The Dead Mikado.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 30, 1912:
    To write understandingly about the Emperor who lies dead in Tokio, one would be compelled to adopt the plan of Sarah Orne Jewett's clergyman in "The Minister's Opportunity." He was appointed to preach the funeral sermon of a very old man, and his discourse treated exclusively of the great events of his subject's lifetime. The reason, in this case, was that there was nothing good to say about the deceased. Much good, indeed, might be said about the Mikado. The world derived an idea that he was a ruler of uncommon sagacity and ability from the mere fact that reforms of so great purport were encouraged in his reign. He was born in Japan's dark ages. He had been his country's supreme ruler in the era of its modernization. His has been a remarkable reign; indeed, its like is scarcely to be found in history.
    Japan, since he ascended the throne in his fifteenth year, has risen from a state vastly inferior to that of England in the War of the Roses to a position among the world's Powers. All that the enlightened West has had to teach Japan has learned while Mutsuhito has been its Mikado. But Mutsuhito's death will not put Japan on the backward path. It is the simple truth that the measure of his personal force has never been taken. He filled his role well, but he has been guarded from public observation, and regarded by his humbler subjects rather as a demigod than as a man.
    He has, to be sure, been extolled as a great man. Only yesterday a Russian journalist compared him to Peter the Great. But the praise, after all, is due to what has been done in his reign, and no outsider can truthfully say just how much or how little the progress of Japan has been due to the wisdom of Mutuhito. The general idea is that Japan would have forged ahead under the rule of any Mikado, or half a dozen, in these last forty-five years.