On New Years Eve, 2009, the Imperial Household Agency released the annual pictures of the Imperial Family.
Gathered in a pastel, clean space with a low couch and a pale low table, the Emperor and his Wife were surrounded by their immediate family in a picture of harmonious family bliss. But this is just a highly constructed picture, a photograph taken on a stage somewhere inside the Palace. Released as part of the celebrations of a national holiday, this image of the Imperial family is a carefully constructed representation of ideal family that goes beyond the obvious PR role of working the Imperial Family into a ritual celebrated across the country. The young Prince, born in 2007 at the end of a controversy about the rules of succession, takes over the image and the attention of the family. Their gazes are pushed to the side, making him the center of interest. His older sisters are pushed behind the shoulders of the Emperor and Empress. The Crown Prince and Princess sit on the opposite side with their young daughter. This isn’t even all of Emperor Akihito’s children or official family members, yet it still claims to be a fair representation of the ‘whole’ Family.
The center of interest is changing in the visual language of the Imperial Family, and there are subtle power plays being enacted through the medium of appearances. What they look like, where they appear, and who sees them is a highly controlled matter in the hands of the Imperial Household Agency. Formally a powerful branch of the government and considered one of the Ministries, it is now just an agency that acts as an extension of the Prime Minister and the Diet to conduct all of the Imperial Family’s affairs. The only people who meet with the Imperial Family on a daily basis are those who work with them, politicians, and the immediate family. Reporters have little access to the Royal Personages outside of select clubs carefully policed by the IHA. In a situation so highly controlled, the individual members of the Imperial family become carefully screened symbols put on display. This runs counter to their identity as individuals. With little control over how or where they appear, the nature of the visual language that they participate in becomes less a question of personal choices, and more of the social and political currents that dictate how the IHA chooses to display them.
Take for instance the progression of the images of the Imperial Family as a unit. From the start, the definition of who is and is not part of the royal family, and how important they are, play an important role in who appears when, where, and how in photographs. Though the Imperial family still officially consists of the Emperor and the family line of his cousins, images of the Imperial family focus on the Emperor, Empress, their sons, and their sons’ wives and children. The image of the family is simplified, keeping the emphasis on those deemed most important and of interest. After the change in the Constitution in the 1940s, the Imperial family was restricted to those directly related to the Emperor by blood. All women who married outside of the Imperial family become commoners, moved out of the Imperial palace, and disappear from the imagery of the family entirely. Emperor Akihito’s only daughter, former Princess Sayako, went through this process when she married her current husband. The visual passage from member of the family into disappeared person had several steps. Though images of Sayako rarely place her in anything resembling a central role, often off to the side of her (more important) brothers who stand to inherit the throne, at this juncture she moved temporarily central. Newspapers released images of her officially leaving the Imperial family with IHA photographs of her in heavy, traditional kimono with several layers, matched with tranquil images of her and her husband walking tranquilly along.
After this point, she disappears from the visuality of the family. Her image is removed from the official genealogies and appearances, erased from the reality-building devices of the official photographs.
But to start with the Imperial family, how they appear in photographs shows a heavy influence from the styles and trends of other Royal families, particularly the British royals. Almost without exception, the members of the family are shown wearing pastels and carefully tailored clothing in a style reminiscent of rich tennis players or wealthy attendees of Harvard. It’s the gloss of the rich, who wear casual clothes from the best designers. There are two ideas being played with here. One is an idealized vision of the rich at ease. The royal family belongs to a certain tier or social group marked by the quality and style of clothing that they wear. This continues to separate them from the general populace, even as the fact they are wearing familiarly styled modern clothes allows the viewer to connect to them or view them as contemporary. At the same time, the color schemes common in the royal wardrobe retain a non-threatening, harmonious impression for the viewer. Nothing can be wrong with the smiling face of the Crown Prince, open and inviting, in his pastel sweater-vest taking a walk with his young daughter and wife.
The difference in what kind of color schemes of the Imperial family wears depends most upon the setting the photographs are taken in. Photographs released by the IHA of the Imperial family at rest, ease, or ostensibly inside the Palace grounds reflect this air of soft comfort, everything alright without strife in and idealized familial picture. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess are the focus of this kind of attention the most often. The family unit of the next Emperor of Japan receives a lot of photographic attention, while the second-oldest Prince and his family have remained relatively outside of these attentions until lately with their new son. The photographs of the Crown Prince and his family emphasize normal, ideal family activities. One such photo shows them playing with two akibas, the ideal family outing underneath the heavy weight of sakura trees. The symbols mobilized in this particular set of photos rely on certain ideas and associations with the component set pieces. The dogs they run with are akiba ken, one of the dog breeds developed within Japan. The setting is out of focus but essentially green, keeping them within the context of nature, especially sakura, with all the associations of spring and the national image of Japan they evoke. Even if they are wearing Western clothing, which has been a staple of Japanese life for the past century and thus not really an object at question here, they do wear clothing that matches the royal image common to the British Royals and others of rank. Thus, the IHA create in these carefully constructed images an ideal Japanese family landscape by playing partly on tropes of Japan as nature, and using “native” set pieces. No dachshund or boston terrier here, no matter how popular they may be in the media. Certainly everything has been carefully chosen in order to present the best symbolic image of ‘Japanese’ family.
