Kyuchu Shuzai Yowa: Koshitsu no Kaze (Anecdotes from Imperial Court Reporting: The Winds of the Imperial Family)

2018/11/09

Like "The Phantom of the Opera," I have depicted the lives of the Imperial Family and those around them, having spent 30 years wandering through the labyrinth of the Imperial Court and witnessing it firsthand.

Just as "God is in the details," I believed that the true nature of the Imperial Family is visible not only on the glamorous public stage but also in the small, quiet episodes behind the scenes.

Many books on the Imperial Family are either "constructed" like skeletal specimens by "experts" who do not know the field, or are emotional, idealized stories. As someone who has conducted fixed-point observations on-site, I felt that the struggles of the Emperor and Empress were not so simple. This is also an elegy dedicated to those involved who have passed away one after another.

Deep beneath the Emperor's office building in the Palace lies a vast, secret "Gofukudokoro" (Imperial Wardrobe), where there is a strictly locked safe, and within that, a smaller safe containing confidential documents. However, the "Seidan Haichoroku"—the testimony of Emperor Showa and the greatest confidential document of the Showa era—went missing during the Heisei era. While Emperor Showa's diary was found, I also wrote about the circumstances of how it was buried along with the remains of Empress Kojun.

The reason aides sealed these records is that the ghosts of history, which were supposed to have been settled once "the lid was placed on the coffin," might revive and attack the living and the dead. The Showa era has not yet become history.

Precisely because we live in a time where discourse loudly glorifying the "heroic spirits" of Yasukuni Shrine and ritual-supremacism is rampant, I also introduced the "phantom poem" in which Emperor Showa expressed his resentment toward the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals at Yasukuni, which was subsequently sealed.

I also wrote about how the current Emperor and Empress, while strictly performing Shinto rituals, also visit temples associated with the Imperial Family, striving for a broad and flexible succession of "tradition," and how they have continued to face the scars of war both at home and abroad.

I provide a detailed explanation of why the Emperor's accession rituals reflect the myth of the Descent of the Heavenly Grandson. On the other hand, I also introduced a prominent theory suggesting that the imperial ancestral deity was originally Takamimusubi and was switched to Amaterasu during the reigns of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jito. I also reported on my memories of being present at the "Kashikodokoro" (Imperial Sanctuary) when the sacred object was moved, and my shock at discovering there were two sacred objects.

My attempt to historically relativize the "sacred sanctuary" stems from a sense of crisis regarding the current era, where even the fact that the imperial view of history perished with the defeat in the war is fading from memory. I hope this will serve as an aid to reflecting on the image of the Heisei Imperial Family, who sought the role of a symbol with "all their heart and soul" under a constitution of popular sovereignty and pacifism, and to thinking about the future.

『Kyuchu Shuzai Yowa: Koshitsu no Kaze』

Katsumi Iwai (Author)

Kodansha

656 pages, 3,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.