TOKYO — Three decades after he ascended the throne and three years after he asked to step down, Japan’s emperor on Tuesday will become the first in more than two centuries to abdicate.

Emperor Akihito, 85, the son of the wartime emperor Hirohito, will relinquish the Chrysanthemum Throne in a short ceremony on Tuesday afternoon, passing the symbolic role to his eldest son, Naruhito, 59. The last emperor to abdicate was Kokaku, in 1817.

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The emperor, once regarded as a demigod, is now an entirely symbolic figure in Japan. Akihito, along with his wife, Empress Michiko, have been hugely popular among the Japanese as they have sought to bring the monarchy much closer to the people.

Akihito and Michiko traveled across Japan, and were a consoling presence particularly after disasters. They visited the Kobe region after the 1995 earthquake that killed close to 6,500 people, kneeling before survivors in a break with tradition.

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed almost 16,000 people in northern Japan and caused a nuclear disaster, the emperor gave an unprecedented nationally televised address, asking people to act with compassion “to overcome these difficult times.”

As the successor to Hirohito, Akihito also took on the mantle of atoning for Japan’s wartime sins. He traveled widely throughout Asia to countries that had been attacked or conquered by Japan during World War II, and spread a message of pacifism.

When Akihito took over the throne in 1989, it was after his father had suffered a prolonged illness. Akihito, who was treated for prostate cancer in 2003 and underwent heart surgery in 2012, may have wished to avoid subjecting his son to a period of such limbo.

But the decision to abdicate was not the emperor’s alone to make. It required a special act of Parliament, passed in 2017. The law applies only to him and not to future emperors.

Akihito is expected to address the nation one last time after the abdication ceremony. Although Naruhito will immediately become emperor on Tuesday, an official ceremony in which he will receive the sacred imperial regalia will be held on Wednesday morning.

Once the emperor abdicates, he will become known as the Heisei emperor, after the name given to the era in which he reigned. Imperial custom dictates that the reign of each emperor is accompanied by a name for his term in power. The new era will be known as Reiwa, and begins on Wednesday.

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