TOKYO: The eight-day state visit to Britain by Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako from Saturday highlights some 150 years of exchanges between the Japanese Imperial Family and the British Royal Family.

Their first exchange occurred in 1869, when then Prince Alfred, the second son of Britain’s Queen Victoria, visited Japan during an ocean voyage and met with then Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito, who is posthumously known as Emperor Meiji.

Prince Alfred had a positive impression of the Japanese side at the time, according to Naotaka Kimizuka, professor at Kanto Gakuin University and expert on the British Royal Family.

This event provided the Japanese side with an opportunity to realize the importance of entertaining important people from abroad and adopt rules of international protocol including hosting banquets at the Imperial Palace for guests.

In 1921, then Japanese Crown Prince Hirohito visited Britain and was well received by King George V.

In 1979, then Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Showa, told reporters that he had listened to King George V about British constitutional government. He said that being a constitutional monarch is the base of his lifetime belief.

Emperor Emeritus Akihito, who is Emperor Showa’s first son and abdicated as emperor in 2019, read a biography of King George V together with Shinzo Koizumi, his mentor and former president of Keio University, when he was crown prince.

After the years of antagonism between Japan and Britain during World War II, then Crown Prince Akihito attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the year after the San Francisco peace treaty, which officially ended the war between Japan and the Allied powers, took effect.

Exchanges between the Japanese Imperial Family and the British Royal Family became active and, in 1971, then Emperor Hirohito and then Empress Nagako, posthumously known as Empress Kojun, visited Britain. In 1975, Queen Elizabeth II visited Japan.

During their visit to Britain in 1998 by then Emperor Akihito and then Empress Michiko, the Japanese monarch said at a banquet hosted by the queen and her husband that he felt deep pain in his heart for people who suffered because of the war.

Emperor Naruhito studied at the University of Oxford between 1983 and 1985. In his book chronicling his two years in Britain, the Emperor wrote about close exchanges with Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the British Royal Family.

When he visited Britain alone in 2001, then Crown Prince Naruhito expressed hope that he would come to Britain with then Crown Princess Masako the next time.

Kimizuka said exchanges between the Japanese Imperial Family and the British Royal Family, which he calls “soft diplomacy,” helped maintain relations between Japan and Britain and also helped postwar reconciliation.

Britain wants to strengthen cooperation with Japan after its exit from the European Union, Kimizuka said. He said the visit to Britain by Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, who were both born after the war, “will be future-oriented, toward a new Japan-Britain relationship.”

JIJI Press