By visiting the Imperial Palace gardens and Kyoto’s imperial villas through the seasons, the author describes how long-held, media-shaped misconceptions about the Emperor vanished instantly. The essay argues that Kyoto reveals the true foundation of Japan and its people.

May 16, 2016

Many readers of Asahi Shimbun are made to adopt a critical attitude toward the Emperor.
I was no exception.
In other words, with regard to one’s understanding of the Emperor, one is indoctrinated by the distorted ideology of Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers.

That Western colonialism turned the twentieth century into a century of war is an indisputable historical fact.

The First World War, and then the Second World War, which was caused by the First.

Yet readers of Asahi Shimbun have been led to believe that the cause of the Second World War lay in the imperial system itself.
They have been indoctrinated.

About ten years ago, I made my third major discovery of Kyoto.
The beauty of Kyoto’s autumn leaves prompted that discovery.
Furthermore, when I was passing beside Kikoku-tei, a taxi driver uttered words that struck me:
“Compared with the gardens of the Imperial Palace, other gardens cannot even be mentioned in the same breath.”
I thought to myself that this must indeed be so.

That became the trigger for my decision to visit places I had long kept at a respectful distance: Katsura Imperial Villa and Shugakuin Imperial Villa.

Until then, I had avoided them because I found the process of applying by postcard bothersome.
After all, when I was visiting Hawaii forty-seven times, my travels were always left to the whim of the wind.
Yet the critical feelings toward the Emperor that I had been made to hold, against my will, as a reader of Asahi Shimbun must also have played a role.

The driver told me that it was best to go to the office located within the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds.
If one had a foreign acquaintance who possessed a passport, it was possible to tour the villas even on the same day; if not, then the next day.
I frequently visited the Palace and knew the location of the office well, so I thought I would go there before long.

I visited the garden of Kyoto Imperial Palace, the garden of Sento Imperial Palace, Katsura Imperial Villa, and Shugakuin Imperial Villa, each in its season.

In that process, the perspective influenced by foolish and distorted Asahi Shimbun editorials, and the perspective indoctrinated by Asahi Shimbun’s Tokyo-centric, distorted worldview, dissipated like mist.

To put it bluntly, it would be more accurate to say that it vanished in an instant.

I boarded the Hankyu Limited Express from Umeda and arrived at Katsura Station.
As the appointed tour time was approaching, I took a taxi.
The moment I stepped out of the taxi, the foolish notions with which I had been indoctrinated by Asahi evaporated.
Even before passing through the gate of Katsura Imperial Villa—indeed, right at the entrance facing the public road—there already hung an atmosphere entirely unrelated to the ugliness of Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers, who remain in Tokyo, no more than yesterday’s New York, brandishing distorted, childish, and vicious ideologies.

I instantly thought of how many long years I had wasted.
I realized that truth existed here, and not in Tokyo.

I came to understand that at the foundation of the greatness of Japan and the Japanese people lay precisely this kind of presence, and the truth of the Emperor’s existence.

What it means to govern a nation—the presence of Katsura Imperial Villa, the architecture of the Palace, and the Palace gardens—taught this to me in an instant, I who am one of the geniuses produced by the postwar world.

That is why I wrote that the Emperor should reside in Kyoto and exist as Japan’s great star.

Strangely enough, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this view was exactly the same as the theory advanced by Umesao Tadao.

I envisioned a scene in which, while Japanese citizens or foreigners alike were touring these gardens, the Emperor or a member of the Imperial Family would suddenly appear, and a spontaneous, untainted, and uncalculated cheer would rise.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that what I envisioned and what Umesao Tadao argued were one and the same.

To be continued.