Japanese Imperial Family Today

    It was reported that His Majesty the Emperor has expressed his displeasure with a book published in May, which is a compilation of interviews with his Imperial Heir, Crown Prince Akishino. The Daily Shincho reported on June 3.   The book is a compilation of a total of 37 one-on-one interviews conducted by journalist Keiji Emori, who has known Akishino for over 30 years. The book was published within a short time after the marriage of Akishino's eldest daughter, Mako, to Kei Komuro, and is said to reveal Akishino's true feelings about this marriage, which was highly criticized by the public.   In the book, there is a scene in which Akishino says of the financial trouble between Kei's mother, Kayo, and her former fiancé, "It's all about the Komuro family. The Akishino family has absolutely nothing to do with it.”  It is assumed that Akishino wanted to convey the stance that the Akishino family was merely involved in the matter.   According t...

    On May 11, a unique book compiling a series of interviews with Crown Prince Akishino over the course of several years was released in Japan. The book, with the slogan "Before being a member of the Imperial Family, one is a human being," written on its obi sash, has caused a stir in various quarters.   This book is "Akishino no Miya" (Shogakukan). Journalist Keiji Emori, former Mainichi Shimbun reporter on the Imperial Household, conducted a total of 37 face-to-face interviews with Akishino over a period of 4 years and 7 months from June 2017 to January 2020. The interviews began the month after the news broke that Akishino no Mako, Akishino's eldest daughter, was inofficially engaged to Kei Komuro, and the book describes Akishino's true feelings as a father from then until their marriage in October of last year.   According to the book, Akishino's discomfort with the Komuro family was triggered by the Komuro mother and son's response t...

    Three years have passed since the current HM the Emperor’s accession to the throne in 2019. As part of the Imperial Family's move following the accession, the Emperor and his family moved to the Imperial Palace in September last year, and late last month, the Emperor Emeritus and his wife began living at the Sento Palace in Akasaka Imperial Palace, where he spent his days as Crown Prince.   Meanwhile, the residence of Prince Akishino's family, the younger brother of the Emperor and heir to the throne, is still under renovation, and it has been announced that the renovation will be completed in the fall. The total cost of the renovation of Akishino's residence is approximately 3.3 billion yen (about 26 million USD), and the current temporary residence of the Akishino family until its completion was newly built at a cost of 980 million yen (about 7.7 million USD), so the total construction cost for the family's new life will be about 4.3 billion yen (about 34 mi...

    Crown Prince and Princess Akishino visited Mie, Nara, and Kyoto prefectures from April 20 to pay a visit to Ise Jingu Shrine and several other sites, and returned to Tokyo by air from Itami Airport on the morning of April 23.   The couple visited Ise Jingu Shrine (Ise City, Mie Prefecture) on the 21st and the mausoleum of Emperor Jinmu (Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture) and the mausoleums of Emperor Takaaki and Emperor Meiji (Kyoto City) on the 22nd to report that Prince Akishino had completed the "Risshi no Rite of Imperial Succession" in 2020, which indicates both at home and abroad that he is ranked first in the line of succession to the throne.   The couple's request to travel approximately 800 km by car, excluding the return trip, out of the four-day, three-night itinerary was an unusual one. Although the reason for this is ostensibly to avoid infection by the coronavirus, it is rumored on the Japanese Internet, which is notoriously tight-lipped, ...

    Crown Prince and Princess Akishino will visit Ise Jingu Shrine in Mie Prefecture from April 20 to 23 as an event related to Rikkoshi no Rei, the ceremony to proclaim Akishino crown prince, which was postponed due to the Corona disaster.   However, there are reports that there is a gap between the couple.   According to a report in the Daily Shincho dated March 30, the couple currently has almost no daily conversation except for meetings on official business. The reason for this is that Kiko is said to resent Akishino's negative comments about the marriage of their daughter Mako and Kei Komuro at press conferences and other occasions, which has made it impossible to repair the relationship between Mako and her parents.   Furthermore, Kiko, exasperated, is said to come down hard on the Imperial Household Agency staff.   “When staff members ask Her Imperial Highness about work reports and other matters, no matter how we explain them, ...

