Emperor, Empress Attend Their Last National Tree-Planting Event

June 10, 2018

Minamisoma, Fukushima Pref.- Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko attended an annual national tree-planting festival, the last such event for the couple, in the tsunami-hit city of Minamisoma in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, on Sunday.

The ceremony was held at a site in the city's Shidoke coastal district, where trees are being planted for preventing tsunami damage.

At the beginning of the 69th national tree-planting festival, the Imperial couple and other participants offered silent prayers for victims of the March 2011 giant tsunami triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that mainly struck Fukushima and other prefectures in the Tohoku northeastern region.

Then, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko planted saplings of six tree species, including Japanese black pine and Japanese red pine, and sowed seeds of four tree species.

The couple watched saplings of Chinese hackberry planted at the site. The hackberry saplings were grown from seeds collected at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and passed from Nagano Prefecture to Toyama Prefecture and then to Fukushima as a symbol of postdisaster reconstruction. Nagano and Toyama, both central Japan, hosted the 67th tree-planting festival in 2016 and the 68th festival in 2017, respectively.

This year's tree-planting festival will be the last such event taking place with the participation of the current Emperor and Empress, with Emperor Akihito set to step down from the throne at the end of April 2019.

The next annual festival, to be held in the central prefecture of Aichi in May 2019, will be attended by current Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako after they become new Emperor and Empress at the start of that month.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have attended the tree-planting festival every year since the event in May 1989, months after the Emperor took to the throne in January that year, following the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Showa.

Emperor Akihito will be the first Japanese Emperor to abdicate in about 200 years.

Earlier on Sunday, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, who started a three-day tour of Fukushima on Saturday, moved to Minamisoma from the city of Iwaki using the Joban Expressway.

While traveling on the highway, the car carrying the couple passed a no-go zone set after the severe accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant knocked out by the March 2011 disaster.

The vehicle slowed down when it passed a point 5.8 kilometers from the damaged plant. The power station was not seen from that point, but the Emperor and the Empress intently looked in the direction of the plant, according to officials of the Imperial Household Agency.

The couple stopped over at a toll facility on the expressway in the town of Hirono and held talks with residents of Hirono and the town of Naraha.

"I hope your town will become livelier," Empress Michiko told Airi Nemoto, 17, a third-grade student at Futaba Future High School in Hirono.

"I want you to help brighten up the town of Naraha," the Empress told 14-year-old Kosuke Aota, a third-grader at Naraha Junior High School.

In Minamisoma, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko paid their respects also at a monument bearing the names of 25 victims of the March 2011 tsunami in the Shidoke district.

On Monday, the Emperor and the Empress visited the Haragama coastal district in the city of Soma for the first time in seven years and laid flowers at a monument with the names of 207 disaster victims from Haragama and nearby areas, including the Obama district in the same city. The couple visited the Haragama district two months after the quake and tsunami.

The Empress had a fever of 38.1 degrees Celsius early on Monday morning, apparently due to fatigue from the long trip, but paid the floral tribute as planned despite the rain.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have repeatedly visited Fukushima, and Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, all of which were hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami.

The ongoing trip is their sixth to Fukushima since the 2011 disaster. They have visited Miyagi and Iwate six and three times, respectively. Jiji Press