On February 23, 1989, General Ibrahim Babangida, the head of state of Nigeria, arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, prior to the funeral of the late Emperor Hirohito.
According to the conventional order of succession, Hirohito (29 April 1901 – 7 January 1989), who was posthumously honored as Emperor Shōwa, was the 124th emperor of Japan. He ruled from 1926 until his passing in 1989. He was among the longest-reigning kings in the world and the longest-reigning emperor in Japan.
In his capacity as emperor during the Shōwa period, Hirohito presided over the emergence of Japanese militarism, the country’s expansionism in Asia, the start of World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the postwar Japanese economic miracle.