Lecture 2003-09-22
"In the service of His Majesty The Emperor"
Mr. Makoto Watanabe


The weather was kind to us on the occasion of our first meeting after the summer break, as a typhoon had just passed, dispelling the last of the summer heat. This occasion was a very special one, firstly as we were greatly  favoured in being invited by the American ambassador, H.E. Mr. Howard Baker and Mrs. Nancy Kassebaum Baker to hold our meeting in their residence, in fact in the very room in which General MacArthur had received the Showa Emperor in 1945. The capacity audience included a number of representatives of the diplomatic corps, among them the ambassadors of Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg, and the Polish minister. The second item marking this special occasion was the fact that we had as our speaker Mr. Makoto Watanabe), Grand Chamberlain to His Majesty The Emperor, and he was accompanied by other members of the Imperial Household Agency. Unfortunately our Patron, H.I.H. Princess Takamado, was unable to hear his talk, to which he had given the title "In the service of His Majesty, The Emperor", as she was travelling on another engagement,  but her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Shigejiro Tottori, conveyed her regrets.

To befit the occasion we had a master of ceremonies, Dr. Peter McMillan, who first called upon Ambassador Baker to address some words of welcome. He then asked ASJ Vice-President and former ambassador Mrs. Hisami Kurokochi, who had known Mr. Watanabe from early days in the Foreign Ministry, to introduce our speaker.

Mr. Watanabe began with an anecdote about His Majesty in which he was asked if he had seen the recent victory of the Hanshin Tigers on television; he said he had seen it on the 6:00 a.m. news.  How had he felt about it? It was good to see that it had made so many people happy. This incident well illustrates two facets of the Emperor: he is an early riser, and he is always concerned about the happiness of his people. His guiding principle, given the fact that he is the symbol of the state, is tsukusu, to devote himself to serving the public good.  This is not just an abstract concept, as for him the public is made up of individuals. This was shown by another anecdote that showed his astonishing memory of individuals.  During a state visit to Brazil he recalled that 19 years earlier a projected visit to a Japanese chicken farmer had been cancelled;  investigations proved him correct, even to recalling the man's name; and the omission was rectified by a visit to the man's surviving children.

His Majesty's particular concern is for the handicapped and those suffering in various ways, and he makes a point of visiting the victims of natural disasters, such as the eruption of Unzen-Fugendake in Kyushu, the earthquake in Okushiri Island, Hokkaido, and the great Awaji-Hanshin earthquake.  In this last case he made a strong impression by entering the gymnasium to which many people had been evacuated, and sitting on the floor to talk with them eye-to-eye. He also displays a constant concern for those evacuated after the eruption on Miyakejima, including children separated from their parents and housed in a high school dormitory, and he and the Empress have visited a number of different groups of people.  He also viewed the island from a helicopter, and landed on the neighbouring Niijima and Kôzushima -- the first imperial visit in history!

Ever since he was Crown Prince, His Majesty, often accompanied by the Empress,  has constantly visited institutions for the physically and mentally handicapped in any area he is visiting. He has done this more than  400 times, and a lady journalist whom Mr. Watanabe had talked to recently had expected that the visits would be a matter of routine.  Instead, she was amazed to discover that each visit was treated as important, as if it were the first of its kind. Sometimes there were humorous moments. During a visit to a senior citizens' home in Budapest he had asked an obvious nonagenarian her age, and received the reply, "I am a woman;  you should not ask!" His interest in the welfare of the handicapped also includes sports.  The year after after the 1964  Olympics in Tokyo, the Paralympics were instituted, and he was made president (a position later passed on to the present Crown Prince). Feeling the importance of letting  handicapped sportsmen and women feel they still had a place in society,  he encouraged the setting up of a Japanese Paralympics, which has gradually grown in strength.  On the first occasion only one basketball team took part,  but for the last event every prefecture had sent a team.

Sometimes he was faced with a hurdle in his attempts to express his concern. He had wished to send a message of condolence to the victims of the September 11th incident, some of whom were Japanese. However, tradition dictated that the Emperor should express condolences only in the case of natural disaster,  since man-made disasters might involve delicate legal matters.  But as he felt that this was a special case requiring an expression of his sympathy, he asked for a means to be devised that would not upset the tradition. Eventually Mr. Watanabe himself was asked to convey a message to the American ambassador.

