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The occupation saw a massive scaling back of the Imperial Household. At the end of the war, it had more than 6,000 employees; today, the IHA has 1,100. Once an independent body directly involved in state affairs, it's now an arm of the Prime Minister's office with no policymaking authority. Once one of the nation's richest entities, today it makes do with a budget of $260 million a year. More than 1,000 of its employees are considered omote, or "outside the house." Led by the Grand Steward, they serve as drivers, gardeners, teamsters, cooks and white-collar bureaucrats. Positions that are oku or "inside the house," led by the Head Chamberlain, refer to the direct caretakers of the royal family, such as ladies-in-waiting and butlers?jobs that were traditionally passed down in families for generations.
Even though it's smaller now, the IHA still wields significant power. It keeps a tight grip on the royal family's contact with the outside world and controls the authorized version of imperial?and so Japanese?history. "Even the Prime Minister does not speak directly to the Emperor without going through the IHA first," says Hakubun Shimomura, a Liberal Democratic Party Diet member who helped organize a petition against Koizumi's panel recommending female imperial succession. The IHA rarely allows any unscripted media access to the royals and doesn't hide its aversion to the press. In 1990, Toshiaki Nakayama, a photographer with the news wire Kyodo, released a photo of Princess Kiko brushing aside Prince Akishino's hair. It was one of the most tender and endearing royal shots ever seen?but, says Nakayama, the IHA deemed it inappropriate and tried to suppress its wide distribution. Likewise, the agency refused for many years to disclose such innocuous details as what dogs and cats the royals kept as pets at the Imperial Palace.
Such reflexive secrecy is par for the course, says Shinji Yamashita, a former head of the agency's p.r. department. (It's typical of the IHA that one of its p.r. managers would feel empowered to speak publicly about the agency only after he's retired.) Unlike most government bodies, says Yamashita, the IHA's priority is to make sure nothing ever happens. "Ever since the war," he says, "the aim has been to cut a low profile, to go unnoticed." He adds with a laugh, "The IHA knows it has a reputation for being shadowy, but it's not true. We are normal people?amiable, friendly, kind." As individuals, that may be so. But as an institution, the IHA has been blamed for cruel meddling. Exhibit A: the saga of Naruhito's wife, Masako. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Masako Owada was a rising star at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs before their marriage in 1993. Beautiful, multilingual and confident, she seemed the harbinger of a modern, energetic royal era. But she failed at her first traditional duty: to bear a prince. Princess Aiko, born in 2001, remains the couple's only child. In the eyes of its critics, the IHA was responsible for placing intolerable pressure on Masako to produce a male heir. In 2003, she succumbed to depression, withdrawing from official duties to which she hasn't yet fully returned. In May 2004, Naruhito revealed his resentment. At a press conference, he said his wife had "completely exhausted herself" trying to adapt to royal life, adding, "there were developments that denied Princess Masako's career."
Widely interpreted as an attempt to loosen the IHA's grip on his family's affairs, this rare moment of candor and reproach stunned the nation. TV networks replayed his remarks for weeks, and commentators parsed every inflection, gesture, blink or raised eyebrow for added levels of meaning or pathos. The IHA said it would work harder to attend to the Crown Princess's unhappiness, but Naruhito's outburst failed to effect much change. Naruhito and Masako gained a sympathetic reception from the public, but Akishino called his brother's comments "regrettable," and Naruhito later apologized for "causing trouble for the Emperor and Empress." Despite the Crown Couple's well-publicized fertility troubles and the fact that Masako is now 42, the IHA has made no bones about its expectation that they keep trying to have a son. After a 1999 miscarriage, the agency severely restricted Masako's travel schedule, hoping she could undergo more fertility treatments. In 2003, the previous Grand Steward, Toshio Yuasa, was blunt. "Frankly speaking," he said, "I want them to have another child." To this day, the public appears to want her to keep trying, too. When Naruhito and Masako recently took Aiko on their first-ever family vacation, the media and the public heaped scorn upon them for frivolously enjoying themselves while neglecting their official duties.
To a degree unimaginable elsewhere, the IHA controls its charges' lives. Unlike Britain's Prince Charles, who has his own interests and pursuits, including an enormously successful charity, Japan's royals have virtually no say over their calendars. "They don't get to choose where they go or what they do," says Yamashita. "They could never be allowed to favor one charity over another." Indeed, he maintains, it's important that the royal family does not have opinions: "They cannot say they like apples, because if they did, what would the orange growers say?" In significant ways, the Japanese royals, by design, still barely inhabit the earthly realm: they have no surname, no personal wealth or possessions, no passports and few, if any, legal rights. Can they divorce? Can they abdicate? Can they sue? Nobody really knows. Says Akira Asada of Kyoto University: "The royals aren't permitted to live like normal human beings. They are forced to live in a miserable situation, stripped of many basic human rights."