Emperor

• Other Titles: 内裏 (dairi), 天子 (tenshi), 御門 (mikado)
• Japanese: 天皇 (tennô)

The hereditary monarch of Japan is commonly referred to in English as the "emperor." In addition to his secular political role, the tennô is also considered the highest Shinto priest in Japan.

Terminology

In English

In present-day English, the "emperor of Japan" refers to the tennô 天皇, the monarch who has reigned over (but not necessarily ruled) Japan for virtually all of recorded history. However, it only became standard in English sometime after Perry's visit in 1853.

The 16th-century Jesuits more commonly used terms such as "nobleman," "king," or "prince," to refer to the tennô, but hardly ever the term "emperor," if at all. Borrowing or imitating Japanese terms, they also often used terms such as mikado and dairi 内裏, the latter literally referring to the imperial palace, in much the same way we might today say "Washington" or "the White House" to mean the President of the United States. (The "emperor" doll in the Doll Festival set is still called the dairi today.)

The Jesuits also called the daimyô "kings," "dukes," or "princes," which was hardly a misuse of the European term, as the daimyô, especially in Kyushu where the Jesuits were first active, were independent rulers who really ruled their territory and fought each other. The tennô was described by St. Francis Xavier as the hereditary ruler of the whole country, but one who was no longer obeyed.

Will Adams, an Englishman who arrived in Japan in 1600, referred to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who became the first Tokugawa shogun in 1603, as "king" in a 1611 letter to his wife, and as "emperor" in a pamphlet of the same date. "Emperor" in Europe referred to someone who ruled over kings, so in the latter he was clearly indicating that Ieyasu ruled over all the various "kings" (i.e. the daimyô) who Europeans knew existed in Japan. The Englishmen who arrived in Japan with the East India Company in 1613 also referred to the then-retired shogun Ieyasu and the shogun Hidetada as "emperor," both in public and private.

Richard Cocks mentioned the "dairi" in 1616, and Engelbert Kaempfer, who came to the Dutch settlement in 1690, referred to the tennô as the "Ecclesiastical Hereditary Emperor," though more frequently his use of the term "emperor" (as in "Embassy to the Emperor's court") referred to the shogun.

One sometimes comes across statements to the effect that during the Edo period the secretive Japanese told the Dutch that the shogun was the emperor, hiding the existence of the real emperor, but such statements are misconceptions deriving from a lack of familiarity with the history of early Japanese-European contact. It is clear that the Europeans, though they knew of the tennô, chose "emperor" as the word most suitable to their minds to describe the shogun.

References

• Michael Cooper, They Came to Japan, University of California Press, 1965.
• John Whitney Hall (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press, 1991.