The way in which the Emperor expresses his wish for the happiness of his people is through his prayer at the three shrines in the Imperial Palace (known as saishi). The middle one of these three connected shrines is that dedicated to Amaterasu, and the others enshrine the Emperor's ancestors and the eight million deities.  Th Emperor prays here about 25 times a a year, first purifying himself with cold water and changing into the traditional costume. Each year begins with prayer at 5:30 on New Year's morning, and prayers are subsequently offered on the 1st of every month. The most important prayers are at the Niinamesai on November 23rd, when the new crop of rice is offered to the deities. These prayers take four hours: two early in the evening and two at midnight, and the Emperor sits formally during the whole period. Mr. Watanabe has to do the same in the corridor outside and finds it an ordeal. (He practises in advance, watching television to take his mind off the agony!) As the Constitution provides for the separation of religion and the state, the Emperor is considered to be praying as a private person.But there is a difference in that he is praying to all the gods for the protection of all the people, and not praying for his own personal well-being.

As has already been said, the Emperor is an early riser, and takes early morning walks. He is strongly self-disciplined. After breakfast he drives himself to wherever his presence is required in the Palace grounds; he is a very careful driver, observing all the niceties of the traffic code, even if there is no-one else around.  He is occupied about 250-300 times a year in various ceremonies, audiences and lunches, and makes five or six trips inside Japan. As Crown Prince he visited all 47 prefectures (some, of course, more than once), and as Emperor has wished to do the same again. In the coming November he will visit the last on the list, Kagoshima. In all his visits, he is interested in who he will meet, not in sightseeing -- to Mr. Watanabe's regret when he accompanies him! One of his natural interests is in meeting scientists, especially fellow ichthyologists, who have invited him to conferences. He of course also makes overseas visits, including over 30 state visits so far. His first was as the Crown Prince at the age of 19, when he attended Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953.  This involved travelling by ship and train (stopping at various places in Canada to meet immigrants), the whole round trip taking six months. On his way back he visited ten European countries and met their crown princes and princesses, who were mostly of the same generation as himself, so that he now knows the kings and queens of these countries.

 He has just been referred to as an ichthyologist, and his special study is the goby (haze). This is a very ordinary fish, of which over 2,000 species exist, but he has been engaged in identifying and classifying new species, which has a bearing on the processes of evolution. He started on this 40 years ago, and has published 30 papers, one of them about the shoulderblades of 400 species! He is an honorary member of various academic societies,  and was presented by the Royal Academy with the King Charles II medal, an honour reserved for scientists who are heads of state.

At this point Mr. Watanabe declared himself open to questions, the first of which concerned the rice grown by the Emperor.  He said that the Emperor symbolically  cultivates a small plot of rice in the Palace grounds, doing all the sowing, transplanting and harvesting himself.   Part of the rice harvested is used in the Niinamesai. He also said that the Empress keeps a traditional koishimaru variety of silkworms,  the delicate silk from which is suitable for repairing the ancient textiles in the Shôsôin treasure house, as it will not pull away from the old fabric.   To another question, about the Three Sacred Treasures  which form the imperial regalia, Mr. Watanabe replied that no specific ritual was involved on the part of the Emperor.  The jewel is kept in the residential palace and formerly  had to travel with the Emperor, but this is no longer required.

 On a very different topic, we were told that the Emperor's style of playing tennis reflects his character: he plays on the baseline and keeps returning the ball in interminable rallies until the opponent tires and makes a mistake. Pam Shriver, a tennis professional who once played in a foursome with him, finally threw down her racquet in exasperation!

There is no regular briefing of the Emperor by the cabinet as happens in the UK, or as there had been before the end of the war when the Emperor was the central figure, but the Prime Minister and other cabinet members often come to the Palace to attend ceremonies and on these occasions they brief him on appointments and he  asks them questions; the information provided by the vice-ministers is particularly useful. There was a historical reason for this: after World War II the people wanted a distance between the government and the monarch.

 The Emperor and Empress both publish some ten poems a year, and in particular compose poems for the New Year's poetry reading, at which ten other poems are read, selected from some 20,000 which are  sent in. The Empress has a good poetic sense, and five years ago the poems composed in the first ten years of the Emperor's reign were collected into one volume and sold for charity.

Mrs. Baker, in her vote of thanks, praised the speaker for having captured in his remarks the daily and personal side of a life that at the same time was so programmed and so public;  she thanked him too for conveying to us the special quality of Their Majesties' contribution to Japan, and to what Japan represents to the rest of the world.  In conclusion, ASJ President Hugh Wilkinson expressed the society's deep appreciation to our host and hostess, and the assembled company then retired to the neighbouring room for delicious cakes, coffee, and animated conversations.