word, being used correctly to refer to a ruler over kings?
So if we're speaking of a ruler over kings, how's that different from the Emperor Napoleon, or the Empress of India?
Ruling over kings implies dominating the armies of those kings (a king with no army is known as an "exile"). You can't maintain an empire without at least threatening martial force. Nearly all emperors have been fighting men - either to establish the empire, or to maintain it. Emperors with no army get deposed, or the empire disintegrates.
"The emperor of Japan ruled over a number of subordinate" is technically correct but it's mere matter of formality, or it could be said that formality had been their point of existence for along time. They've been out of the game for long time, not even around invention of gunpowder, but around the emergence of curved Japanese swords.
The only reason the Emperor of Japan is called an Emperor in Western translations is probably because within Japanese historiography it's considered the highest possible title for a head of state of any kind and in European precedence tradition the equivalent is Emperor, with the exception of the King of France [1].
All that to say that there's no need to call back to the military history of the term to explain its significance in the context of Japan.
[1]: the Medieval Empire, that is what is commonly referred to as the HRE, being an outgrowth of the Frankish realm, there's been a tacit understanding that the King and the Emperor were of equal standing and wouldn't dispute each other's claims. Hence the notion that the King [of France] is Emperor in his Kingdom, which is of great importance in the conceptual history of sovereignty. Note that the King of France in the Age of Discovery had an Empire, but never claimed an imperial title as it was a core ideological principle that no title could possibly be above King of France. You can see some of that in the Japanese 天皇.
Sure, the HRE name is three lies for the price of one, but its at least specifically understood in its referent; “the Medieval Empire” is...not. Byzantium, most notably, being a thing.
Furthermore including the Eastern Roman Empire as part of European Medieval history is dubious, or at least novel (and I'd wager the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Cold war and the EU have something to do with that shift in perspective).
The European title precedence tradition I'm referring to, and from which the translation of 天皇 as Emperor is affiliated to, was solidified in the context of Late Medieval/Renaissance diplomacy [1], in which the Eastern Roman Empire was neither considered as part of the Western world (it was quite literally the East), not relevant as it had become a rump state.
[1]: If you're so inclined, read about the councils of Constance and Basel-Florence-Ferrara. They involved a lot of international politics, petty quarrels on precedence and as a bonus, the almost-but-not-quite end of the Great Schism. My favourite tidbit is the Spanish and Swedish bishops arguing over who among them were the true Goths.
I don’t see anyone shouting that now, and even if they did there wouldn’t be any martial connotations.
And FWIW, it's not particularly hard to find fringe groups in Tokyo that proclaim their devotion to the Emperor from black vans equipped with loudspeakers.
The implications of these terms are spiritual, cosmogonic and social. I don't see what's martial about calling the big guy heavenly king or to wish "ten thousand years", all the more so that the later is a Chinese stock phrase and Japan imported their governance model part and parcel.
If the Australian army went to war at the cries of "Vegemite or death !", would you say Vegemite has martial implications ?
Remember that a condition of retaining the institution of emperor was the public renunciation of the emperor's godhood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity_Declaration
> But an "emperor" is a byword for invading and dominating your geographical neighbours.
This might be reading too much into the English translation; we'd want to ask what the actual Japanese title is and what semantic implications it has in Japanese.
I do not think that custom has gone away. I seem to be at war with my next-door neighbour, over rubbish-disposal; I just don't know which neighbour, what he looks like, or what his name is (but I'm not trying to seize his property by force of arms!)
People go to war with their neighbours over REAL things, like water-rights, and access to minerals and other resources. Those real things are still real. Fortunately, imperial wars don't seem to happen much these days; perhaps because great imperial powers can now transport a heavily-armed army of 200,000 across the world in a few days, squishing your imperial ambitions.
But the motivation is unchanged. Perhaps the Chinese occupation of Tibet is an example?
(Tibet used to be the imperial power, once upon a time - Chinese diplomats in the 14th C used to kow-tow to Tibetan kings)
The Greeks (well, Macedonians, if you prefer) built an empire that lasted 1,000 years, and stretched from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan. All during the lifetime of a warrior who died aged 32 (?). That was around 320BC.
So you have to go quite early in history, to find a culture that precedes "invade everything" imperialism (I doubt that there is any "beginning" to invade-everyone imperialism).
I’ll repeat it: the primary reasons which caused Japan to become “imperialist” are directly tied to Western imperialism. The Japanese emperor was mostly a political symbolic figurehead that united the Japanese islands, not a Roman emperor or British monarch intent on conquering the world.
This is all basic Japanese history.
Wikipedia article on Shogun[1] has a nice quick summary on pre-modern Shogunate system. It’s similar to British constitutional monarchy in a sense: the emperor was to delegate all power to the government and was to remain within instructions and supervisions of the government.
It's sad to see politicians made those 'practical' decisions to protect those criminals. Let alone countless people lost their lives or suffered just because a room of people wanted wars.
The Japanese were extremely anti communist to the point that it would make McCarthy look like a hippie.
~ Johnny Rotten
As a one-time hippie, I'm with Rotten on that. Very few hippes retained their principles. Lots of them had trust-funds. Lots of them are here on HN (sorry chaps; I don't mean to imply that you're all money-grubbing wretches, happy to have swapped your principles for a San Francisco developer's salary!)
So many people who were responsible for the worst atrocities Japan committed in the last two decades in Asia were made leaders of the new "democratised" Japan. Hirohito as the spearhead was only one example. The people who were actuallt prosecuted and sentenced to death for war crimes were all deemed expendable by the Japanese anyway.
This is what haunts Japan until today - Nippon Kaigi, Nippon Foundation (aka Sasakawa Foundation), etc. are all basically think tanks and well-budgeted secret government agencies promoting right-wing nationalist or even borderline fascist ideas in Japan and astroturfing them overseas.
Just read about the Sasakawa Foundation to get an idea.