Most British people who watched Prince Andrew’s cringeworthy interview with Emily Maitlis this month will have done so with a certain amount of disbelief. But for Japanese observers, the spectacle of a crown prince being asked awkward questions about his private life by a forensic interviewer would have been totally incomprehensible.
The Japanese royal family doesn’t really do big royal scandals. It’s not because embarrassments never occur, or that individual members aren’t prone to all the usual human failings, it’s just that the institution as a whole is much better protected, the media far more carefully regulated, and the public has significantly less appetite for juicy tidbits of royal gossip.
The Japanese royals are ‘managed’, which effectively means controlled by the notoriously all-powerful IHA (Imperial Household Agency) – a small army of civil servants who operate independently of government. They draw up the royal family’s schedules, write their scripts, advise them on everything from choice of clothes to choice of life partners, and generally keep a beady-eyed watch on the royal family’s every waking move.
The IHA extends almost as much control over the media.
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