📍Tokyo Imperial Palace, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
1993 – 2020“Akihito was born in 1933, the eldest son of Emperor Hirohito. During the Second World War he was evacuated from Tokyo, and after Japan's defeat he was tutored by an American Quaker, Elizabeth Gray Vining, who introduced him to Western ideas and broadened his outlook. In 1959 he married Michiko Shōda, the first commoner to marry an heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. He became emperor in 1989, and in December 1993 he and Empress Michiko moved into the newly built Fukiage Palace, in the wooded Fukiage Garden of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The palace grounds became the setting of a quieter, more personal style of monarchy. Akihito was a serious marine biologist who studied gobies, small fish of rivers and coasts, and published dozens of scientific papers, and he kept up his research within the palace. Each spring he planted rice in the palace paddy, and each autumn he harvested it, keeping alive an ancient ritual. Empress Michiko continued the tradition of raising silkworms on the palace grounds. Together they raised their three children much more closely than previous imperial couples had. From this home they travelled across Japan and the world, comforting survivors of disasters, kneeling to speak with evacuees at eye level, and visiting the sites of wartime suffering to express remorse. In 2016 Akihito told the nation that age was making it hard to fulfil his duties, and in 2019 he became the first emperor in two centuries to abdicate. In March 2020, he and Michiko moved out of Fukiage Palace to the Takanawa residence, and later to the Sento Imperial Palace, leaving behind a home where a modern, compassionate idea of the monarchy had taken shape.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today