Emperor Naruhito, who turns 62 today, is known for his compassionate and sociable personality, as well as his proficiency in English, as the first emperor to have studied outside Japan.
Born in 1960, the eldest son of Emperor Emeritus Akihito and Empress Emerita Michiko, the emperor made his first overseas trip to Australia in 1974. After he graduated from the Department of History in the Faculty of Letters of Gakushuin University, he traveled to the United Kingdom in 1983 and spent two years living in a dormitory and studying at Oxford University’s Merton College. He studied the history of transport on the River Thames, and his interest in issues associated with water and waterways has continued today, as can be seen in his involvement in the United Nations’ Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, where he served as honorary president from 2007 to 2015.
In the emperor’s recently published book, “Suiunshi Kara Sekai no Mizu e” (“From the History of Water Transport to the World’s Water”), which is a compilation of the speeches he made on different occasions over the past three decades, he insisted further efforts are required to make sanitary facilities accessible by all people and address global warming and natural disasters. He also delivered a 25-minute address in English at a U.N. session on water and disasters held online in June last year and spoke about the importance of passing on the records and stories of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami to future generations.
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