Japan’s royal family is often forgotten about in the west.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of you watching didn’t know that Japan actually
still has an emperor, but indeed… they do… it’s this man, Emperor Naruhito.
Naruhito ascended to the throne in May of 2019 after his father Emperor Akihito abdicated
from the throne.
These men are the official heads of state of the third most influential economy in the
world, and while their powers are almost entirely ceremonial, however their living standards
are anything but.
The immediate royal family has over 1,000 staff working for them directly.
This roster includes basic essentials like, you know… gardeners, chefs, plumbers, chauffers,
secretaries, security personnel not to mention 47 servants PER ROYAL!
But this enormous staff also extends to things like wardrobe managers, royal farmers that
farm the family’s food, 4 doctors constantly on standby, a silkworm breeder to make sure
the family is always decked out in the finest threads, Shinto advisers, and 30 archaeologists
tasked specifically to look after the tombs of the family.
Beyond just the manpower the Japanese Royal family claims some pretty pricey real estate.
If you think the white house or Buckingham palace are ritzy, they have nothing on the
Japanese Royal Palace in Tokyo.
Sprawled out over 379 acres in the heart of the largest city in the world, this royal
residence was once more valuable than all of the real estate in California combined.
Nowadays it’s worth about as much as two and a half San Francisco townhouses but that’s
a whole other issue.
This estate, along with dozens of other lavish estates dotted around the country and over
the planet cost a lot to maintain, and that’s why the government of Japan gives the family
11.83 billion yen (or around 110 million American dollars) every year to keep everything up
to a royal standard.
This is ON TOP of a personal expense account of 324 million yen or 2.9 million USD’s
for every member of the direct royal family as well as a 269 million yen for every member
of the extended family.
This is taxpayers money which is all going to fund the ridiculously lavish lifestyle
of a huge family that hasn’t actually played an active role in managing the country since
world war two, and even back then their job performance wasn’t what I would call stellar.
So it’s time to learn how money works to makes sense of how this family justifies their
unbelievable operating expenses in a country that has not seen sustained economic growth
in nearly three centuries.
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Now so far the Japanese royal family might sound very similar to the British Royal family,
and indeed there are a lot of similarities.
For starters they both swallow up a lot of taxpayer money to fund their lifestyles, with
the British royal family costing the equivalent of around $93 million dollars in 2019, and
the Japanese royal family costing approximately double that.
What’s more is that they both have huge amount of staff working for them, they are
both almost entirely ceremonial, they both directly receive public funding and curiously
enough they are both the head of two respective religions.
The church of England is ruled over by the Supreme Governor of the Church of England,
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.
Shintoism if headed up by the Emperor of Japan.
A side note here is that Shintoism is not necessarily a religion in the way that most
people in the west might think of it.
It’s more a shared belief system more so than a defined set of teachings, and as such
lacks the rigid hierarchies you tend to see in western religions.
Despite this, everybody that practices Shintoism just agrees that this guy is the top dog.
The royal family is incredibly ingrained into the wider Japanese culture.
This one family has ruled over the country for at least 1,600 years with some record
indicating that this monarchy could stretch back as far as 600bc.
The family is pretty much biblical, and emperors up until the second world war were seen as
gods on earth.
Now I don’t want to turn this into How Culture Works, but the reason that I bring this up
is that most Japanese people really don’t have a problem paying for this family to live
the way that they do.
They are a cultural icon that represents the history of Japan.
In theory this family acts as a unifying entity that is above party politics.
They are the equivalent of the Washington monument an America or the opera house in
Australia, just in human form.
These national landmarks just naturally require some upkeep.
We wouldn’t be making a video talking about the maintenance costs of the statue of liberty,
because nobody really has a problem with that.
This family’s job is pretty much exactly the same, and they need money to safely and
effectively play their role for the Japanese people.
