In 1985, during a tour of Japan, a group of students from Burnaby’s Gladstone Japanese Language School had the good fortune to meet the country’s then-Crown Prince Akihito and his wife, Princess Michiko in Tokyo.

School principal Yoko Murakami says they managed to tag along with a Toronto Japanese-language school which had secured a meeting with the royal couple.

“I remember meeting him, he was very soft spoken, his tone is really soft,” said Murakami’s son, Ricky, now 38, of the crown prince.

As nervous as they all were, the crown prince had a great ability to put everyone at ease, he said.

On Monday, the family will have another rare opportunity to meet Akihito and Michiko, now emperor and empress of Japan, as they visit Nikkei Place, the Japanese cultural centre in South Burnaby where the school is now based, during their cross-Canada tour.

This time they’ll be adding another generation of Murakamis to meet Japanese royalty—Ricky’s three-year-old daughter Chika will be among Gladstone students who will sing to the royal couple.

“I’m so happy and very much excited,” said proud grandmother Yoko, 67, who noted two former students also on that 1985 trip will be attending with their own children.

“It’s amazing,” said Ricky of three generations of his family having the opportunity, twice, in the case of his mother and himself.

“Even in Japan, to see the royal family is very rare.”

At more than 2,000 years old, Japan’s imperial family is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world.

Akihito, now 75, became Japan’s 125th emperor in 1989 with the death of his father, Hirohito, whose reign was punctuated by his country’s surrender in the Second World War. Today, the emperor’s role is largely ceremonial, without any powers over government, and almost celebrity-like, unlike previous centuries when he was revered as a living god.

Mits Hayashi, chairman of the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre who is helping plan the visit to Nikkei Place, said while the imperial family is generally popular, it’s a generational thing.

“Some of the senior people appreciate the presence of the imperial family,” he said.

“The younger generation, probably they don’t care.”

Hayashi said this will be the first visit to Canada of a Japanese emperor.

While Akihito paid a visit to B.C. in 1953 on his way to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, he was a crown prince at the time.

Hayashi will be greeting the royal couple and guiding them around Nikkei Place, unique in North America, he said, for combining a museum, cultural centre and seniors housing for the Japanese-Canadian community all on one property.

He said he had an inkling the visit was coming after an advance team from the Japanese consul-general made several visits to Nikkei Place in the past year.

“But they were very much tight-lipped.”

Calling the visit “a great honour,” Hayashi has been learning the protocol he must follow when guiding the emperor and empress: don’t speak until spoken to, don’t shake hands until a hand is offered first, when walking, stay a few steps to the left, never in front.

He expects to be nervous but right now is too busy with preparations to feel it.

“I’m supposed to spend five minutes giving an explanation of Nikkei Place but I haven’t thought of what I’ll say,” he said with a laugh.

On Tuesday afternoon, a long, RCMP-led motorcade of black vehicles circled past Nikkei Place, ostensibly a dry run for the upcoming visit.

Centre staff have been busy cleaning and sprucing up the building, which opened in 2000. Yoko Murakami said her school’s 200 students have been hard at work painting Japanese flags to wave at the royal couple.

Likely least nervous will be young Chika Murakami, who has youth and obliviousness on her side.

“She doesn’t know what’s going on, she just knows she has to sing to somebody,” said Ricky with a laugh.

wchow@burnabynewsleader.com