Japanese emperor’s visit recalls ’53 jaunt

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This article was published 02/07/2009 (6140 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HE is set to begin his first trip to this country in more than half a century. And if Japanese Emperor Akihito spends a moment during Friday’s flight from Tokyo to Ottawa trying to recall his 1953 visit to postwar Canada, it’s doubtful the exploding flashbulb, the unscheduled snooze or even the lost pants will come to mind.

Such were the trivial highlights of Akihito’s two-week journey across Canada 56 years ago as Japan’s then-crown prince, a 19-year-old heir to his nation’s "Chrysanthemum Throne" en route to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

But for all of the banal photo ops and nap-worthy factory tours endured by the "slightly bewildered" young prince (as one Canadian reporter put it at the time), the future emperor’s 1953 Canadian visit was as much an odyssey of courage as an exercise in stock diplomacy.

By contemporary accounts a "shy," "nervous" and often "weary" traveller in a "strange land," Akihito’s first visit to Canada was carried out under intense press scrutiny and with the memory of a brutal war against Japan still fresh in the minds of the host country’s citizens.

As the teenage face of his nation, sent abroad among the countries that helped bring about Japan’s defeat, Akihito’s tour was aimed at helping heal the wounds of a war barely over — and, for many physically and psychologically scarred veterans, not really over yet.

Akihito’s father — Emperor Hirohito — had symbolized for wartime Canada the Japanese peril facing Allied armies on the Pacific front.

In 1953, the peace treaty formalizing Japan’s postwar status as a democratic nation was only a year old.

Louis St. Laurent, prime minister at the time of the young prince’s visit to Canada, remarked during a welcoming address in the House of Commons that "the history of the relations between Canada and Japan were darkened by heavy shadows during the tragic years of war."

While those shadows still lingered in 1953, St. Laurent voiced hope that Akihito’s presence in Canada was "a happy omen" that the "repugnant" conflict was now "something of the past," and that the world could begin restoring "the intimate feelings of all the peoples of the nations" involved in the Second World War.

Yet nerves were clearly taut among Akihito’s security detail during his Canadian visit.

While touring a Gatineau, Que., paper mill near Ottawa, Akihito was apparently swarmed by bodyguards when a photographer’s flashbulb popped.

During an earlier trip to a Niagara Falls hydro plant, though, the prince’s impromptu 20-minute nap in a limousine between stops generated a headline for the Canadian press corps, its members clearly searching for surprises in the tightly scheduled, heavily stage-managed royal visit.

Earlier this week, in a statement issued in Japan about his upcoming return trip to Canada, a 75-year-old Akihito — emperor since his father’s death in 1989 — recalled the friendliness of Canadians, particularly those of Japanese ancestry, who attended his 1953 appearances.

"Fifty-six years have passed since then, and I am much delighted that I will be visiting Canada once again."

 

— Canwest News Service