courageous pine

Courageous pine-

enduring the snow

that is piling up,

color unchanging.

Let people be like this.

Hirohito. Emperor Shōwa

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. By John Dower. W.W. Norton and Company. 1999. p.317-318 

In heralding the advent of each new year, the [Japanese] court customarily assigned a thematic topic on which members of the imperial household as well as ordinary people would compose thirty-one-syllable waka, with commoners invited to submit their verses for evaluation by experts assembled by the court. Early in the new year, the best poems would be published alongside waka by the emperor and other eminent figures - a high honor indeed for an amateur poet. In October of that year of bitter defeat (1945), it was announced that the theme for the coming year's poem would be "snow on the pine," a classic image of beautiful endurance. Above is the emperor's own poem, widely disseminated in the media on January 22.