On the one hand, some people take 'emeritus' to mean 'retired'--like even if you actually are recognized and awarded it and someone hears, it'll be, 'oh, you're retired', not 'congrats', or 'so what are you working on', etc. Or someone will comment, 'oh, right, doesn't everybody who retires get that?' (At some schools, maybe, not at mine.) Obviously, you have to be 教授, and not 助教授, etc.
Technically, yes, my school granted me this status. The June after I retired I got a call asking if I could come in on a certain day. Uh, okay, sure... It was a brief ceremony in the big room next to the president's office, and besides him, the 理事長 and most of the other 理事 were there (small, private uni). A few pictures, handshakes, an A3-sized certificate (kind of fancied up), some flowers, and "hey, captainspoke, please say a few words". Frankly, it caught me off guard.
I never pursued it, but if it's official, I think you can apply for 文科省 grant/research money, as tho you were still regularly employed as a faculty member. The school you were at may have to sign off on it as a part of submission (just some hanko? or something else?). Tho I had some ideas, the last few years there were pretty quiet for me, research-wise, and there wasn't anything I needed or wanted to continue working on. About the only thing I could think of that would have some side benefits was to replicate ('modernize') some of the material in
The Story of English. It had been a few years, but I had taught a course called 英語史 for a while and used that text (and the accompanying videos). Again, I didn't try, but the (speculative) concept was to get that grant money to fly/travel around the world re-recording/"updating" the varieties of English covered in that series, along with anything new I could rationalize. Paid travel, in effect.
