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TOKYO -- The first postwar visit to South Korea by a Japanese emperor
is still up in the air due to a combination of politics, soccer bureaucracy,
national sensibilities and television coverage broadcast rights, sources familiar with such a
trip have said.
The latest episode in imperial soccer diplomacy was the cancellation
by Prince Takamado--Japanese Emperor Akihito's cousin--of a trip to Seoul
planned to begin April 26.
Prince Takamado is the honorary president of the Football Association
of Japan and during the three-day visit he was to see a South Korea-Japan
soccer match and view venues for the 2002 World Cup finals.
The opening match in the final series--it is the first time a World
Cup championship will be co-hosted-- will be held in the Seoul Olympic
Stadium, site of the l988 Olympiad, and the final match will be held in
Yokohama's new 128,000-seat stadium.
Given the popularity of soccer worldwide, television audiences are
expected to number in the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.
The 46-year-old prince had also planned to meet officials from South
Korean soccer associations.
Sources said the cancellation was made to avoid giving the impression
that Emperor Akihito will visit South Korea in the near future. Even
support for such a visit is ambiguous with ramifications extending to
North Korea.
Most Japanese, according to polls, agree that an eventual Imperial
visit is likely to help cool entrenched animosities from 35 years of
colonial rule of Korea by Japan, 1910 to 1945.
Seoul has invited t he Emperor--the eldest son of the late Emperor
Showa, known in the West as Hirohito, and a cousin of Prince Takamado--to
visit South Korea before the international soccer tournament.
The Emperor and Empress were scheduled to visit South Korea on behalf of
then Emperor's father, Emperor Showa, in October 1986, but the trip was
canceled in August that year, reportedly because the Empress was
suffering from an illness.
Some observers believed the latest trip was called off because
opposition political parties and Christian groups in South Korea were
against it. In Japan, certain factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party expressed opposition as did nationalists and "ultra-rightists."
Such a visit is seen by some diplomatic analysts as a complicating
factor in negotiations toward normalization of relations between Japan and
North Korea, now underway.
Finally, there was disagreement between Seoul and Tokyo over television
broadcast rights on the Prince's and ultimately the Emperor's visit, both
of which are seen is in Asia as a extremely important events.
Seoul and Tokyo have long discussed visits to South Korea by Emperor
Showa's relatives, as a means of improving ties, but little progress has
been realized.
Critics say an Imperial visit is part of President Kim Dae-jung's
grand script--the North-South summit and eventual Seoul-Pyongyang
rapprochement are others--toward his winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kim's wish is that he and the Japanese Emperor attend both the opening
match in Seoul and the final in Yokohama. Such a plan has been discussed
but not finalized.
One of Emperor Showa's nephews, Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, became the
only member of the Imperial Family to visit South Korea for a postwar
friendship event when he traveled to Seoul in October 1990.
The American angle in this story s that U.S. Supreme Commander of the
Occupation, Gen.. Douglas MacArthur, spared Hirohito's life in the Tokyo
war crimes trials and allowed him to remain as Japan's sovereign--and to
remain at the center of many controversies, such as Korea-Japan relations.
Hirohito
died in 1989 and was succeeded by his son, Emperor Akihito.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.