Royals to join Instagram with eye on UK troubles

Move may be bid to avoid kind of frenzy that engulfed Princess of Wales

Japan’s monarchy will soon enter the social media space with a new Instagram account, in a move seen as giving the Imperial Household Agency control over its narratives following the online woes of the British royal family.

The Japanese imperial family’s official Instagram account is due to go live next month, with media observers agreeing the timing is notable given the frenzy surrounding Britain’s Princess of Wales before and after her announcement about her cancer diagnosis last Saturday.

The agency – widely regarded as the power behind the Japanese throne – may also have learned from a local media frenzy in 2021 over the wedding of former princess Mako, niece of Emperor Naruhito, and Kei Komuro, a commoner, the observers said.

Japan’s tabloids went into lurid details over the couple’s courtship, Komuro’s repeated failures to pass the bar examinations in New York, his divorced mother’s former relationships and questions about money provided by one of her former boyfriends to pay his university fees.

“I think the palace learned a lot from that experience,” said Garren Mulloy, professor of international relations at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo.

“The story was so unusual and had so many elements that just kept the story going for the tabloids that it became like a 12-part television drama,” he said.

“But now I am sure they are looking at the British royal family and the nightmare they have had to endure over the last few weeks,” he said. “On the plus side, I do not think the Japanese media or social media will get as bad as it has been in the UK, but they will be watching that as the worst-case scenario.”

In the weeks before the Princess of Wales announced her diagnosis, conspiracy theories had run wild about her disappearance from the public eye since she entered hospital in January for abdominal surgery. Online claims ranged from the princess being terminally ill to a body double appearing in her place.

The Imperial Household Agency appears to hope that a carefully curated social media presence would enable the monarchy to release information on its own timetable and get ahead of any bad news.

“I think the agency wants to have some sort of agency over social media coverage of the imperial family, rather than leaving it to the conspiracy theorists and the lunatics who populate these platforms,” Mulloy said. “They want to be able to shape the narratives before the speculation starts.”

Focusing on a single platform was a smart move, Mulloy said, since Instagram allows comments to be turned off in posts. X, formerly known as Twitter, would have been a far more difficult platform, he added.

Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Eniwa, Hokkaido, said that a wellmanaged social media presence was likely to be a positive development for the imperial family.

“For decades, in effect since the end of the war, they have been trying to show how the imperial family is a key part of the nation and our society so this is another way of communicating with people and getting that message across,” he said.

Watanabe expects the

“carefully controlled” account to prevent people from commenting. “It is important they do that because failing to do so would just give anti-monarchists or those on the far left a place to post their complaints.”

Such control could also help the Japanese royal family shield its account from being used as a platform by other nationals to criticise Tokyo’s policies.

“Social media could be used by people in other countries to complain about historical issues or other problems, in the same way that Chinese social media users and the government there have used it to spread rumours about the treated water that is being released from the Fukushima nuclear power plant,” he said.

Watanabe said he hoped the British royal family’s recent unsavoury online experience would not be repeated in Japan.

“I just hope that Japanese society is more gentle than other recent cases we have seen and do respect the fact that even the imperial family needs to have a private side.”

I am sure they are looking at the British royal family and the nightmare they have had to endure over the last few weeks GARREN MULLOY, ACADEMIC