Meet emperor Naruhito and empress Masako: Japan's anglophile royal couple

It had been 4 years within the making after an preliminary journey deliberate for 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic. 

Arriving late afternoon at Stansted airport, north of London, the couple will likely be within the UK for seven days, attending personal occasions, earlier than the official state go to kicks off on June 25.

The emperor and empress will likely be formally welcomed by King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Tuesday (June 25) earlier than making their technique to Buckingham Palace in a stately carriage. Moreover, Naruhito will attend a proper banquet on the palace after laying a wreath on the unknown soldier’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Each Labour get together chief Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who’re presently working for workplace within the common election earlier than the vote on July 4, are scheduled to attend the state banquet on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace.

The journey can be the primary Japanese state go to to the UK since 1998. 

Regardless of it being greater than twenty years since Japanese royalty touched down on UK soil in an official capability, Japan’s royal couple have sturdy ties to the UK. Emperor Naruhito, 64, and his spouse, empress Masako, 60, who’ve headed Japan’s monarchy since 2019, each studied at Oxford of their college days, when Naruhito was a younger prince and Masako a fledgling diplomat. The couple additionally attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, of their first abroad journey since their coronation.

The King has additionally visited the island nation 5 occasions because the Prince of Wales, together with for the enthronement of Naruhito in 2019, which noticed the monarchies meet for a lavish white tie banquet alongside dozens of different royals, and he was additionally current on the enthronement of Naruhito’s father, Akihito, in 1990.

The upcoming state go to is anticipated to be simply as opulent, together with conventional highlights resembling a state banquet hosted by the King and a carriage parade alongside the Mall and a guard of honour. There will likely be a go to to St George’s Chapel, Windsor Fort, to put a wreath on the burial place of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Japan’s royal household, which claims to be the oldest steady monarchy on this planet relationship again to 600 BC, stays broadly standard at house, regardless of what was deemed a controversial union between Naruhito and his spouse in 1993.

Naruhito makes for an attention-grabbing determine at its head – not least due to his fairly eccentric and area of interest pursuits and repute as a contemporary Renaissance man. Having frolicked dwelling in each Australia, and the UK learning at Merton Faculty, Oxford – about which he wrote a memoir – he’s the primary Japanese royal to check overseas, and is seen as a modernising determine for the imperial family.

From their lengthy will-they-won’t-they courtship, to their unlikely British connections, right here is the whole lot you could learn about Japan’s anglophile royal couple. 

Naruhito has, all through his life and reign, maintained a spread of distinctive and generally eccentric pursuits which have set him other than earlier heads of the imperial home. 

Born in 1960, on the Tokyo Imperial Palace through the reign of his grandfather, the wartime ruler Hirohito, as a toddler he loved mountaineering, horse-riding and taking part in the violin. Throughout his teenage years, Naruhito spent a 12 months overseas, dwelling in Australia, the place he grew to become a eager tennis participant and climber.

However a fairly extra area of interest curiosity fashioned in Naruhito’s early maturity impressed a longstanding relationship with the UK. Someday, whereas roaming within the palace grounds as a younger boy, he found the remnants of an historic roadway. This sparked a lifelong fascination with the historical past of transport, which might ultimately turn into the topic of his grasp’s thesis at Oxford. “I’ve had a eager curiosity in roads since childhood,” he as soon as mentioned at a press convention. “On roads, you may go to the unknown world. Since I’ve been main a life the place I’ve few possibilities to exit freely, roads are a treasured bridge to the unknown world, so to talk.”

After graduating from the elite Gakushuin college in Tokyo, Naruhito accomplished a historical past diploma in Japan. Then, in July 1983, he undertook an intensive English course, earlier than matriculating at Merton Faculty, Oxford that 12 months. It marked the primary time that anybody in direct succession to the throne had ever studied exterior Japan. Upon arriving in Britain, the younger prince stayed with British dignitary Colonel Tom Corridor and his household. Throughout his time in London, he noticed the state opening of parliament with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip whereas Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. He was later invited to tea at Buckingham Palace with the Queen, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.

A “notably vivid reminiscence”, he notes in his memoir, was his first expertise of a rural village fête. “Colonel Corridor organized for me to be accompanied by his elder son Edward,” he writes. “Because the phrase ‘fête’ suggests, it was a contented event: there have been varied video games, and foods and drinks had been on sale. However I made a frightful blunder on the fête in a recreation involving throwing ­Wellington boots… Maybe as a result of I threw the boot with an excessive amount of power, it flew sideways throughout a wall. The bystanders, who most likely regarded me as some unusual Oriental, burst out laughing. I heard later that the boot had grazed a farmer working in a discipline.”

As soon as at Oxford, the then crown prince threw himself into college life, changing into president of the karate and judo golf equipment, taking part in inter-collegiate tennis and climbed the three peaks of the UK: Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell Pike. He additionally took half within the college consuming scene, visiting some 21 Oxford historic pubs, together with the Trout Inn.

Impressed by his childhood obsession with transport, Naruhito carried out two years of postgraduate analysis on the historical past of cargo-carrying on the Thames throughout his time at Oxford. Upon returning to Japan, he wrote a 120-page thesis entitled The Thames as Freeway: a Research of Navigation and Visitors on the Higher Thames within the 18th Century. 

