At a press conference to mark his 68th birthday last December, Emperor Akihito surprised reporters by saying that he felt a strong "kinship" with Korea.
The "kinship" itself wasn't what surprised them, only the fact that he mentioned it. The comment was reported positively in South Korea and may help repair the latest rift between the two countries due to the still touchy textbook issue. Ironically, but at the same time not surprisingly, the comment went almost unreported in the media here.
Quoted in this newspaper Tuesday, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, the only vernacular daily to discuss the ramifications of the comment, said that most of the Japanese media were simply following the wishes of the Imperial Household Agency, who preferred to keep a lid on it.
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