Saturday, January 27, 2007




Thought I'd go with a Bridges of Imperial Palace theme while I digress into attacking the Imperial family. In my largely uninformed opinion, this has to be the wimpiest royal family anywhere in the world. Their giant claim to fame is they are the world's oldest royal family, by a long shot, since they've been ruling Japan pretty much since there's been a Japan, while other ruling families take over and get overthrown in the general tussle of ruling. But the way they've survived is to be almost invisible. Almost invariably for the first thousand years, the shoguns who nominally served them actually ran the country and ignored and humiliated them. And the emperors' response was to sit in their gardens, making tea and writing haikus. Keep in mind that the Japanese believed their emperors were gods at the time, which should have given them some leverage. They have a brief flash of willpower in the late 1800's when the shogun is finally overthrown and the emperor moves to Tokyo, but he's promptly coopted by the military and ignored again, albeit in a nicer palace. Then after the second world war, the military is wiped away, so it's hard to see who's going to boss the emperors around now, but believe it or not, the bureaucracy takes over. The Imperial Household Agency, basically the emperors' servants, totally dictates what the emperor does and whether he's allowed out of his palace, they even gave the current princess a nervous breakdown because they kept pushing her to have a boy. Most husbands wouldn't tolerate the servants giving their wives a breakdown, but not in this family. Anyway, I do think the bridges are pretty.

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