| Original caption: “President Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan.” President Ronald W. Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004), Nancy Davis Reagan (July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016), are greeted by Emperor Hirohito (April 29, 1901 – 7 January 7, 1989) at Akasaka Palace, the state guest house of Japan. The Reagans arrived at Haneda Airport at 1411 Hours, flew to Akasaka Palace on Marine 1, and arrived at 1445 Hours. After greeting the Emperor, the President and his entourage went to the Imperial Palace for an audience that lasted until 1651 Hours. The Reagans rested for the night at Akasaka Palace. On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines (KAL) Flight 007 was shot down by the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS; “Military Air Forces”) of the Soviet Union. The Reagan Administration confronted the Soviet Union over this incident. On September 5, 1983, President Reagan condemned the shooting down of the airplane as the “Korean airline massacre”, a “crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten” and an “act of barbarism…[and] inhuman brutality.” The Soviet Union withheld the destroyed Boeing 747’s black boxes, recovered off the coast of Moneron Island, Sakhalin, until 1992, after its collapse. That was the background of the Reagan-Hirohito meeting. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone (May 27, 1918 – November 29, 2019), known for his pro-United States foreign policy, met with President Reagan on November 10, 1983. Together, Japan and the United States had held the Soviet Union accountable for the KAL007 shoot-down. Upon election in 1980, Reagan and his advisers immediately rekindled the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and inaugurated an aggressive policy of imperial interventions. Japan’s elites responded by increasing defense spending on the premise that the United States’ global economic and military hegemony was declining, and it was time for Japan to prepare to stand on its own. Nakasone immediately sought to improve relations with the Reagan administration, strengthening defense and raising the annual military budget above the ceiling of 1 percent of gross national product, formally fixed by a cabinet decision 6 years earlier. For Hirohito, Reagan’s policies carried the danger of war, and the Nakasone initiatives had both positive and negative sides. As he told Grand Chamberlain Irie Sukemasa (June 29, 1905 – September 29, 1985) on October 17, 1982, after learning that the Reagan administration had requested that Japan not only share the burden of air defense over its sea lanes but also blockade the Söya Strait, “If we do this, isn’t there a danger of war with the Soviet Union? Go tell the director [of the Defense Agency] that I think so.”+ On October 26, he confided to Irie his concern that “If Japan increases the size of its armed forces, the Soviet Union might be provoked.” 3 days later, riding by car with Irie to view field birds and ducks, “All he talked about on the way was defense issues. We have no politicians who can view these matters from a broad perspective. How foolish to provoke the Soviets by strengthening defense, to become so preoccupied with the percentage of GNP we spend on defense!” Irie died in 1985. The last 2 years of his diary record Hirohito’s continuing uneasiness with problems in Japan-United States relations. Another political issue that roiled the Japanese political scene during the early and mid-1980s was state protection for Yasukuni Shrine. Although Hirohito had stopped visiting Yasukuni after 1975, he did not object to public officials worshiping at the shrine where the souls of those who had died for him and Japan reposed. On the other hand, he did not want to deepen domestic divisions over the issue of state support for Yasukuni. The same was true of most Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians in the Japanese Diet. Anxious to retain the support of the Bereaved Families Association and the Association of Shinto Shrines, while also not alienating the opposition, they had tabled a “Yasukuni Shrine Protection Bill” 5 times between 1969 and 1974. On each occasion, the bill was defeated after discussions with the opposition Socialist Party, and all involved breathed a sigh of relief. After 1978, when the Class A war criminals, executed for “crimes against humanity,” were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni, the issue of furnishing state support for the Shinto institution became more controversial than ever. Moreover, this action made it virtually impossible for the image-conscious Hirohito ever again to visit the shrine that extols Japanese militarism and the “War of Greater East Asia.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii1481.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.18 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2620 x 4000 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Reagan White House Photographs |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | November 9, 1983 |
| Location | |
| City | Tokyo |
| State or Province | Tokyo |
| Country | Japan |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | C18189-22A |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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