  A new allegation has surfaced against Hisahito, the eldest son of the Akishino family, who was announced to have "allegedly" entered a high school attached to Tsukuba University on March 16. It is said that his essay, which he entered in a contest in the past and received an "honorable mention," is very similar to other works. On February 16, "Daily Shincho" reported the story.   In the past, His Imperial Highness has been known for his "excellent grades," and the Imperial Household Agency has taken great pains to appeal to his "literary talent," as he was twice selected for essay contests in junior high school. Last spring, out of a total of 97 entries in the junior high school division of the 12th Children's Nonfiction Literature Award sponsored by the city of Kitakyushu, Prince Hisahito's essay was selected as the honorable mention following the grand prize. The subject of the essay was his memories of the Ogasawara...

    On February 16, the Imperial Household Agency announced that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family and second in line of succession to the throne, will enroll in the National High School Attached to Tsukuba University (Tsukufu, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo) in April using the "Affiliated School Admission System. Prince Hisahito is in the third year of junior high school at Ochanomizu University. Since Ochanomizu High School is an all-girls school, there has been a lot of attention on where he will go.   Both the University of Tsukuba and Ochanomizu Women's University have established a system that allows students who are recommended by both universities to enter their respective affiliated schools. According to the IHA, Prince Hisahito took advantage of this system “because his academic performance was excellent and he met the conditions for recommendation.” In addition to the internal selection process, he took the five-subject "academic achievement test...

  On February 13, the only son of the Akishino family, Prince Hisahito, who had been attracting a lot of attention for where he would go to school, took the entrance examination for Tsukuba University High School (Tsukufu). At a little after 8:00 a.m., when the clouds were low and heavy and the weather was bitterly cold, he passed through the main gate of Chikuzuke High School like all the other examinees.   The exam starts at 9:00 a.m. Hisahito will take exams in five subjects: Japanese, mathematics, English, science, and social studies.   Recently, the head of household of Crown Prince, the closest aide to the Akishino family, has been complaining about the media coverage of Hisahito's entrance into high school, saying, "How is the attitude of the media to report every week on the entrance into high school of a minor who is about to take an entrance exam, based on speculation?” Today, TBS, one of Japanese commercial TV station, broke the news of Hisahito's ent...

  The Akishino family is decisively unpopular with the Japanese people despite having the first and second highest ranking male heirs to the throne. Every day, the Internet is filled with criticism of their every move. In February, they are said to face two difficult problems, FRIDAY 　 DIGITAL reported on January 30. The two are Hisahito's higher education and Kei Komuro's bar exam.   First of all, there is the issue of the higher education of Hisahito, the second in line to the throne, who is 15 this year. At present, the issue of his "privileged admission" to Tsukuba University's affiliated high school (Chikuzuke), one of the most advanced schools in Japan, through the "Affiliated School Admission System", is being discussed and is attracting public attention.   This system was introduced by the University of Tsukuba and Ochanomizu University in 2017, and is considered to be a time-limited measure for five years. There will be no acad...

    On January 28th, at a regular press conference, Takaharu Kaji, a close aide of the Akishino family, commented, "I think it is regrettable that such an article should appear at a stage when there is no announcement or anything about her marriage.” He requested that the media refrain from speculating about the marriage and said, "I would like you to watch over her quietly.”   It was only a short time after the fiasco between Mako (30), the eldest daughter of the Akishino family, and Kei Komuro (30) had died down that the second daughter, Kako (27), was reported to be getting married one after another in the weekly magazines.   As for Kako, her passionate love affair with the son of the president of Fuji Express emerged in 2017.   Most recently, at the end of last year, "Shukan Josei" took a close look at a younger man, Mr. A (24), as a potential new boyfriend. He is a graduate of the University of Leeds, where Kako studied from September 2005 t...

  At a regular press conference on January 27, Yasuhiko Nishimura, director general of the Imperial Household Agency, the government agency with jurisdiction over the Imperial Family, asked for understanding, saying, "We would like you to watch over the  progress quietly," in response to the string of reports in weekly magazines and on the Internet about the high school that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family, will enter this spring.   Prince Hisahito is currently in his third year of junior high school at Ochanomizu University. The high school attached to Ochanomizu University is an all-girls school, so there has been a lot of attention on where he will go to school. Some weekly magazines have reported that he has been accepted to the high school attached to Tsukuba University, which has an "affiliated school admission system" with his current school, without any examination. Mr. Nishimura complained, "How is it that every week there ...

