A close aide to Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Showa, criticized the government for staging an "entirely incongruous" and costly ceremony in 1990 to proclaim the enthronement of Emperor Akihito, according to comments in his diary obtained by Kyodo News.
The late chamberlain Shinobu Kobayashi also wrote about his "fears" that the enthronement ceremony, "held for the first time under the new Constitution, might be used as a precedent for holding the ceremony in the future."
The discovery of criticism by an Imperial household insider comes as the government prepares to perform a series of Imperial succession rites related to Emperor Akihito's abdication and his son's enthronement in 2019.