Emperor Akihito has had a good run. As the first Japanese emperor to ascend the throne as a “symbol of the state” rather than as a divine priest-king, he has done much — along with his wife, Empress Michiko, the first commoner to marry into the imperial family — to humanise a secretive, remote and starchy institution.

Outside Japan, it is hard to imagine how unusual it was for the emperor and empress to visit scenes of natural disaster, such as the Kobe earthquake in 1995, and kneel on the floor to talk to the victims like fellow human beings. Emperor Hirohito, Akihito’s father, tried to do something like this after the war, when the American occupiers insisted on it, but his behaviour was so stilted and the encounters with his subjects so awkward that the experiment was swiftly abandoned.

Today’s emperor has also done his bit to heal the wounds of war with other Asian nations. He has told his subjects on several occasions to reflect on their country’s aggression in Asia and to learn from it. In China in 1992 he expressed “deep sorrow” about the hardships inflicted on the Chinese by Japan. This is a lot more than most Japanese prime ministers have managed.