In reality, he was so mesmerised with the Thames that he devoted the title of his memoir, which particulars his two years as a pupil at Oxford, to the river. The Thames and I, written in Japanese in 1992 and translated into English in 2006, explains why he was so taken by the river, and the UK generally. It additionally describes his extra social experiences as a pupil, together with discovering beer and being banned from coming into a disco as a result of he was sporting denims. 

“The River Thames – from my former picture of it as a fairly soiled river, to its existence as a vital, very important aspect within the London scene – quickly started to captivate my thoughts,” he writes.

The foreword to the memoir was written by none apart from the King himself, then the Prince of Wales, describing Naruhito as displaying “a eager eye, a fragile sense of humour, an enviable want to be concerned in all kinds of actions and an influence of description which supplies the reader curiosity and delight”.

Such is his fascination with the river that the emperor has requested to see the Thames Barrier throughout his free time at this month’s state go to, which marked its fortieth anniversary final month.

Naruhito first met his future spouse, Masako Owada, at a tea for the Infanta Elena of Spain in November 1986. Then a 22-year-old diplomat who had studied economics at Harvard, and one in every of simply three ladies in her cohort to move the celebrated Ministry of Overseas Affairs entrance examination, it’s not tough to see why the then crown prince was captivated by her. 

Having spent her early years between Moscow and Boston and ultimately additionally learning at Oxford, she too was a worldwide citizen. Nevertheless, the imperial family didn’t approve of the match, due partly to controversy about her maternal grandfather, Yutaka Egashira’s connection to the Chisso Company, which dumped chemical plastics into the water surrounding Minamata within the Thirties, inflicting the notorious Minamata illness and the ensuing nationwide scandal.

Nevertheless, Naruhito continued to pursue Masako, regardless of reluctance from the monarchy. In the course of the couple’s courtship, Masako was hounded by reporters and even referred to as an impromptu information convention on the library steps whereas at Oxford, to disclaim any romantic connection to the prince.

For her half, Masako was initially reluctant to marry Naruhito. Having simply began out as a diplomat, a wedding to Naruhito would pressure her to desert her profession, curbing a lot of her freedom. After an extended courtship, which noticed Naruhito proposing to her 3 times, their engagement was introduced in 1993 and their marriage ceremony befell later that 12 months on the Imperial Shinto Corridor in Tokyo, earlier than 800 visitors, though no international leaders had been invited. 

The wedding made Masako solely the second “commoner” in Japanese historical past to marry the primary in line to the throne (the primary being her mother-in-law, Michiko).

Talking at a press convention after their marriage ceremony, the crown princess Masako mentioned, ”His Highness instructed me that ‘you could have many worries and anxieties about coming into the imperial home, however I’ll do the whole lot in my energy to guard you so long as I dwell’.”

Nevertheless, Masako reportedly struggled to adapt to life within the imperial court docket. She was reportedly recognized with “adjustment dysfunction” within the early 2000s, linked with signs of melancholy or nervousness. Labelled by the Japanese press as the “damaged butterfly”, she retreated from public life with rumours of a nervous breakdown. In 2004, Prince Hiro gave an unprecedented press convention attacking royal courtiers for attempting to suppress her individuality.

“For the previous 10 years, she has tried very laborious to adapt to the methods of the imperial household,” the prince mentioned. “To me, she seems completely exhausted from it.”`

In July 2008, whereas on an eight-day journey to Spain with out his spouse, Naruhito mentioned of Masako: “I would love the general public to grasp that Masako is continuous to make her utmost efforts with the assistance of these round her. Please proceed to observe over her kindly and over the long run.”

Some have attributed the situation to the strain she had felt to supply a male inheritor – Japan’s male primogeniture guidelines dictate that solely sons of monarchs are included within the line of succession. 

The princess first conceived in 1999 however later suffered a miscarriage. Following fertility remedy, their daughter, Aiko, princess Toshi, was born in December 2001, eight years after their marriage. The one little one of the couple, the now, 21-year-old is presently a pupil of Japanese literature at Gakushuin College. 

Their daughter’s start parked full of life debate in Japan about whether or not the regulation ought to be modified to permit a girl to succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne. Preliminary plans to alter the male-only regulation of imperial succession had been shelved after it was introduced in February 2006, and Naruhito’s brother, Fumihito, 57, stays subsequent in line to the throne. 

Masako has spent intervals of day out of the highlight, however has taken on a extra public function since her husband’s ascension in 2019, accompanying him on official occasions, resembling a go to to the US to satisfy Donald Trump in April of that 12 months. 

In 2017, it was introduced that Naruhito’s father, 85-year-old Akihito would abdicate in 2019 citing his age and failing well being, the primary abdication of a Japanese monarch in additional than 200 years. Naruhito’s accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne in Might 2019 marked a big symbolic second for Japan, as he grew to become the primary emperor born after World Struggle Two, a marker of progress.

Naruhito’s place is solely ceremonial and consultant. Not like most different constitutional monarchs, Naruhito has no formal powers associated to authorities and is prohibited from making political statements.

Regardless of these constraints, he has been a progressive monarch, outspoken on points like psychological well being, water shortage and conservation, combining custom and modern points.