    It seems that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family, has already been accepted to Tsukuba University High School (Tsukufu), according to a report in the January 20 edition of Shukan Bunshun.   According to the report, Hisahito took the entrance examination for the school through a "Affiliated School Admission System" between the school and Ochanomizu University Junior High School, and was notified of his acceptance in the first half of January. The announcement of his acceptance by the Imperial Household Agency is expected to be made in mid-February, the same time as the announcement of acceptance for the general entrance examination so that the public can’t know whether he used the special system or not.   According to the article, the aim of the parents, Akishino and his wife, is to get a recommendation to enter the University of Tokyo (UOT) through Tsukufu. The following is from the article:  

  (Added.) As already reported in this blog, information on the high school education of Prince Hisahito (15), the only son of the Akishino family, is a hot issue in Japan right now.   It has been reportedly confirmed that Prince Hisahito will attend Tsukuba University High School (Tsukufu) after graduating this spring from the junior high school attached to Ochanomizu Women's University, which he currently attends.  Note: According to the January 21 issue of Shukan Bunshun, the students who will be admitted to Tsukufu under the "Affiliated School Admission System," which is supposed to be used by Hisahito, were decided on January 8. So Hisahito should have already received his acceptance letter. However, His acceptance will be announced after the general entrance exam acceptance announcement in mid-February so that it is impossible to tell whether he used the Affiliated School Admission System or not. The Daily Shincho, an online news site, reported on January 17 t...

    In 2021, Japan's imperial family was rocked by the marriage issue between Mako Akishino and Kei Komuro, and a ray of light was shed by the coming-of-age event of the emperor's only daughter, Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko.   At the end of the year, there were a series of articles in the Japanese media comparing the "Emperor Family" and the "Akishino Family."   Here is an abridged translation of one of them, written by journalist Masahiko Motoki for President Online on December 22.  

  The choice of high school for Prince Hisahito, the only son of Prince Akishino and second in the order of succession to the throne, was reported spectacularly before Christmas that he would be attending Tsukuba University High School, a top preparatory school. This blog recently introduced the criticism by Mr. Yuji Odabe, Professor Emeritus at ShizuokaUniversity of Social Welfare , and on the 3rd of this month, the Asahi Shimbun-affiliated online media "AERA.dot" carried an interview with Mr. Hideya Kawanishi, a historian and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University, who is an expert on the symbolic emperor system. Mr. Kawanishi's argument is as follows:   Prince Hisahito is currently attending the junior high school attached to Ochanomizu University for Women. Ochanomizu Women's University is a coeducational school up to junior high school, but from high school on, it is an all-girls high school, and boys at the school have ...

It was recently reported that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family, has been chosen to go to Tsukuba University High School through the privileged system of special affiliated admission. Yuji Odabe, professor emeritus at Shizuoka University of Social Welfare and an expert on the modern imperial family system, points out that the Akishino family lacks the education to overcome the problem on their own .   “There will be difficulties no matter which school he goes to. What is important is that His Highness is determined to overcome the difficulties in whatever he chooses to do. What is most undesirable is the idea that the privileges of the royal family allow them to do whatever they want. ” (Shukan Josei, December 14, 2021)   The issue of Hisahito's decision around higher education and the use of imperial privileges by former Princess Mako in her marriage to Kei Komuro, as well as the attitude of her father, Prince Akishino, in protecting her, are conn...

  Prince Hisahito, the only son of Prince and Princess Akishino The only son of the Akishino family, Prince Hisahito (15), is currently a junior high school student attached to Ochanomizu University for Women. Since only female students are allowed to enter the high school attached to Ochanomizu University, Hisahito has no choice but to find another school to go to. There have been a number of names of high schools that have been discussed for his future.   However, it seems that his next step has finally been decided. The following is a quote from "Bunshun Online" dated December 22 and "Shukan Bunshun Digital" dated December 23.   For some time, Gakushuin, a traditional school for members of the Imperial Family, had been considered the most promising school for Hisahito.   “One of the reasons why it was considered the most likely choice was because of the flap over the marriage issue of Mako, the eldest daughter of the Akishino family, who went on to ...