Old Coot’s ‘Memories’ Of Imperial Palace’s Black Swans Were All A Bit Cuckoo

Japan is often held up as a potential source of a black swan event in the financial world, but much closer to home, I have had a decades-long “memory” of black swans in Tokyo. But it looks like my recollections of the graceful birds symbolic of the state of Western Australia were more than a bit cuckoo.

My mind is convinced that there used to be at least a pair of black swans living the Imperial Palace moat in Tokyo in the 1990s, but no amount of searching has been unable to unearth any evidence, and I have no proof myself.

I could have sworn I saw them, especially as the black swans are so symbolic of Australia and I have retained a strong attachment to anything from Down Under that I have spotted over the years. Some sources said I might have seen a black bird that I mistakenly thought was a swan. On suggested bird was a coot, which is a known presence in the moat. Though I am an old coot myself, I’m not sticking my neck out by saying the coot couldn’t possibly have been a black swan because it wasn’t sticking its neck out, either.

What I did find out while trying to prove I wasn’t imagining things was that I am not the first person to have thought that black swans would be ideal for the Imperial Palace. The first postwar Japanese ambassador to Australia also apparently floated the idea back in the 1950s. But it wasn’t taken up on.

It’s highly likely the suggestion to send black swans to the moat at that time because the swans that continue to populate the moat to this day are the descendants of those first introduced in 1953 amid great fanfare. But those swans have all been the traditionally better-known white variety.

That’s not to say there aren’t black swans in Japan.

In some ways the black swan is already a disaster in Japan, as the National Institute for Environmental Studies calls cygnus atratus an invasive species in mainly northeastern around Lake Senba in Mito and southeastern Japan after it was imported into Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto in the 1950s and 1960s to use for fishing before spreading uncontrollably in some areas.

Black swans are also popular in zoos and gardens, being kept in Tennoji Zoo in Osaka, Kobe Animal Kingdom, Gunma Safari Park, Nasu Animal Kingdom in Tochigi Prefecture, Izu Shaboten Zoo in Shizuoka, Tobu Zoo in Saitama Prefecture, Kagoshima Hirakawa Zoological Park, Kujukushima Zoological and Botanical Garden Morikirara in Nagasaki Prefecture, and Fuji Kachōen among other places.

Natural flocks of kokucho, as the black swans are called in Japanese, are found around Lake Senba in Ibaraki Prefecture and in Miyazaki Prefecture.

Even if my memory of black swans in Japan is lousy, I hope I don’t ever get to find a black swan of the financial type while I’m here. Japan is often cited as a likely source for being prone to natural disasters and still maintaining significant economic clout globally.

As defined by Investing. com, a black swan “refers to an event that is highly improbable, unpredictable, and which has a significant impact on financial markets, economies and societies as a whole. These events are characterized by their unpredictability, extreme consequences, and the tendency for people to rationalize them only in hindsight. These events are often seen as outliers or deviations from the norm, defying conventional wisdom and challenging established models and theories.”