Theme for the New Year's Poetry Reading(2024):WA(HARMONY)

His Majesty the Emperor
Seeing the smiles of the people
I meet during my many journeys
Throughout the country
Fills my heart with peace(Background of the poem)
Their Imperial Majesties the Emperor and the Empress have visited almost every
prefecture in Japan, including the period when they were the Crown Prince andPrincess. (His Majesty the Emperor has visited all 47 prefectures. Her Majesty theEmpress has visited 45 prefectures including 2 prefectures visited online.) Since thebeginning of the Reiwa period, Their Majesties the Emperor and the Empress together
have visited 28 prefectures including online visits.
During each visit, Their Majesties were delighted to receive a warm welcome fromthe local people. His Majesty the Emperor composed this poem expressing his feelingof peace when he saw the smiles of the people they met in every place.
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Her Majesty the Empress
How moved I was to read
My daughter's deep feelings for peace
After her first visit
To Hiroshima(Background of the poem)
Her Imperial Highness Princess Aiko, the daughter of Their Imperial Majesties theEmperor and the Empress, visited Hiroshima for the first time when she participated inher school trip in May during her third year in junior high school. In Hiroshima, Princess
Aiko visited the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and,realising how important peace is, her wish for peace grew deeper. She wrote about thisexperience and expressed her deep feelings for peace in her composition upon graduationfrom Gakushuin Girls’ Junior High School.
As Their Imperial Majesties the Emperor and the Empress always wish for peace andhope that sentiments toward the importance of peace be inherited by the next generation
and beyond, they were touched by Princess Aiko’s graduation composition. Her Majesty
the Empress composed this poem to express such warm feelings.

His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Akishino
Reflected on the surfaceof Lake Towada in the early morning,
the autumn leaves
on the surrounding trees
whose colors have emerged.
(Background of the poem)
In the autumn, forty-some years ago, His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Akishino
paid a visit to the Tohoku Region. On that occasion he took an early morning walk by
Lake Towada, enjoying the sight of the limpid waters of the lake and the crimson
foliage on the nearby trees. The Crown Prince has written about that scenery in theabove poem.
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Her Imperial Highness Crown Princess Akishino
The atmosphere in the stadium softenedwhen the children called out,
with enthusiastic cheers,
to the athletes assembled in Kagoshima.
(Background of the poem)
Last October Their Imperial Highnesses Crown Prince and Crown Princess Akishino
visited Kagoshima Prefecture to attend the “National Sports Festival for People with aDisability.” During the opening ceremony, held under a fine clear autumn sky, the local
children in the stadium stands called out the name of each prefecture and municipality
as the teams passed in front of them and shouted “kibaiyanse”, the word in Kagoshima
dialect for “gambatte,” the Japanese term of encouragement. The children greeted theathletes with enthusiastic cheering, accompanied by the sounds and the visual
movements of the brightly colored stick balloons they waved. The Crown Princess
wrote the above poem as she recalled how the mood in the stadium softened at the sightof the children cheering.

Her Imperial Highness Princess Aiko
Surviving centuries of hardship
The words of Waka poems
Touch my heart today(Background of the poem)
Her Imperial Highness Princess Aiko composed this Waka poem to express herfascination with old Waka poetry. She entered the Department of Japanese Language
and Literature in the Faculty of Letters at Gakushuin University in April 2020, andbecame a fourth year student last April. Princess Aiko has been impressed tolearn in her studies that Waka poems composed between the 10th and 13th centuries
have survived nearly one thousand years even through some turbulent times, and havebeen passed on to contemporary people.