Now if you are still thinking this sounds like a pretty expensive national landmark
you’re not wrong but it actually could have been a whole lot worse…
After the end of World War II there were talks of ending the Japanese monarchy altogether.
The then Emperor Hirohito was at the time anything but ceremonial, he played an active
role in the conflict similar to all of the other war time leaders.
But he was never tried for any of his crimes, and you better believe their there were plenty
of crimes to be tried for.
In fact he got to continue to live in complete luxury up until his death 44 years later in
1989.
Why?
Well a few reasons, the first being… communism…
The allied powers were afraid of the Japanese taking a peace deal with the soviets, which
would give them unwelcome influence over the region.
To deal with this the Americans offered them a pretty sweet little deal where they promised
not to do anything rude like oh I don’t know, making them pay for their atrocities.
This also meant that the allies didn’t have to plan for a land war on the Japanese mainland,
which most historians agree would have been absolutely devastating for both sides.
One compromise was that the emperor could keep on being emperor but he could in no way
wield the same power that he did before and during the war.
The country was to be run by an elected parliament with the head of state power effectively residing
with the new prime minister.
For better or worse this allowed America to form very strong ties with the newly reinvented
Japan and still to this day the country continues to host many large American foreign military
bases.
Another compromise was that the sprawling royal family tree was to be trimmed down a
bit so as to move the country away from a system of nobility.
There were twelve distinct royal lines before world war two but after the war, only Hirohito,
his sibling and their respective children were recognised as royals, the cousins and
uncles were all downgraded to commoners… ouch.
This mean that when funding was set up to maintain the dynasty as agreed upon it only
had to fund a dozen royals rather than hundreds.
So with the history lesson out of the way, let’s look at what that fund did…
…
Before the war the Japanese emperor basically owned all of the royal land and artifacts
in the country, it was HIS personal property, the same as you might own your own home.
After the war this was yoinked off of him as part of the efforts to democratize the
nation and ceremonialize the emperor’s actual power.
A lot of this the land was just given back to the government who used it for parks, farmland
and tourists attractions.
What was left over was again slit up, some items the emperor was allowed to keep as his
own personal property.
We are talking about personal effects like clothes, nothing worth too much in the grand
scheme of things, especially when compared to the wealth of the emperor previously.
The more valuable assets, like the Imperial Palace in Tokyo were given to a government
organisation called the imperial household agency.
This agency was put in charge of managing the affairs of the royals and making sure
that they were both able to fulfill their royal duties while also ensuring that they
followed the rules.
Now these rules are incredibly detailed, but the royals have to abide by them or else they
risk being cut off from access to their generous government allowances, palaces and personnel.
To give you an idea of these restrictions, the royal family is not allowed to vote, they
are not allowed to have a job in anything other than a not for profit institution, they
are not allowed to marry commoners, and they are also now allowed to give or receive gifts
totalling more than $15,000 per year without special permission and approval by Japanese
federal parliament
Now you might think $15,000 sounds pretty generous, and yeah sure you or I might be
happy to receive that much, but for world leaders it’s very restrictive.
If a royal father wanted to gift his son a new Toyota Camry from his royal allowance,
well he would basically need to have that request passed into law… add onto this the
fact that they are required to meet constantly with all manner of high profile people and
you can see how this limit can be reached very quickly.
Also looking at their multi million dollar per year allowances might give you the wrong
impression of their personal wealth.
They are not allowed to funnel this money into their own personal bank accounts.
They can use this money to effectively whatever they want so long as it’s legal but it doesn’t
go towards their own personal assets.
In 2001, then Emperor Akihito spent $200,000 on a forty-five hundred bottle wine cellar,
which is obviously very lavish, but this wine didn’t personally belong to him, he was
allowed to drink it and serve it to his guests as he saw fit, but it was still the property
of the imperial household agency, and by extension the Japanese government and by extension the
Japanese people.
So why all of these tight controls?
