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    Emperor Akihito, Japan's 'Surprising Pacifist,' Steps Down After 30 Years

    Japan's defeat in World War II "produced in him strong feelings against war and its chaos," says a childhood friend. Akihito has expressed deep remorse at home and abroad for Japan's wartime actions.
    by Anthony Kuhn Apr 30, 2019 4 minutes
    Japan's Emperor Akihito, with Empress Michiko, waves to well-wishers in the central Japanese prefecture of Mie on April 18. Emperor Akihito takes part in a series of rituals ahead of his abdication.

    In the years immediately after World War II, at the Peers' School in Tokyo, a Quaker teacher named Elizabeth Vining liked to give English names to her students, all children of the Japanese nobility.

    "I was Eric," recalls Masao Oda, one of Vining's former pupils.

    His roommate and classmate, a boy named Akihito, was given the name Jimmy. But Akihito pushed back.

    "So he stood up and rejected this name given by Mrs. Vining, 'Jimmy,'" Oda recalls. "'I'm not a Jimmy, I'm a crown prince,' he said."

    Akihito ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989, succeeding his father, Emperor Hirohito. On

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