Japan Emperor, Empress Arrive in Fukushima for Their Final Tree-Planting Event

June 10, 2018

Koriyama, Fukushima Pref.- Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko arrived in Fukushima Prefecture on Saturday chiefly to attend an annual national tree-planting festival in the northeastern Japan prefecture.

They will also view progress in the reconstruction work in areas affected by the March 2011 powerful earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear accident.

Their first participation in the annual event was in May 1989, after the Emperor acceded to the throne in January that year. The tree-planting festival in the year took place in the western prefecture of Tokushima.

The 2018 event, to be held in the Fukushima city of Minamisoma on Sunday, will be the last for the couple, as the Emperor is set to abdicate at the end of April next year.

A hoe and other wooden items to be used by the couple in Sunday's event are made of cedar trees that grew from seeds sown by Emperor Hirohito, the father of the current Emperor and posthumously known as Emperor Showa, and late Empress Nagako at the 21st tree-planting festival, held in the Fukushima town of Inawashiro in May 1970.

On Saturday afternoon, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will visit public housing in the city of Iwaki in Fukushima to hold talks with residents who have been evacuated due to the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, damaged by the 2011 tsunami.

The couple will stay the night at Spa Resort Hawaiians in Iwaki, where they will watch a performance by "hula girls," regarded as a symbol of postdisaster reconstruction.

On Sunday, the Emperor and the Empress are slated to move to Minamisoma using the Joban Expressway. They will pass through a no-go zone, set after the nuclear accident, on their way to the city.

They will attend the tree-planting festival after offering prayers for victims of the natural disaster at a monument erected in the Shidoke district in Minamisoma.

On Monday, the couple will move to the Haragama district in the city of Soma to lay flowers at a monument established there for disaster victims. They visited the district two months after the disaster.

They will then visit a wholesale fisheries market in Soma, which was reconstructed after the disaster, and a memorial hall in the city of Fukushima for the late composer Yuji Koseki, a native of the capital of Fukushima Prefecture.

They will return to Tokyo later on Monday.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have repeatedly visited Fukushima and two nearby prefectures--Iwate and Miyagi--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. The three prefectures are part of the Tohoku northeastern region.

The Emperor was hospitalized due to bronchial pneumonia in November 2011.

He had a heart bypass surgery in February 2012. On March 11 that year, only a week after he left hospital following the surgery, Emperor Akihito attended a government-sponsored first-anniversary memorial service for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami.

With less than a year to go until the Emperor steps down, the Fukushima trip may be the couple's final opportunity to visit disaster-hit areas in Tohoku before the abdication.

However, an aide to the Imperial couple said there could still be a chance that they will visit Tohoku again before the abdication because they are always thinking about people affected by the disaster. Jiji Press