午夜剧场

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 Palace 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 "Gofukudojo" (wardrobe department), where there is a strictly locked safe, and within that, a smaller safe containing confidential documents. However, the "Seidan Haichoroku" (Records of Hearing the Sacred Discourse), the testimony of Emperor Showa and the greatest confidential document of Showa history, 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.

Those close to them sealed these records because the ghosts of history—which should have been settled once the coffin was closed—might revive and attack the dead and the living alike. The Showa era has not yet truly 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, which expressed his indignation over 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 enthronement 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 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 experience being present at the "Kashikodokoro" (Imperial Sanctuary) during the movement of the sacred object, 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 look back at 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, will help in thinking about the future.

Katsumi Iwai (Author)

Kodansha

656 pages, 3,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.