Protests and Praise Greet Royal Visitors : Diversity: The Japanese imperial couple meet a rich variety of local leaders. Asian American marchers demand reparations for war crimes.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have been working hard in their United States visit to pay tribute to the diversity of America. But in Los Angeles, the Japanese royal couple have been encountering even more of it than was scheduled.

At City Hall, hundreds of people of Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese descent demanded an apology for Japanese war crimes.

In Little Tokyo, Latino workers at a Japanese-owned hotel appealed to the emperor to support their union, holding up a sign in Japanese and trying to present a letter to him.

And nearby, even friendly gestures reflected the city’s multicultural stew: Young men from Japan shouted a tribute of banzai --in American gangsta-style baggy pants and baseball caps.

None of the protesters--or hoi polloi well-wishers, for that matter--got near the imperial couple. The close encounters with the diversity of the city were entirely over the clink of fine crystal. There was, for example, a luncheon with the mayor atop the Transamerica building Tuesday. The guest list of 100 was designed to let the emperor see the rich variety of leaders here.

At one typical table, Latina businesswoman Ana Barbosa, Bruce Ramer of the American Jewish Committee and Joe Hicks of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sat together. “I’m delighted to meet with leaders from a cross-section . . . of Los Angeles,” said the emperor in a toast. “I (hear) with much interest that Los Angeles’ community is made of people with various and diverse cultural backgrounds.”

The task of the unfailingly statesmanlike emperor has been to mend fences torn apart by the sometimes clumsy personnel management of Japanese corporations, by boorish Japanese politicians who insult minorities and by Japanese intellectuals who pen bestsellers spouting theories about alleged Jewish conspiracies.

And to some degree, it’s working.

“The wounds are still deep (from past insults),” Hicks told a reporter. “(But) I’m encouraged by these remarks. The more interaction there can be between highly placed Japanese officials and African Americans who are clearly in the mainstream and influential people, the better.”

Japanese doing business in Los Angeles could tell the emperor a few things about the influence of powerful African Americans.

It was an African American--former Mayor Tom Bradley--who aggressively forged ties with Japan that helped build Los Angeles over the last two decades into an international trading giant. He focused so much on Asia, in fact, that some of his constituents accused him of ignoring his own back yard.

Bradley was among the guests at a gala black-tie dinner for 650 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Monday night, as well as at Riordan’s lunch. At the dinner, the emperor and empress were welcomed in speeches by Gov. Pete Wilson, Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook and Riordan.

The seat of honor next to the emperor went to Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--and an African American. She noted the long history of Japanese Americans in her district and the sister-city ties between her district and Ibaraki, Japan.

Some Angelenos, however, feel far less friendly toward Japan than these civic leaders. For many of the nearly 1 million people of Asian descent in the county, the emperor brings back memories of aggression and atrocities during World War II, even though he was just a child at the time. About 400 Asian Americans, led by Korean drummers, marched from Chinatown to City Hall to the Japanese Consulate to demand that Japan pay war reparations and teach Japanese schoolchildren the truth about what happened.

Although the emperor has expressed “deep sorrow” over the “severe suffering” that Japan inflicted on China, many Chinese consider the gesture inadequate.

“I want you to come down and get on your knees and apologize for what you’ve done,” yelled 70-year-old Lee Jom Jo, aiming a bullhorn at the Bunker Hill skyscraper where the consulate is ensconced. Lee, who talked about being forced into slave labor in Japan during World War II, waved a placard that said “Japan Is the Asian Nazis.”

Some protesters said they had firsthand experience with Japanese atrocities. Yuh Fan Sung, 75, carried a handmade ink drawing showing a scene from his hometown that he remembered vividly--heads of decapitated Chinese hung from walls by Japanese soldiers.

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But other protesters, too young to remember the war directly, said the issue still burns in their hearts.

“My parents told me a lot about the war,” said Daniel Wang, 30, who skipped out from his Downtown job to join the demonstration. “These are things no one can forget, even my children and their children.”

It was during the reign of Akihito’s father, Hirohito, that the atrocities occurred, but protesters said it is the responsibility of Akihito to ensure that the truth about the past is told. Ironically, when Hirohito visited here in 1975, there was no similar protest against Japan’s war history reported by the press.

There were protests in 1975, to be sure. But they were by a group of Japanese Americans upset at Japanese investment in Little Tokyo displacing local people.

The Asian American community of Los Angeles today is very different from that of two decades ago. It has shifted from a small population dominated by U.S.-born Japanese Americans to a large, mostly foreign-born population from many different countries.

Some observers of Tuesday’s protest said it was an important watershed in unifying various Asian immigrant communities behind a single cause. The protest was supported by some Japanese Americans, who said that their own fight for redress from the U.S. government for their internment during World War II makes it natural for them to support other victims of injustice.

Some Japanese Americans are also active in pressing Japanese corporations to act responsibly in the United States--in part because anger against Japanese companies often is taken out on Asian Americans.

Glenn Omatsu, a staff member of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, was marching with Latino workers trying to unionize the Japanese-owned New Otani hotel. “The owners of the New Otani are certainly not promoting the image of Japan, and they’re certainly not promoting inter-ethnic harmony,” Omatsu said.

Despite all the activity on the street, the emperor and empress sailed serenely through the day, she in a beige kimono, he in a dark gray suit.

Waving from a balcony of the Japanese American Community and Cultural Center, they were met by a rustling sea of Japanese and American flags flourished by enthusiastic Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans.

Inside the center, they met with Japanese American leaders bringing not demands or complaints but expressions of friendship and shared cultural ties.

Later, they met with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at their home in Bel-Air.

Earlier Tuesday, the royal couple visited an exhibition on Abraham Lincoln at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Even there, the painful roots of America’s diversity were on display, in historic posters advertising slaves for sale. But the imperial couple seemed fascinated, lingering over an original manuscript of the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The emperor and empress appeared to be delighted with the lush gardens, which include roses named Princess Michiko, and with the Huntington’s extensive collection of British portrait paintings, including “Blue Boy” and “Pinkie.”

But the visit to the hushed, wood-paneled Huntington, a world-famous center of Anglo-American civilization, was still another symbol of the changing face of Los Angeles. For the elegant Beaux-Arts museum, formerly the mansion of Anglophile railroad tycoon Henry Huntington, is at the heart of the San Gabriel Valley--center of the largest Chinese community in the United States.

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Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this story.