Well two reasons
The first and most widely acknowledged is that the government doesn’t want the Royals
getting personally wealthy off of taxpayer money.
You might look at this family and assume that they are massively wealthy but that’s not
really the case.
It’s sort of like looking at the president getting off of air force one and assuming
they have jumbo private jet money.
I mean some of them do, but these opulent symbols of wealth belong to the state and
are just made available to the president for them to fulfil their duties.
Of course the Japanese Emperor differs from the American president in the sense that they
were never voted into office, and they can stay emperor for as long as they live and
then pass that office down to their children, but besides that little detail, the same relationship
exists between the president and the Whitehouse as does the Japanese emperor and the imperial
palace.
Now that’s not to say that they haven’t become wealthy.
The thing about having all of your needs taken care of for you by the state for 80 years
is that it gives even a modest amount of money time to grow unimpeded by pesky things like
living expenses.
The royal princes and princesses are not allowed to work in the private sector, but any salaries
they draw from their non profit jobs, or any money owned by their partners when they get
married just gets put into a pot and never touched.
This slow and steady growth has given the current emperor a private net worth of around
40 million dollars.
Not bad at all, but it’s not private equestrian track in the middle of Tokyo city rich.
Which is the second reason that the royals have such tight controls on how they use imperial
funds, it keeps them in line.
If the royal family was to break the rules of the imperial household agency they could
quiet literally be kicked out onto the streets.
Sure, they would still be pretty well off, but as such high profile public figures they
would likely burn through their comparatively modest fortune over time with security costs
alone.
Holding the family by the purse strings means this lavish lifestyle is somewhat of a trade
off.
Yes they get to live in luxury and yes they have every wish tended to, but they also need
to stay in line and be available year round to further Japan’s national interests.
Despite the immense trappings of wealth that the family is afforded, I don’t know if
I would trade places with them, it’s literally the epitome of a gilded cage…
…
So this just leaves one question…
Is it worth it?
We have seen that the royal family has basically made themselves a well looked after public
asset, but does this asset justify it’s cost?
An argument could by made that the British royal family justifies it’s cost to the
taxpayers just through the tourism that is drawn to the country by the star power of
the royal family.
But that’s not really true for the Japanese royal family, as I said at the beginning of
the video I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you didn’t even know that Japan still
had an emperor.
Now for arguments sake, let’s just ignore the fact that the new government established
in Japan after World War 2 promised to maintain the Monarchy.
Yeah sure a promise is a promise, but I am going to blow your minds and let you know
that some governments have been known to lie…
But the thing is there is a good chance most of this money would be spent anyway, with
the emperor or without him.
Japan relies heavily on what is known as “soft power” when dealing with other nations.
That means they want to work hard to stay in the good graces of potential trade partners
and military allies.
The Japanese royal family are essentially just regal ambassadors for the country.
Talking to a Japanese diplomat is great and all, but talking to the actual emperor of
Japan about continued friendship between nations hold a lot more weight.
If the Japanese royal family was to be dissolved tomorrow it’s not like the government wouldn’t
need to maintain the imperial palaces spread out over the country, they would still need
to pay diplomats to speak on behalf of the state, and they would still need to fund big
fancy state dinners.
The princess’, princesses, empress and emperor are just very traditional ways of performing
modern diplomacy.
Are they a little bit spoilt?
Yeah probably..
Could the same thing be achieved at a lower cost to the tax payer?
Oh yeah almost definitely.
But Japan is a Democratic monarchy, and a large majority of the voters in the nation
want to maintain their emperor, so who are we to do a cost benefit analysis.
But what do you think?
Do you think Monarchies have a place in our modern world?
If you don’t, maybe you should go and learn about the hidden American monarchies by watching
my video on the real reason why family fortunes like the Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts ACTUALLY
disappeared after being passed down the generations.
I want to again thank my channel members and patrons on patreon for making it possible
for everybody to keep on learning How Money Works.