A Postwar Agency for a Monarchy Remade

The Imperial Household Agency was created in 1949 as part of the sweeping reform of the Japanese monarchy that followed the country's defeat in the Second World War, replacing the much larger prewar Imperial Household Ministry with a smaller body operating under Japan's new constitution, which redefined the Emperor as a symbol of the state rather than a sovereign with political power. Custody of the Three Sacred Treasures, the mirror, sword and jewel described in the earliest Japanese chronicles as gifts from the sun goddess Amaterasu to the imperial line, passed to this new agency as part of its general responsibility for the Emperor's household and ceremonial functions.

Unlike most custodians in this atlas, the Agency's role is not to display or interpret its holding for the public but specifically to keep it away from public or scholarly view, a policy applied consistently regardless of academic or media interest, and treated as a settled matter of state and religious protocol rather than an open question of access policy. This makes the Agency's custodianship the most restrictive form covered anywhere in this collection, more so even than a private collector who at least occasionally exhibits an object for scholarly attention.