The Coalition of the Swilling

Reminds me of how they kept Hirohito (oops, I'm sorry, I almost forgot that Japanese emporers, even after they fail to conquer the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, change their names after they finally croak), er, I mean Showa died right after we arrived in Japan in October of '88. They kept that miserable tyrant, er reformed tyrant, alive for several months so that they could have him die on the anniversary of some kind of insignificant anniversary. Insignificant to me anyway.

I thought it was revolting that we Americans were stricter in our observance of mourning of this mass murderer than the Japanese were, and he was their god!

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini (aka Yasser Arafat) is still dead.

Someday we will be able to add Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz to that little joke. Today would make me very happy - but I suspect that even if he IS dead, we won't know for sure for some time.

Mike - Japanese emperors do not change their names, they choose a reign name, and Showa was Hirohito's reign name, just as Meji was Mutsuhito's reign name and Heisei is Akihito's reign name. Showa was chosen by Hirohito back in 1926. Emperors are buried under the reign name. New geologic features that are discovered or arise in a reign take on that name too - the volcano that burst out of some Hokkaido farmer's field in 1943 (and that our bombers used as a beacon flying to Tokyo) was called "Showa Shin San" (New Mountain of Showa). People generally give their birth dates as Showa such and such or Heisei such and such - drove me crazy on Japanese forms because I never remembered what year of Hirohito's reign corresponed to my birth year (it is Showa 44). Coins are also dated by this method - but things really get screwy because 1989 is both Showa 64 and Heisei 1.

But Hirohito was in full possession of his faculties until the very end. What this reminds me of is a Brezhnev hopped up on ludes being kept in power for 15 or 20 years by the KGB. He was so incapacitated that jokes circulated (discretely) about it. One from 1976: Brezhnev gets up on the podium to announce the selection of the Soviet team for the Olympics. He begins to read: "Oh,oh,oh,oh,oh". Someone whispers sotto voice: "Comrade Brezhnev, those are the Olympic Rings - the speech is underneath".

Where did you hear that Showa was in full possession of his faculties until the very end? On this point you are clearly wrong. I was in the country and it was wdely reported that the man was comatose for months. The rumors were that he was actually dead, they were merely circulating fluids to keep him from decomposing, but he was at the least comatose.

Oh, compared to Brezhnev, months is nothing. Hirohito was not ill for more than a year. Brezhnev got addicted to painkillers and ludes in the 1960s, so in effect the USSR had no leader for the entire 1970s.