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29th April 1945

The emperor was 44 years old today. Apparently there will be no elaborate celebration; the state banquet has been cancelled, as it has been every year of the war. The only public ceremony (outside of the rites at the three sanctuaries of the imperial palace today) was the visit which he paid yesterday to the Yasukuni shrine, where, “after graciously removing His cap” and going through the ritual of ablution, he offered a branch of the sacred tree to the spirits of the war dead.