“The imperial ceremony”, Emperor Taisho enthronement commemorative postcard, Kyoto, 1917, at the Shishiden, the Ceremonial Hall of the Kyoto Imperial Palace where the court rituals to proclaim the Coronation were conducted. Coronation rites were held in the old imperial capital rather than the new capital, Tokyo, to uphold the imperial city’s traditional setting as the Former Seat of the Chrysanthemum Throne.
See also:
The Enthronement of Emperor Hirohito, 1928.
Grand Kyoto Coronation Exposition, Kyoto, 1928.
“Preparations had already begun for the coronation of the Emperor.
“…As in the case of the coronation of King George the Fifth of England, there was an unprecedented study of ancient forms and usages, with a view to carrying out the ceremony upon a more magnificent scale than had ever been seen before.
“The preparations were elaborate, and while even to a Western eye they were not lacking in a strange grandeur, their prodigious cost was probably their most impressive feature.
“Special Grand Military Maneuvers” commemorative postcard, Emperor Taisho, Osaka, 1914.
“When the Emperor left the Palace in Tokyo on November 6th, with a great procession , to travel down to Kyoto , he wore the uniform of generalissimo of the forces, and had a military escort; but in the procession was carried the family ark or shrine, the kashikodokoro, containing the Three Sacred Treasures — the Mirror, the Jewel, and the Sword, traditionally handed down from the times of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, ancestress of the Imperial House, to whom is dedicated the Grand Shrine at Ise.
“… The public ceremony of an imperial procession through the city was held on the 10th, and never in history had there been so many people in the old capital. An imperial procession in Japan has special peculiarities.
“Much attention is paid to physical altitude as implying social elevation … To sit on the floor before a superior is more respectful than to stand. Hence, when majesty rides through the street , all upper stories offer to the gaze only the blank stare of wooden shutter.
“Even a doorstep is an improper elevation; and tens of thousands of the Emperor’s loyal subjects sat on their heels in respectful silence on the matting which had been spread on the roads, and even bowed their heads, hardly daring to look, when the Emperor passed, the high-priest of an ancient faith, in a modern closed carriage.”
– In Japan in Recent Times: 1912-1926, by A. Morgan Young, 1929
Decorated streetcar, Emperor Taisho enthronement commemorative postcard, unknown artist, 1915.