Over the past few weeks, I’ve been finishing up Spring Break over here, which is pretty much the longest and most restful break of the Japanese school year. I was lucky enough to have my parents come visit me for the last two weeks of this break, and we traveled as much as possible during their stay since they’ve never been to Japan, or East Asia at all. Since the Spring Semester is kicking into gear, my next few posts are most likely going to revolve around a few experiences I had while traveling with them.
This post will focus, I think, on our visit to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The visit happened on one of our first days in Tokyo, and luckily my parents weren’t too beaten down by the cold, hard hand of jetlag, so we were able to see quite a few sights leading up to our Imperial Visit. For those of you who haven’t been blessed with admittance into the Imperial palaces of Japan, know that you have to make reservations in advance to even step foot onto the property. Your request is passed through the Imperial Household Agency, and then sent back to you, usually with a positive response and firm reminder to be at a certain place at a certain time.
That’s right – the Japanese Emperor, a man who has even less power or influence (certainly less money and columns in the gossip rags) than any other royal person, has his own bureaucracy still surrounding him – even though he was stripped of all true administrative abilities over a half-century ago. I mean, really? Alright, Japan, if you must.
Having procured the necessary documents, my family and I arrived at the correct gate at precisely 10am on the set day only to find ourselves escorted into a room to find we were not only the sole Westerners, but also the only foreigners. After watching a video – in Japanese – and then being handed English audioguides – because the tour is conducted in Japanese – we were shuffled out of the gym-like structure in order to be yelled at over a bullhorn by 70-something Imperial Guards in white gloves who kept shooing us back into a steady group formation. Because obviously, if we strayed from the group we were going to do something horrible, like pee in the royal pond or cut down the Emperor’s beloved bonzai bush.
After about 15 minutes, we realized that the Imperial Guards were not yelling instructions over the bullhorn; this was actually the tour. Being conducted over a bullhorn. Throughout the course of the 60 minute tour, between all the constant reminders to stay in four close lines communicated with a mix of sign language and desperation (because he had no idea I spoke Japanese – because really, a blond girl, speaking Japanese?), I’d like to think I actually became close with the eldest guard who brought up the rear of the tour group (where my parents and I were inevitably shuffled, given our lack of understanding staticky Japanese and a weakness to being elbowed by elderly women with cameras bigger than they are).
The Tokyo Imperial Palace itself began as the Tokugawa shogun’s castle in the Edo Period (16th-19th c.), and was then used for the Emperor’s purposes when the Meiji Restoration occurred. Of course, all the impressive and/or cool stuff pretty much burned to the ground with all the bombings of WWII (people seem to forget that the U.S. flattened almost every major Japanese city between ’42 and ’44, and didn’t just all of a sudden say, “hey I’ve got this great idea…”), so there really isn’t much to see on the Palace grounds themselves. Add to that the extreme security since the Emperor and his family do happen to still be living on the Palace Grounds, and pretty much the entertainment for our Imperial tour was watching “Bullhorn Guy,” and evading the elbows and white-gloved hands of all the guards trying to push us back into tightly-controlled tour group.
Needless to say, my parents were a bit wide-eyed by the end of the tour. This is Japan at its most authoritative – anything surrounding the Emperor still has that red tinge of absolute compliance and obedience. It helps that whenever the guards demanded people not take pictures, all the Japanese tourists were only too happy to whip out their cameras and do exactly the opposite, but still. Looking at the guards, at the way they just expected us to form a group with four neat lines proceeding swiftly through the palace grounds – it’s not that far away from the mindset that surrounded those dark times in the mid-19th century.
I’ve attached a few pictures of the Palace – you’ll see some Edo-era buildings, which have actually been moved from Kyoto post-war, which is why they’ve not been burned to the ground by now. The next post will hopefully revolve around a sunnier and far less sarcasm-ridden topic, but this experience was just too unbelievable not to relate to the community. I hope you enjoyed it!
