In 1960, Crown Prince Akihito of Japan visited Chicago with a very specific request: he wanted to see the fish at the Shedd Aquarium. His interest in fish biology was more than a passing hobby. But the visit would have an unexpected consequence decades later, after 18 bluegills were gifted to him and taken back to Japan.
Akihito, then 26 and heir to the Japanese throne, visited Chicago in October 1960. During his trip, then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, an angler himself, presented him with 18 bluegills taken from an aquarium tank. Akihito planned to keep the fish in the moat around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
