Why did Obama make obeisance to Japanese Emperor?

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Outrage in Washington over Obama's Japan bow by Stephanie Griffith
WASHINGTON (AFP) – News photos of President Barack Obama bowing to Japan's emperor have incensed critics here, who said the US leader should stand tall when representing America overseas....Washington's punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the US president had disgraced his country two days earlier by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan's Emperor Akihito....But it's not appropriate for an American pre...speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, adding that the gesture bespoke a United States that has become weak and overly-deferential under Obama.
Another conservative voice, Bill Bennett, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program: "It's ugly. I don't want to see it."
... Some said the gesture was particularly grating coming after Obama's bow to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah at a G20 meeting in April.****While Obama might have deep-sixed American exceptionalism, another intrepretation of yesterday's indignity was his wish to downplay the Muslim aspect of his previous obeisance to the Keeper of the Two Shrines.****... The gesture appears to have touched a particularly raw nerve among Obama critics who said the president has hastened America's decline as a world superpower by being too apologetic and too deferential in his dealings with other world leaders. ... some political observers, like longtime Democratic activist Donna Brazile, came to the president's defense. "I think it's a gesture of kindness," she told CNN, ...****Bullshit! At least Japan is on "our" side on the world scene; Saudi Arabia hardly is.****