天皇皇后両陛下 英国・デンマークご訪問（ポルトガルお立ち寄り）時の天皇陛下のおことば（英文）

Your Royal Highness, President, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude for being awarded the King Charles the Second Medal of the Royal Society.

It is now more than 300 years since Charles the Second granted the Royal Society its first Charter. I would like to express my profound respect for the Society, for the unceasing contributions it has continued to make towards the development of world science. The motto of the Society is "Nullius in verba", and countless scientists must have endeavoured to make their own of this attitude. Indeed, I myself am deeply in accord with it.

In the 1960's, when I started my research on gobioid fishes, there were not yet many specialists in that field, and few up-to-date references. Among the people who guided me on the subject are Dr. Ichiro Tomiyama and Dr. Kazunori Takagi, both of whom had taken their Doctorate on this subject. It was Dr. Tomiyama who established the taxonomy of gobiid fishes in Japan in the 1930's, and his thesis was extremely helpful in reviewing and re-examining species of gobiid fishes. Dr. Takagi undertook comparative morphology on the gobioid fishes, especially on sensory system organs of the head, which up to then had been virtually unstudied in Japan. I found that the arrangements of rows of sensory papillae are unique to each separate species, and that it was possible to clearly identify the species, which thereto had been under some doubt, by focusing on this aspect. Looking back, I recall the joy I felt when, after days and days of peering into the microscope, I finally came to identify the characters of the arrangements of rows of sensory papillae of one species after another.

By that time, the method of investigating bones by dyeing them with alizarin had already been widely adopted, but little had been done as far as bones of gobioid fishes were concerned. The first bone I myself examined was the scapula. The inspiration for this came partly from a paper by Mr. Tate Regan of the British Museum of Natural History in 1911. In his paper, he pointed out that one of the marks distinguishing the family Eleotridae from the family Gobiidae, both of which belong to the gobioids, was the existence of the scapula. However, Dr. William A. Gosline of the University of Hawaii, who conducted his research by the bone-dyeing method, presented an alternate view in his paper of 1955. I myself, after close examination of scapulae of various species, reached the general conclusion that the shape of the scapula is largely the same within one genus and can therefore be taken as a defining character of the genus, though not of a specific family. From then on, I concentrated on osteology and eventually discovered a species of gobioid fishes whose bones were not specialized. There are more than 300 species of the gobioid fishes in Japan, and they have diversified into various forms. But their bones always show the tendency of degeneration or disappearance. This led me to conclude that the species of gobioid fishes in which the bones show the least osteo-degeneration must be closest to the common ancestor. I am very much looking forward to seeing the phylogeny and relations of gobioid fishes further clarified in the future by the most advanced methods of biological research.

In the course of carrying out my researches, I have had opportunities to communicate with Dr. Peter J. Miller, Professor of Bristol University, and many other ichthyological specialists both at home and abroad. I have also had opportunities to borrow, or be given, precious specimens from individuals and various museums including the British Museum of Natural History. I am most grateful for all this help.

When I was Crown Prince, I was elected foreign member of the Linnean Society of London. It was a great honour indeed, to be admitted as one among the only 50 foreign members. While I felt that this was too great an honour for me, it stimulated me to continue my studies so as to maintain the high standards of research worthy of this honour, which remains one of my dearest memories.

Since me accession to the throne, my full daily schedule has so far prevented me from continuing my researches effectively. Indeed, the only paper I completed since enthronement was one which had been largely done some ten years before, when I was still Crown Prince. I am firmly resolved, however, not to let my light of learning be extinguished. I hope to go on pursuing my studies, mindful of the fact that I was today awarded the King Charles the Second Medal.

Reflecting on the history of science in Japan, one cannot fail to recognize the role played in its development by cross-border cooperation from various people abroad, including many British scientists. Scientific truth must always be universal. I would like to conclude this word of thanks by expressing my hope that British-Japanese scientific exchanges will continue to advance, thereby making significant contribution to the progress of world science.