ABSTRACT
When emperor akihito visited Britain in May 1998, the media reported that before the Second World War the emperors of Japan were believed to be gods, whereas after that they have come to be regarded as human beings. This dichotomy raises several questions: Were the emperors indeed believed to be gods? What happened to their religious role when they changed their status? And has their religiosity been limited to Shinto, or has it also stretched back to Buddhism, or reached out to Christianity? These are the questions that I would like to address here.
