The Chrysanthemum Throne

The Emperor of Japan occupies what is often called the Chrysanthemum Throne, an institution Japanese tradition holds to be the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. Traditional accounts trace the imperial line to the legendary Emperor Jimmu, said to be a direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu and to have founded the imperial line in 660 BCE, a date modern historians regard as a later mythological construction rather than a historical event; the historically attested imperial institution is generally dated to at least the Kofun period, several centuries CE, with a continuous documented succession from around the sixth century.

For most of Japanese history the Emperor held largely ceremonial and religious authority while real political and military power rested with regents, court nobility, or, from the twelfth century onward for extended periods, with shoguns, military rulers who governed in the emperor's name while the imperial court retained symbolic and religious primacy. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 formally returned political power to the throne and, under the Meiji Constitution of 1889, declared the Emperor sacred and inviolable, combining religious veneration within State Shinto with a modern constitutional monarchy modeled partly on European examples.