Moments outside the goldfish bowl.(The Thames and I: A Memoir of Two Years at Oxford)(Book review)

The Thames and I: A Memoir of Two Years at Oxford, by Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan; Global Oriental, 2006, about $100.

JAPAN'S ROYALS devote themselves to esoteric and inoffensive pursuits. Nothing as controversial as, say, Princess Diana's crusade against land-mines, or Prince Charles's campaign against modern architecture.

After the Second World War, the Emperor Hirohito disappeared into a specially-built laboratory in the palace grounds to devote the rest of his life to the study of jellyfish. The current emperor, Akihito, has published twenty-six scientific papers on gobies, tiny spiny-finned minnows, and even has one (Platygobiopsis akihito) named after him. His wife, the Empress Michiko, propagates a rare species of silkworm.

And the next in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne, Crown Prince Naruhito, is no exception. He has spent the past twenty-eight years studying ancient water transportation, first on the Seto Inland Sea, which separates Shikoku from the main Japanese island of Honshu, and then on the River Thames.

In 1983 he was enrolled at Oxford's Merton College and spent the next two years of his life sneezing in the dust of musty tomes in the County Records Office as he transcribed great lists of the commodities, from coal to horn-tips, vitriol, cider, plumb bobs, scythes, gudgeons and mangles which were transported down the Thames to London in horse-drawn barges. His black-bound thesis, the result of five years' work, is available at the Bodleian Library, though I would recommend it only to serious collectors of eighteenth-century trivia.

Of more potential interest is this recently-translated account of the daily life and travels of the prince, released from his cloistered, cosseted existence behind the gates of the East Palace, having his first taste of life overseas.

All Japanese royals breathe a sigh of relief in the VIP lounge at Narita Airport as they leave behind the stifling protocol of Kunaicho, the Imperial Household Agency which runs their lives. Hirohito, the first royal in 2600 years to leave Japanese soil, said he felt "like a bird released from its cage".