Overview

• Japan’s Imperial Household Agency published the complete Kojun Empress Jitsuroku on its website on Oct. 9, covering her life from 1903 to 2000 across 3,828 pages.
• The record details extensive wartime engagements, including frequent meetings with senior officers, visits to army and navy hospitals, and material aid that exceeded 50,000 bandages and more than 160 instances of artificial eyes or limbs.
• A Dec. 3, 1941 entry documents a meeting with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in which the empress acknowledged his “grave mission” before the Pearl Harbor attack.
• Editors applied a verify-before-inclusion standard that excluded unconfirmed remarks recorded in private diaries, such as entries attributed via hearsay in Irie Sukemasa’s diary.
• Scholars are probing entries suggesting she may not have known of the emperor’s Aug. 14, 1945 ‘sacred decision’; the chronicle also notes she spent Aug. 15 in the Gyobunko and heard the surrender broadcast, and it traces her pre‑marriage education, long Red Cross service, and 1971 Europe/1975 U.S. visits, with postwar lectures shifting to the new constitution.