ISE, Mie Prefecture--Recently discovered film footage from the Taisho Era (1912-1926) shows Empress Sadako visiting Ise Jingu shrine to pray for her husband’s recovery as well as a newlywed in Kyoto who later became Emperor Hirohito.

The black-and-white silent footage found at Kogakkan University, which has close ties to Ise Jingu shrine, also provides a glimpse of the customs and manners of the public toward the imperial family at that time.

The rare footage, comprising two recordings, is now being shown at the Museum of Shinto and Japanese Culture on the university’s campus.

Empress Sadako (1884-1951), posthumously known as Empress Teimei, visited Ise Jingu shrine on Nov. 5, 1922, to pray for the recovery of her husband, Emperor Yoshihito (1879-1926), posthumously known as Emperor Taisho.

The footage shows the empress leaving the grounds of Ise Jingu’s Naiku inner shrine and visiting the Jingu Kogakkan school, the predecessor of today’s Kogakkan University.

She is also seen taking a ride on a horse-drawn carriage with ladies-in-waiting and Home Ministry bureaucrats.

Another part of the video shows children likely from a local girls’ school and a higher elementary school marching while holding Hinomaru national flags as well as Rising Sun flags.

The footage, which runs for 3 minutes and 50 seconds, ends with the empress leaving on a train and seen off by citizens at Yamada Station of the Japanese National Railways Sangu Line, the predecessor of today’s JR Ise-shi Station.

The other video piece shows Crown Prince Hirohito and Crown Princess Nagako (1903-2000) visiting the Fushimi-Momoyama mausoleum of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) in Kyoto on Feb. 27, 1924, to report on their wedding that was held in January that year.

Hirohito (1901-1989), grandson of Emperor Meiji, is posthumously known as Emperor Showa.

The footage, which runs for 4 minutes and 15 seconds, also shows a procession of horse-drawn carriages and imperial guard soldiers on horseback, airplanes making a congratulatory flight and the entourage entering an automobile.

“Showa Tenno Jitsuroku,” the official chronicle of Hirohito’s life compiled by the Imperial Household Agency, contains a record saying the future emperor visited the Fushimi-Momoyama mausoleum with Nagako on that day.

Officials said Betamax-format tapes were discovered last autumn during clean-up work in a ground-floor workroom at the Museum of Shinto and Japanese Culture.

One of the tapes contained the two pieces of footage, one following the other.

According to Rei Hasegawa, an assistant professor of modern Japanese history with Kogakkan University’s Faculty of Letters, the footage was aired at a commemorative event in 1982 to celebrate the centenary of the university’s foundation.

But word about the tape was not passed on, and its existence was forgotten, officials explained.

The footage was likely copied onto the tape from now-missing film.

Sadako’s Kogakkan visit on the tape is chronicled in the university’s in-house records under an entry titled “Visit by Her Majesty the Empress.”

A commemorative album was also created for the occasion.

It is unclear why the footage of Hirohito was contained on the same tape.

The identity of whoever filmed the imperial family members remains unknown, and it is also a mystery how the clips ended up preserved at Kogakkan, the officials said.

“The footage is valuable because it is one of the very few available video records of imperial family members from the Taisho Era,” Hasegawa said.

He noted that citizens in the footage “appear respectful, showing they felt themselves at a distance from the imperial family at the time.”

The footage is on display at “140 years of Ise and Kogakkan,” a special history exhibition that is running at the museum through Aug. 31. Admission is free.

Ise Jingu is dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu-omikami, a mythical ancestor of the Japanese imperial line.

Kogakkan University has its origins in Kogakkan, a school set up at the shrine’s Hayashizaki Library in 1882.

It was later reorganized into Jingu Kogakkan, a school overseen by the Home Ministry, and to Jingu Kogakkan University under the jurisdiction of the former Education Ministry.

The university was closed in 1946 after the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, which occupied Japan after World War II, ordered the separation of state and Shinto shrines.

Kogakkan University was re-established in 1962 as a private institution.