14. Japanese Cult of the Emperor
All throughout history, there have been entire civilizations and religions built upon the worship of a monarch. In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was worshiped as a god, believed to be a reincarnation of the son of Iris and Osiris, the god Horus. Many of the ancient Roman emperors, such as Nero and Caligula, claimed that they were divine and required people in the empire to burn incense to them as a ritual act of worship. Likewise, in imperial Japan, the emperor was worshiped as if he was a manifestation of the divine.
Emperor Hirohito, who was the last emperor of Japan, reigned in the years leading up to and during World War II. He reinvigorated the Shinto belief that the emperor was the connection between heaven and earth and a descendant of the goddess Amaterasu. His religious and political mission, given to him by heaven, was the expansion of Japan and defeat of the Western forces that tried to dismantle the Japanese Empire. Many of his followers swore such a high level of allegiance to him that they strapped themselves into glider-like planes and dive-bombed into American warships stationed in the Pacific. They were known as kamikazes – the word literally translates as “divine wind” because they were sacrificing their lives for their emperor god.