Eli5: Why is the Japanese emperor an emperor if Japan is not an empire and doesn’t have a king or multiple Kings below him?
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PhD here. We call the Tenno an emperor in English because this became a standard term for the monarch during the nineteenth century, which conveniently was when Japan also began to actually create a modern imperial state, ie conquering and controlling surrounding countries and territories.
Prior to that, Europeans used the term in diplomatic correspondence during the late medieval and Edo periods, but interestingly, officials did not interpret the term to refer to the Tenno, but rulers like the shogun. Empire and emperors are traditionally connected with military conquest, which prior to the nineteenth century, actually makes “emperor” a poor translation for the monarch, who functioned more like a priest king. We are stuck with this term because of rather uninformed European diplomacy (which assumed that the Japanese monarchy was just like the Chinese) and then the Japanese monarchy embracing the term themselves when they began a modern empire.
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