Imperial Family Views Photo Exhibition Themed on Wartime Tokyo to End Series of WWII-Related Visits on War’s 80th Anniversary

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:16 JST, December 22, 2025

The Emperor and Empress and their daughter Princess Aiko visited the National Showa Memorial Museum Showa-Kan in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday to view a photo exhibition with the theme of Tokyo during wartime.

The exhibition features 40 photographs taken between 1937 and 1945 by late Metropolitan Police Department photographer Koyo Ishikawa. The photographs depict such scenes as bodies being collected after air raids and citizens grieving in front of the Imperial Palace on Aug. 16, 1945, just after the war ended.

The Emperor and Empress remarked that the records and materials are valuable.

The museum also displays a signed Japanese flag that was presented to female nurses of the Japanese Red Cross Society who were deployed to battlefields during the war. Princess Aiko, who works for the Red Cross, asked, “Did the women sign this?”

Later, the Imperial family spoke with three women: two storytellers born after the war and an elementary school former principal who now serve as museum guide.

The Imperial Family reportedly expressed their hope that wartime and postwar photographs, films and other records and materials related to the war would be preserved, ensuring that knowledge of the hardships experienced during that era are passed down to future generations.

The visit to the museum concludes a series of commemorative trips made by the Imperial family to war-related sites this year, which marks 80 years since the end of the World War II.

Earlier in the year, the Imperial couple visited Iwoto Island in Ogasawara, Tokyo, and Okinawa Prefecture, where fierce battles took place during the war. They also mourned the victims of the war in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities devastated by atomic bombings.