Wherever Japan’s ruling family goes, you will find Fumiko Shirataki: in summer heat and winter cold, to the ocean and to the mountains. The only times Shirataki does not go are when it snows or rains too hard. “You can’t get good pictures then, and if the camera lens gets wet, it might get damaged. I really worry about that,” she says. For the past 26 years, Shirataki has followed and taken pictures of Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko and especially Crown Princess Masako. “As soon as I know their plans, I’ll be there; though it’s hard if I only find out the night before,” she told the Reuters news agency. Shirataki loves following the royal family. This custom is called “okkake” in Japan. She began in 1993, when she followed then-Masako Owada, before her marriage to Crown Prince Naruhito. Shirataki, now age 78, remembers that, in the beginning, she had trouble taking good pictures. “I wasn’t used to carrying such a heavy camera, so I’d shoot the tires, or the back seat, or the driver,” she said at her home in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. On the wall hangs a photo of Masako and an Imperial Family calendar. But now she has gotten better at photography, and her house is filled with a huge number of photos.
