Reason trip
It’s not everyone’s vacation. On August 8, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, stopped in Tokyo, Japan, as part of a major diplomatic tour through Asia. In the morning, in front of the press, he recalled that the nuclear threat weighed a little more on us every day and called on world leaders to reason. In the evening, he took part in a memorial ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. Between the two, he met the Emperor Naruhito, in Tokyo, in the context of an official interview that was obviously not very bullshit.
austere pair
For the occasion, the two men had made the choice of sartorial austerity. Thus, Emperor Naruhito wore that day a two-button navy suit devoid of the stylistic finesse displayed by his father, the elegant Akihito, but technically irreproachable. For his part, the Portuguese Antonio Guterres had put on a gray suit without the slightest interest, if not that of reminding us that it is always preferable, when traveling, to opt for woolen suits. hightwist wrinkle-resistant, at the risk of displaying the scruffy look of Boris Johnson.
“Roll” of composition
From a stylistic point of view, the less uninteresting was in the shoes. Emperor Naruhito wore, as often, black Chelsea boots with heels, intended to make him taller by a few centimeters. Guterres, he wore black moccasins called “beef roll”, “beef roll”, in English. Why this designation? Because their bridle ends, on either side of the instep, with two small sausages similar to roasts.
Memory holes
Note that the wearing of shoes by the monarch and his guest is not insignificant. If the practice of taking off your shoes before entering an enclosed space was imposed on the Emperor’s visitors for a long time (historians remember the socks with holes in the heel of the American Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, at the beginning of the XXe century), it has disappeared for about twenty years, as the country has westernized.
Naked property
Finally, how not to stop for a moment on the decoration of this reception room of the imperial palace? The famous shouji, the sliding walls made of wood and translucent rice paper, intended to modulate the spaces while allowing light to pass through, act as walls. But the place is distinguished above all by its absence of imposing furniture and
by a decoration inspired by traditional washitsu (“Traditional Japanese style pieces”). Indeed, for the joke, we will come back.