Days ahead of his abdication, the outgoing Japanese monarch on Thursday paid his respects to the Shinto gods, local media reported.<\/p>\n
Emperor Akihito, who is set to step down at the end of this month, visited the Ise Shrine, one of Japan\u2019s holiest sites, in Mie Prefecture, daily Japan Today reported. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter.<\/p>\n
The 85-year-old monarch will be first living head of the Japanese royal family to retire in its 200 year history.<\/p>\n
His eldest son and Crown Prince Naruhito will succeed to the throne on May 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cAkihito in a tuxedo headed into the shrine, with palace officials holding up two imperial treasures \u2013 sword and jewel. The third, a mirror, is kept at the shrine. The treasures were brought from the palace in Tokyo and traveled with the emperor. The regalia, or three treasures, will be handed to Naruhito after his succession,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
Shinto, a religion perhaps as old as Japan itself, is a rich blend of folklore, reverence for all things natural and the Japanese nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emperor Akihito is set to abdicate on April 30 paving way for his son to succeed him Days ahead of his abdication, the outgoing Japanese monarch on Thursday paid his respects to the Shinto gods, local media reported. Emperor Akihito, who is set to step down at the end of this month, visited the Ise …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medyaolusum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}