ABSTRACT
When the Emperor Meiji, the first restored Emperor, lay dying in 1912, thousands of the citizens of Tokyo gathered nightly in front of the Palace and prayed for his recovery. Their prayers were directed to no other god than the divine ruler himself. I should not offer this statement on my own authority; mob emotion seems to me a better explanation than conscious belief in the godhood of a dying old man whose existence had been in no way remarkable, but it is the explanation given by Dr. Genji Kato, Professor of Comparative Religion at Tokyo Imperial University.
