Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, who are on an official visit to the Netherlands, have been welcomed as state guests at a ceremony in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
The couple were joined by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima at the ceremony in a square outside the Dutch Royal Palace on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Following a performance of Japan’s national anthem by a military band, the Emperor was saluted by the guard of honor. He then inspected the guard with the King.<\/p>\n
The Emperor and Empress spoke to students at a local Japanese school, who waved the flags of both countries. The couple gave their consent to be photographed together and then thanked the children for coming to the ceremony.<\/p>\n
After the welcome ceremony, the Imperial couple laid a wreath and offered a silent prayer at a monument for the war dead in the same square.<\/p>\n
Japan and the Netherlands fought during World War Two in what is now Indonesia, which was a Dutch territory at the time.<\/p>\n
The now-defunct Imperial Japanese military took Dutch soldiers as prisoners and interned residents, many of whom died due to being forced to work and other causes.<\/p>\n
The Emperor told reporters prior to the trip he will be mindful of the fact that many people in the Netherlands are still suffering. He also noted the importance of learning humbly from history while deepening understanding of the past, and developing a love for peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, who are on an official visit to the Netherlands, have been welcomed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[101],"tags":[199,2003,3161,3160,3163,200,38,3162,3166,3167,3168,3165,922,3164,3169,595,1827],"class_list":["post-110058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amsterdam","tag-amsterdam","tag-asia","tag-biz","tag-japan","tag-japan-broadcasting-corporation","tag-netherlands","tag-news","tag-nhk","tag-nhk-world","tag-nhk-world-premium","tag-nhk-world-tv","tag-nhkworld","tag-nuclear","tag-public-broadcaster","tag-radio-japan","tag-tech","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116765405208982811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}