Um...no, the old "living God" adage was never quite true in the sense you mean. Emperors are and were never "Gods" in the big G, Abrahamic sense. They were and are conduits to the divine, mortals who died and could be killed—at least one was. They become kami upon their deaths; part of the pantheon of spirts along with their ancestors in Shinto tradition. The Showa Emperor Hirohito's renunciation of his divinity didn't mean nearly what the West believed it did, and was puzzling to most Shintos.
Um...no, the old "living God" adage was never quite true in the sense you mean. Emperors are and were never "Gods" in the big G, Abrahamic sense. They were and are conduits to the divine, mortals who died and could be killed—at least one was. They become kami upon their deaths; part of the pantheon of spirts along with their ancestors in Shinto tradition. The Showa Emperor Hirohito's renunciation of his divinity didn't mean nearly what the West believed it did, and was puzzling to most Shintos.