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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In June this year I had the opportunity to visit the inside of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo when I covered the official visit to Japan of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern as a correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.
On a sunny morning, I arrived with a small party of photographers and journalists inside the Palace ground, set in 300 sprawling acres of greenery in the very heart of Tokyo, much of it off limits to the public that pays for it. We were met by a kunaicho (Imperial Household Agency) official, a superbly unpleasant and sniffy bureaucrat, who did not feel the need to smile or even greet us in the usual formal Japanese way. He immediately raised a fuss over the dress code of an RTE (Irish television) cameraman, sparking a mad scramble for a jacket before our 11 am deadline to meet the Emperor.
1. The full text of Prince Naruhito's remarks can be found on the Imperial Household Agency's Web site at: http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/press-crown/prince2004-0510.html. The cast of characters behind the Imperial Moat and their proper titles can be found at: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Imperial_Household_of_japan
2. Interesting to note here that South Korea, which has a similar, much-criticized press club system, has recently begun to dismantle it. See N. Onishi, “South Korea Dissolves Ties That Once Bound the Press to the Powerful,” New York Times, 13 June, 2004
3. It should be noted too that for years the British press shared a similar attitudes to the Queen and her family. As old footage of BBC interviews with members of the British royal family make clear, obsequiousness was a job requirement for court reporters. Like their Japanese counterparts, British publications also sometimes relied on foreign publications like Paris Match to broach royal topics before they felt able to cover them. It is only in the last 20 years that royal taboos in the UK have tumbled amid intense tabloid competition for a dwindling readership, led by the Murdoch- owned Sun, a newspaper percolated by antiroyal sentiment, despite the often fawning language used to refer to the Windsor family. See Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie (1998), Stick it up your Punter: The Uncut Story of the “Sun” Newspaper, Pocket Books.
4. The Big Media correspondents are usually assigned to the IHA press club on rotation, often in two-year intervals. There is much speculation about the selection procedure; some critics such as Prof. Asano say only the elite and the ideologically safe are allowed to stand in the shadows of Imperial family members, although Correspondent C said he was known in his newspaper for his antiroyalist views.
5. Among other things, Emperor Akihito said he read in an eighth-century official history document that the mother of Emperor Kammu (736-806) was of the line of King Muryong, who ruled one of three ancient kingdoms on the peninsula.
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