"Thy Prayer is Heard"
I am afraid that there is some misunderstanding among Americans and Europeans on Shintoism, while tens of millions of Japanese visit and worship at shrines on the New Year’s Day, the holy three days, and the holy first week of the year.
It is true that some emperors of ancient days are enshrined in many Shintoism shrines, but they are not the only gods for the Shinto religion.
There are almost 110,000 shinto shrines all over Japan. Most of them enshrine gods or heroes of Japanese mythology, since the era of gods preceded the era of emperors in Japan.
SECTION I: IMPERIAL FAMILY OF JAPAN
I am afraid that there is some misunderstanding among Americans and Europeans on the Imperial Family of Japan.
Though I don’t claim that the Princess Diana case is symbolic of European royal families, it is impossible in Japan.
In this context, non-Christian Japanese Imperial Family is more Christian than European Royal families, though the former has their own religion but the latter are virtually subject to the Vatican, directly, indirectly, or remotely, thus being simply secular.
In other word, the Japanese Imperial Family is holy; but European royal families are not essentially.
It is said that there are four or five major categories of Shintoism. The Imperial Family represents one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
Yet, it is true once, namely 1300 years ago or so, the Imperial Family adopted Buddhism as the de-facto national religion. The prominent Todaiji Great Temple was built in the early 8th century by Emperor Shomu so as to house the great statue of Buddha.
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According to records kept by Tōdai-ji, more than 2,600,000 people in total helped construct the Great Buddha and its Hall. The 16 m (52 ft) high statue was built through eight castings over three years, the head and neck being cast together as a separate element…. and the Buddha was finally completed in 751. A year later, in 752, the eye-opening ceremony was held with an attendance of 10,000 people to celebrate the completion of the Buddha. The Indian priest Bodhisena performed the eye-opening for Emperor Shōmu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Ddai-ji
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So, the Imperial Family of Japan established its authority through religion rather than military or political power in the long Japanese history.
However, when descendants of samurais put the emperor at the head of the state in the political term in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Japan had to face severe challenges in the history, resulting in the collapse of the Empire of Japan in 1945.
Now, Japan does neither call itself an empire or a kingdom, nor style its state a republic. It calls itself simply Japan with the Emperor as the symbol of the nation.
SECTION II: CROWN PRINCESS OF JAPAN
The Crown Prince of Japan is called His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Naruhito, the eldest son of His Majesty The Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.
But when searching articles with the keyword "Naruhito-shinnou (Prince Naruhito)" using the Japanese Yahoo search engine, the number of retrieved sites or pages would be 98,100. Yet with the keyword "Masako-hi (Princess Masako)," the number would be 728,000.
(In comparison, the keyword "Obama" in Japanese would return 36,200,000 pages in the Japanese Internet domain.
Yet, the keyword "Ten-nou [emperor]" would return 49,100,000 pages.)
As there are no noble classes in Japan, Crown Princess Masako, an ex-elite bureaucrat of the Foreign Ministry, is of course from the no-privileged class, though her father has been an elite diplomat and intellectual person.
As she seems to have been used to live and work in environments associated with the European/American Civilization, namely the Christian Civilization, I think it would not have been easy for her to perform shintoism in a manner that satisfies tradition-loving people in the highest society of Japan.
Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako have only one child: Aiko, Princess Toshi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako,_Crown_Princess_of_Japan
SECTION III: Kiko, Princess Akishino
The Crown Prince of Japan has a younger brother: His Imperial Highness Prince Akishino, the second son of His Majesty The Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.
Prince Akishino married a daughter of a professor of a university when she was just a student of a graduate school.
Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko have two daughters and one son.
It is expected, by law, that their son, Prince Hisahito of Akishino, to be Emperor of Japan someday.
In older days, namely 1400 years ago or so, there were female emperors who held real power in the imperial court. In that case, each of those female emperors was also a mother of an emperor or an ex-empress. They tried to secure the Chrysanthemum Throne for their very young sons or grandsons.
Yet it would be a difficult situation for any Japanese lady to be a mother of a future emperor just like the case of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Michiko who is also not from a noble class, since noble classes were abolished in Japan after the Second World War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Akishino
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That is respectfully all for today.
Just 1600 years ago, a Chinese authentic history book reported that a king of Japan sent an envoy to the imperial court of China to receive a gold seal in A.D. 57, which is the first for Japan with anybody to represent it regardless of the effective area of his dominion to be recorded in history, matching the establishment of the Gospels for Ever-Holy Jesus Christ.
Nonetheless, the king is yet to be identified by Japanese scholars and professors to date, though the gold seal (believed to be genuine) was discovered 200 years ago in a small island annexed to Kyusyu, one of four main islands of Japan situated near the Korean Peninsula.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoku
(Of course, God only knows whether or not one of your descendants will be a king or a queen if not an emperor somewhere, say, in Jerusalem.
http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/images/sc4_22_1.mid
Source: http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/C4_2.htm)
Luk 1:7 And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.
Luk 1:8 And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course,
Luk 1:9 According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
Luk 1:10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.
Luk 1:11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
Luk 1:12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
Luk 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.