This image of the ideal family unit has a long history in the more recent creation of the Imperial family. Older pictures of Emperor Hirohito and his family concentrate on this kind of family set piece. The evolution of what kind of family image the IHA and the government want the Imperial family to present can be best followed in the famous New Years Eve photographs released every year. Other then coronations or marriages, these pictures are taken in supposedly informal settings, with relatively informal clothing compared to the full regalia, and are consistent with most of the Imperial family present. The existence of these kinds of photographs to begin with are something of a curiousity, considering that in the time of Emperor Hirohito before the World War there was a sacridity to the image of the Emperor that matches the closed access to his and his family’s presence . Photographs of the Emperor were used in abstract ways in schools to create a sense of allegence to a central figure for the war effort. The New Years images did not start until after the end of World War II, after the Occupation depowered the position of the Emperor into a symbolic role.
Comparing them to earlier full-family portraits conflates their use, but serves a purpose in studying how different symbols and meanings have become prioritiszed over time when combined with the royal visage. Going back to Emperor Meiji, the royal family portrait has a very different feel then that seen today. As a print, this particular image makes fabrication even easier, occurring before the major spread of photography. The Emperor is dressed in heavy military garb, thickly studded with golden medals, evoking not only wealth of military strength. He’s portrayed here as a military leader, standing stiff and composed next to the rest of his family. The setting they stand in is relatively plain, leaving the details submissive to the heavy detail of the costumes. The costumes are made even more important in this way as symbols of wealth, rank, and the identity of the costumed. The clearest contrast in the clothing seems to be the children versus the adults, who continue to wear more traditional court clothing and hair styles compared to their parents, rendered more as small miniatures of the adults then with a child’s proportions. Doll-like, they stand perfect and one display. Personality is played down for a distance between the viewer and the viewed, emphasizing the distinction between the plane of the looker and the looked at while adding an aloofness that lifts the importance of the subjects above that of the viewer. They exist on a level equal to the foreign dignitary powers that Japan, at the time, were trying to surpass in terms of industry and military style, while also displaying connections to the traditional court costume of their country.
In a way, this implies that the ‘old’ style of the court is only meant for children. Growing up leads to ‘adult’ style, in this case, western dress heavily based off of Western and Russian styles. This falls in line with the already existing discourse of the era, when Orientalism heavy-handedly guided the way politics contextualized Japan as a child-like or inferior country trying to ‘grow up’ to match the rest of the world. Another print of the same Emperor, slightly earlier, also depends heavily on gold printing and the heavily detailed stylization of the costume, emphasizing the weight of wealth and the distance of the royal visage. Though the Emperor’s son, here, also wears his father’s dark uniform, this also emphasizes the fact that he’s the next in line. The visual connection between father and son strengthen the sense of a direct dynasty line in the face of an infamy for trouble having sons. The images not only work to show the country literally clothed in the advancement of Western style, but to impress the wealth and military strength of the leadership of the country. These distant faces are meant to be obeyed, turned away from, or uneasy to meet.
Compare this to a much later portrait, this one of the New Years photographs, from sometime around the 1980s, judging by the apparent ages of the now-Crown Prince and Emperor Akihito. The family sits informally around pale-wooded tables on a background of cream, the only sign of quality the style of the chairs, the frame of the picture, and perhaps the style of dress. Though all the participants are dressed formally, this is a very different kind of formal. The formal style matches more closely those of the wealthy businessman and the new kind of political body adapting suits instead of militarized uniforms. The young boys are, likely, in clothes not unlike their formal school-clothes. The image is not straight on, resembling more an incidental family picture taken as a whim. Put together, this is a very different view of family. The flat separating plane between the viewer and the family continues between these two very different eras of the Imperial family, but the attitudes within them have changed. The children are bright and active, clearly part of the family scene rather then pushed to the side or foreground. The family acknowledges each other in a sense of some kind of dynamic. The distant visages have cracked, allowing a smile or two, though it is all very subdued.
Most significant are where the woman stand in the room. All attention focuses on the young boys, weighing the picture towards the Emperor and the then-Crown Prince Akihito. The woman stand behind the men or separated off from them in their own spaces, but are also the ones other then the children and the Crown Prince displaying the most emotion. The hierarchy is very definitive here, with the second-prince placed behind the line of interest, obscured literally by the other personages in the room. The image tries to construct what could be construed as a normal familial scene, but the setting is so purposefully clear, and the seating so purposefully arrange, the lie is as clear as the window-box display they have been set inside. The images very self-consciously set them on display as another ideal family unit.
Skip forward to 2007. Crown Prince Akihito has become Emperor. His two sons are married, but this is the fateful year of the birth of Prince Hisahito. Arriving on the coattails of a controversy of succession that is part of a growing issue within the Imperial family household, this image creates a strange juxtaposition of figures. The only wives and husbands sitting together, unlike most images available from this set, are the Emperor and Empress. In a way, there’s a rippling effect in the hierarchy implicit in the arrangements. Going out from the center, the most important figures—the Emperor and Empress—are central, with the next in line sitting next to them, with the third sitting even further out. Hisahito is implicit in this line of succession by sitting as he does as part of the same plane as the adults. The three girls sit with the Crown Prince’s daughter in the middle, further privileging this sense of inheritance, but their kneeling position just emphasizes the youth of the girls. Despite one of them being nearly 15 at the time of this picture, they are still dressed in simple dresses and pastel colors that evoke youth when compared to their father’s dark clothes.
The family smiles at the viewer, inviting them in. The photograph tries very hard to create this non-threatening, inviting space while emphasizing the ranks of the individuals involved, and the diorama-feel to the composition. The girls still resemble dolls, but instead of ningyou, they are English girl’s dolls with their white collars and lambs-leg sleeves. The women, however, are wearing suit dresses.
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