Troubles of Biographers: M & N are for Enigma and Interview with a Translator!

For "N" on my autobiography list, I determined to tackle Emperor Naruhito.

Trouble: What do you do when there aren't any books about the subject?

You read a related book about someone else—in this case, Empress Masako.

Problem: What if the only related book available seems to miss the point?

You read it anyway. Then interview someone who can provide insights into Japanese culture.

Interview with a Translator is back! A total of three posts will tackle the royal family in Japan, culture and politics in Japan, and Western writers about Japan, including the chosen biography:

Hills, Ben. Princess Masako: The Tragic True Story of Japan's Crown Princess. Penguin, 2006.

ROYAL FAMILY  

Question: Reading about becoming a member of the royal house in Japan feels similar to scenes from Netflix's The Crown where princes, princesses, and their lovers chafe at the rules. Does Japanese royalty have as many restrictions and rules as the British royal family? More? Hills claims that what Masako had to endure as princess "[makes] Princess Diana's ordeal look like a picnic" (4). Is this a fair assessment?

There's a cause and effect relationship going on here. The Japanese Imperial Family simply does not put itself in the spotlight the way the British Royal Family does. They also behave better. Since the end of the war, the Imperial Family has deported itself in public as the idealized upper middle class Japanese family. They are purposely dull. Restraint begets restraint.

With both Naruhito and his dad, the image they project is that of the family you'd like to have as your next-door neighbors in a nice suburb. My armchair analysis is that the conflicts with Masako did not arise so much from the Imperial Household Agency trying to impose on her their ideal of Lady Di, but rather trying to impose on her their ideal of a Japanese Ozzie and Harriet.

It's not just the Imperial Family. Entertainers in Japan across the board are held in public to higher standards than anybody elsewhere in the celebrity world. Minor brushes with the law that would get laughed off in Hollywood result in suspensions and cancellations. Any illegal drug use can get them banished for years.

I mean, this story cracks me up: Nobunari Oda. But it was no laughing matter in Japan.

Here are a few more examples of celebrity crime and punishment: Reefer Madness. 

Viewed in the context of the culture it is part and parcel of, the Imperial Family has been exercising the gaman ethos ("perseverance makes perfect") for 150 years now.

Many years later, the German court doctor Erwin Baelz overheard Itou Hirobumi remark to Prince Arisugawa, "'It is really very hard luck to be born a crown prince. Directly he comes into the world he is swaddled in etiquette, and when he gets a little bigger he has to dance to the fiddling of his tutors and advisers.' Thereupon Itou made a movement with his fingers as if he were pulling the strings of a marionette." [Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912, p. 31]

Nevertheless, what becomes abundantly clear from Keene's account is how vastly life has improved in every possible way for the modern Imperial Family. They still have to gaman, but hardly to the grueling extent their predecessors did.

Question: Is the Japanese news more deferential than the British news towards its royal family? The British news these days is mostly not at all deferential (and then there's that television series!). Do Japanese news agencies have anything at all comparable to Western tabloids? 

The Japanese tabloids are alive and well, far ahead of the UK in terms of circulation. But when it comes to the Imperial Family, way more deferential. Again, because of the above. The mainstream media in Japan has a strong conservative streak when it comes to cultural institutions. The Imperial Family is the Japanese cultural institution. 

Stop the presses! A recent scandal involving the Imperial Family actually involves the niece of Japanese Emperor Naruhito.

Actually, this little drama has been on a slow burn for four years now. To sum up, Princess Mako's fiance's mother's ex-fiance helped pay Princess Mako's fiance's tuition at Fordham University to the tune of $40 grand or so. The mother's ex-fiance has since decided that it was a loan and wants it back. Or something. Meanwhile, the Imperial Household Agency sniffs that, as far as they're concerned, the suspended engagement has demoted Princess Mako's "fiance" to "boyfriend" status. 

This constitutes red meat for the tabloids, and the "fiance" is fair game because he's not a legit member of the Imperial Family (one reason offered for why he hightailed it back to New York). Even the staid NHK covered the story for the past two days. After a while, the squabbling over this tempest in a teacup begins to resemble the backstory to a British drawing room mystery. 

Question: Hills argues that although the Japanese emperors are no longer technically divine and have few constitutional duties, they are still very much a part of the practice of Shintoism. According to Hills, “Shinto has no ecclesiastical hierarchy, no sacred text, and no belief in God or a universal afterlife…Most Japanese of Masako’s generation never worship, but happily embrace a trilogy of faiths. They see no contradiction in being taken to the local Shinto shrine to be recorded at birth, marrying in Christian ceremonies…and having their bones buried in Buddhist family tombs…The emperor is not just Shinto’s principal practitioner, he…is the custodian of Japan’s most sacred shines” (12). 

How would you characterize the relationship between the royal family and Shintoism? 

The chief religion of Japan is being Japanese, which is defined by rituals derived from both Buddhism and Shinto (Shinto gets weddings, Buddhism gets funerals, both do Hatsumode) not holding fast to a defined set of beliefs. In this respect, Hills is correct. Nobody knows what Naruhito "believes" and nobody cares. It does not matter as long as he doesn't go off the deep end. Not going off the deep end is exactly what the Imperial Family does for a living.

Deputy PM Taro Aso is Catholic. He never draws attention to the fact and nobody cares.

Western political leaders show up at church and profess their faith in a way that Japanese in general and the Imperial Family simply do not do. The Shinto religious context only kicks in during the enthronement ceremonies and the occasional marriage. And those things don't happen very often. It's very much a when-in-Rome thing.

Question: Masako did spend many of her formative years abroad and appears to have suffered a kind of culture shock when she returned to Japan. You have written about how being culturally Japanese is not the same as being ethnically Japanese (see here and here and here). Masako does appear to have quickly caught up with her peers. Yet she is not "traditional" and she is a commoner. Naruhito's father also married a commoner. Are Naruhito and Akihito anomalies? Or was the entire cult of the emperor an anomaly that rose to temporary prominence with the end of the shogunate? For that matter, do Japanese people connect Hirohito to Naruhito and/or Akihito? Is Hirohito perceived as a kind of "black sheep" or ignored or simply too far in the past to bother with? 

The entire cult of the emperor was an anomaly. Not only was it a one-off, but pre-war Hirohito and post-war Hirohito were two completely different creatures. MacArthur saw to that. His goal of rehabilitating Hirohito paid off brilliantly for both of them, and the travesty of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal put its big stamp of approval on the whole charade. Aside from a tiny number of right-wing fanatics, everybody in Japan moved on. I mean, everybody moved on.

So did Hirohito, who spent the latter half of the 20th century working hard at being taken seriously as a marine biologist. 

See The Last Year of Heisi

See Emperor Naruhito Becomes Emperor Again