Imperial Court Etiquette Heartburn

Princess Masako Takeda

Public domain image of HIH Princess Takeda Masako, 

6th daughter of Emperor Meiji, 1909

Heartburning in Korean Court Circle’s Etiquette:

Question of Appropriate Decoration for the Three Imperial Brides 

SHANGHAI. Aug. 16.– There was much heartburning recently in Korean Court circles over an unfortunate lapse from the sacred rules of etiquette. It appears from the Japanese newspapers that in offering Grand Cordons to Princes Takeda, Kitashirakawa and Asaka, on the occasion of their nuptials with daughters of the Emperor of Japan, the Korean sovereign failed to send at the same time appropriate decorations for the three Imperial brides. 

This failure in etiquette, having been made clear to the Imperial household, steps were hastily taken to remedy it, and a special envoy received orders to set out at once for Japan carrying three first-class orders. But when it came to obeying this command, the officials discovered that the necessary insignia were not in the possession of the Imperial Household Department, and accordingly a choice had to be made between two alternatives - either to postpone the Embassy until new insignia could be prepared or to have recourse to old ones. The latter plan seemed preferable, and in order to carry it out the desired insignia were taken from three Korean Princesses. 

Two of the ladies, to whom the facts were explained, readily gave their consent, but the third, who received no such explanation, not unnaturally concluded that she had incurred the Imperial displeasure in some signal manner, and her grief was so violent that the whole story came to light, Ultimately the difficulty was solved by suspending the dispatch of the special envoy with the old decorations and entrusting to the Korean Prince Imperial the duty of conveying to the three Japanese Princesses a document announcing the presentation of the orders, the actual delivery of the insignia being postponed. – Special to the San Jose Mercury Press, 1910

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