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

Like "The Phantom of the Opera," I have depicted the lives of the Imperial Family and those around them, whom I witnessed firsthand while wandering through the labyrinth of the Imperial Court for 30 years.

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 about the Imperial Family are either "constructed" like skeletal specimens by "experts" who do not know the actual field, or are framed as emotional, heartwarming 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 wing in the Palace lies a vast, secret "Gofukudokoro" (wardrobe department), where there is a strictly locked safe, and within that, a smaller safe containing confidential documents. However, the testimony of Emperor Showa, the "Seidan Haicho-roku," which is the most significant confidential document of Showa history, went missing during the Heisei era. While Emperor Showa's diary was found, I also wrote about the circumstances under which it was buried along with the remains of Empress Kojun.

The reason aides sealed these records is that the ghosts of history—which should have been settled once the coffin was closed—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-supremacy is rampant, I also introduced the "phantom poem" composed and sealed by Emperor Showa, expressing his resentment toward the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals at Yasukuni.

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" while continuing to face the scars of war 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 academic theory suggesting that the 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" (the Emperor's ritual site) during the relocation of the sacred object, where I was astonished to find that there were two sacred objects.

My attempt at a historical relativization of 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 away. I hope this will serve as an aid to reflect on the Heisei Imperial Family, who sought the image of a symbol with "all their heart and soul" under a Constitution of popular sovereignty and pacifism, and to think 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.