Annals of Emperor Showa’s Wife Completed by Imperial Household Agency, to be Published Online in October

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:47 JST, September 21, 2025

The Imperial Household Agency has completed the compilation of the annals of Empress Kojun, the wife of Emperor Showa and grandmother to the current Emperor. The process took 17 years.

The annals were presented to the Emperor and Empress on Thursday and the Emperor Emeritus and Empress Emerita on Friday.

Empress Kojun died on June 16, 2000, at the age of 97.

The chronicle of the life of Empress Kojun was written across 3,828 pages and contains about 2.64 million Japanese characters. The print version has been split into 13 B5-size volumes and a digital version will be released by the agency on its website on Oct. 9.

According to the agency, the records detail not only Empress Kojun’s official activities and the Imperial engagements she took part in but also such events as her marriage to Emperor Showa and the birth of their son, the current Emperor Emeritus. How these annals portray Empress Kojun, who together with Emperor Showa lived through the turbulent times surrounding World War II, is expected to a key focus.

Imperial annals are chronicles showing the activities of the Emperor or a member of the Imperial family based on reliable sources.

The annals were written in chronological order and the language used was largely colloquial.

For the annals of Empress Kojun, about 1,500 documents, including diaries of former aides and official records, were used. Interviews with 30 former aides and others were also conducted. Related expenses ran to about ¥55.9 million, excluding personnel expenses, according to the agency.

The official records of Empress Shoken, the wife of Emperor Meiji, and Empress Teimei, the wife of Emperor Taisho, were each written in about 1 million characters.

It will be the first time for the agency to release the annals of the Imperial family online. The annals of Emperor Showa were disclosed based a public records request in the form of a print publication, among other means. “With advances in digitization, we will prioritize the convenience of those wishing to view the records,” the agency said.

“I hope the annals will help people to deepen the understanding of the life of Empress Kojun, who lived beside Emperor Showa and with all the people of the nation through turbulent times,” said Yasuhiko Nishimura, the grand steward of the agency, in a statement on the occasion of the presentation.