Emperor Jimmu - Commemorating Jimmu's Reign

Commemorating Jimmu's Reign

New Year's Day in the Japanese lunisolar calendar was traditionally celebrated as the regnal day of Emperor Jimmu. In 1872, the Meiji government proclaimed 11 February 660 BC, in the Gregorian calendar the foundation day of Japan, which was then commemorated as the holiday Kigensetsu ("Era Day") until 1948. Suspended after World War II, the celebration was reinstated in 1966 as the national holiday Kenkoku Kinen no hi ("National Foundation Day").

For the Kigensetsu celebration of 1940, according to the calculation the 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu, the government constructed on the legendary site of Emperor Jimmu's palace, near Miyazaki, the Hakkō Tower. The building was named after the ancient phrase of Hakkō ichiu (literally "eight cords, one roof"), which had been attributed to Emperor Jimmu and, since 1928, has been espoused by the Imperial government as an expression of Japanese expansionism, as it envisioned to the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Emperor's "sacred rule", a goal that was considered imperative to all Japanese subjects, as Jimmu, finding five races in Japan, had made them all as "brothers of one family." The 1940 celebrations also included a concert at the Tokyo Kabukiza for which new works were commissioned from composers in France, Hungary, England (Benjamin Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem, ultimately rejected), and Germany (Richard Strauss, Japanische Festmusik).

This propaganda narrative was officially abandoned at the end of Pacific War when the Japanese government accepted the 1945 Potsdam Declaration. Because of the association with Hakkō ichiu, the Kigensetsu celebration of 1940 is today considered controversial.