TOKYO: Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako waved and smiled from an open car in a motorcade marking his enthronement Sunday before hundreds of thousands of delighted well-wishers who cheered, waved small flags and took photos from both sides of packed sidewalks.
Security was extremely tight with police setting up 40 checkpoints leading to the area. Selfie sticks, bottles and banners — and even shouting — were not allowed inside the restricted zone. Residents in high-rise apartments along the road were advised not to look down from their windows or balconies.
Naruhito succeeded his father Akihito on May 1 following his abdication, and formally ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in a palace ceremony last month.
The parade started from the Imperial Palace with the Kimigayo national anthem played by the marching band.
Naruhito, wearing a tail coat decorated with medals and carrying a brimmed hat, and Masako, in an off-white long dress and a tiara, kept waving from a Toyota Century convertible. The car was decorated with the chrysanthemum emblems and the emperor’s flag during the half-hour motorcade on the 4.6-kilometer route from the palace to the Akasaka imperial residence in the soft afternoon sun.
Naruhito, sitting on the right side on the slightly raised backseat, constantly turned his head to the right and left, responding to the people cheering from the opposite side of the street as the motorcade slowly moved at a jogger’s speed, led by a fleet of police motorbikes.
The parade was postponed from the original October date due to the recent typhoon that left more than 90 dead and tens of thousands of homes flooded or damaged.
Thousands of people had lined up at checkpoints hours before the parade, trying to secure their place to get the best possible view of the royal couple.
The parade was the first since Naruhito and Masako’s marriage in June 1993, just three years after their parents celebrated their enthronement in a Rolls Royce.
Naruhito and Masako have been warmly welcomed by the public. Many Japanese were especially impressed by the couple freely conversing with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump during their visit weeks after Naruhito’s succession in May, according to palace watchers.
There are expectations that Naruhito, the first emperor with a college degree who also studied abroad, and his Harvard-educated wife Masako, will internationalize the imperial household.
Naruhito, who studied at Oxford, is a historian, a viola player and an expert on water transport. Masako, a former diplomat, has struggled for more than a decade and had largely withdrawn from public appearances until recently. She developed “adjustment disorder” after giving birth to the couple’s only child, Princess Aiko, and facing pressure to produce a boy in Japan’s monarchy, which allows only male heirs.
Despite concerns about her health and skepticism over her ability to fulfil even part of hugely popular former Empress Michiko’s work, Masako has been seen in good health and in smiles as she attended most of her duties recently.
Opinion polls show public support and a sense of friendliness to the royal family have increased over the past three decades, owing largely to Naruhito’s parents’ effort to bring what used to be the aloof palace closer to the people.
Emperor Naruhito greets public in Japan parade marking enthronement
Emperor Naruhito greets public in Japan parade marking enthronement
- Security was extremely tight with police setting up 40 checkpoints leading to the area
- The parade was the first since Naruhito and Masako’s marriage in June 1993
NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February
- The 98-meter rocket began its 1.6 kph creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak
- The six-kilometer trek could take until nightfall
CAPE CANAVERAL, USA: NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.
The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek could take until nightfall.
Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.
Weighing in at 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms), the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.
The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.
“This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.
Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyzes and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.
They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.
NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date. Depending on how the demo goes, “that will ultimately lay out our path toward launch,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said on Friday.
The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.
