The utakai hajime poetry reading ceremony at the Imperial Palace, an annual Imperial event during the New Year holidays that was postponed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was held Friday at the palace in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo.
The subject for poems this year was "mi," or fruits. The event featured recitations of waka poems by the Emperor, the Empress and members of the Imperial family and their relatives, in addition to 10 members of the public whose poems were selected out of 13,657 poems submitted.
The poems, each with 31 syllables, were recited in a characteristic traditional chanting style.
In a normal year, about 100 people are invited to the event as the audience, but this year only three people received the honor, as a measure against infection. The reciters took PCR tests in advance and wore face shields in the palace.
One of the 10 members of the public whose poems were selected stayed home in Fukui Prefecture and participated in the ceremony remotely.
The poems by both the Emperor and the Empress are about the pandemic. According to the Imperial Household Agency, the Emperor cared about people facing difficulties due to the pandemic and composed his poem with a wish that those people's efforts will bear fruits and the pandemic will come to an end.
In May last year, when the first state of emergency for the virus was still in effect, the Empress noticed green ume plums growing plump in the garden of the Akasaka Imperial Residence, where she lives. She expressed in her poem that she was touched by the unchangingness of nature despite the pandemic having drastically changed the way people live.
The Emperor's poem in an English translation:
I sincerely pray that
The hope and efforts of the people
Bear beautiful fruit
Leading us to peaceful days
The Empress' poem in an English translation:
As I stand in the garden
Yearning for
The end of the infection's spread,
The fruit of the ume
Are a hopeful green
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