Tokyo- Japanese people were apparently relieved at the enactment on Friday of special legislation for 83-year-old Emperor Akihito's abdication, 10 months after he signaled his strong wish to step down in a closely watched televised video message.

"I hope the Emperor will relieve his fatigue," said Miyuki Yamada, 65, who evacuated her home in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, following the triple reactor meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s  Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which was damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Yamada, who now lives in one of public houses built for nuclear evacuees in the city of Fukushima, the capital of the prefecture, suffered an unruptured cerebral aneurysm during her evacuation.

Yamada said she was relieved by sympathetic words the Emperor gave to her when he and Empress Michiko visited the prefecture in July 2015. "I always treasure those words," she said.

Shigeru Chiyokawa, 67, hosted the Imperial couple when they stayed at his Sanriku Hana Hotel Hamagiku in the town of Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, in September last year.

"The Emperor's tight trip schedule seemed to be imposing a heavy burden on him, given his age," Chiyokawa said. The town was hit hard by the 2011 tsunami.

"The Heisei era has seen many disasters, and the Emperor has come to encourage affected people each and every time," Chiyokawa said. "I hope he will watch the next era in peace." The current Heisei era started in January 1989 when Emperor Akihito assumed the Imperial Throne following the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, who is posthumously known as Emperor Showa.

"It was good that the abdication issue was settled within a year (of the broadcast of the Emperor's video message)," said Masakatsu Takara, 77, head of a group to remember a US submarine's torpedo attack on the Tsushima Maru, a Japanese student evacuation ship, that killed more than 1,400 people during World War II.

A survivor of the attack on the ship off an island in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in August 1944, Takara guided the Imperial couple when they visited the Tsushima-maru Memorial Museum in Okinawa Prefecture, southernmost Japan, in 2014.

"The children (on the ship) were victims of a war started for the sake of the (previous) Emperor," Takara said. "But it was very good that they were given some solace by Emperor Akihito's visit to the museum," he said.

"I hope the Emperor will live long and in peace," said Isamu Kakida, 72, a survivor of the US atomic-bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of the war. He manages a care house for other survivors of the nuclear attack in the western Japan city.

"I felt the Emperor's attraction as a person" during his visit to the facility in December 2014, Kakida said. "I guess his official duties are extremely tough," Kakida said. "It's good that he will now be allowed to step down."

Some people voiced disappointment that the new legislation applies to only the current Emperor, stopping short of a permanent abdication system, which the Emperor is believed to regard as desirable.

"The result didn't end up in line with his majesty's thoughts," Akira Hashimoto, 84, a former classmate of Emperor Akihito, lamented.

"I believe behind Emperor Akihito's message last August was consideration for future Emperors, since he has realized that it is now difficult for him to perform his official duties with full body and soul," Hashimoto said.

"I now think that the video message was his version of the 'humanity declaration' by Emperor Hirohito following the end of WWII," Hashimoto said. "I think Emperor Akihito wanted to say that the Emperor does have limitations, because he is a human." (Jiji Press)