Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Sheep in the Sunshine - Inside the Imperial Stock Farm, Where Vets Care for Six Kinds of Animals

Not every imperial story wears a suit. The newest film from the Imperial Household Agency opens on a sunlit pasture, a flock of sheep with their heads down in the grass, and a simple title: the veterinarians of the Imperial Stock Farm. On Wednesday, October 21, 2026, the Agency posted the short reel to its Instagram account @kunaicho_jp, followed by about 2.5 million people, and used it to introduce a side of imperial life that almost never makes the evening news – the working farm in Tochigi Prefecture, and the animal doctors who keep it healthy.

The facts in the caption are spare, and they are fascinating. The farm, known in Japanese as the Goryo Bokujo and managed directly by the Imperial Household Agency, raises six kinds of animals: horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and pheasants. The veterinarians based there are responsible for managing the health of all of them. The reel offers a glimpse of that work, and the caption closes with a sentence that turns a pretty film into genuine news: as of October 2026, the Imperial Stock Farm is recruiting veterinarians, with details on the recruitment page of the Agency website.

A farm that feeds a household

To understand why this matters, it helps to know what the Goryo Bokujo is. It is not a petting zoo and it is not a photo location. It is the Imperial Family’s own working farm in Tochigi, the place that supplies produce and meat for the imperial table, and a site the household is proud enough of that diplomats posted to Japan are traditionally invited to visit it. A farm that feeds a family has to be run properly every single day of the year, in every season, and the health of its animals is the foundation everything else stands on. Lose that, and you lose the farm.

That is what makes the veterinary post such a quietly demanding job, and it is the distinctive angle of this story. A city vet might specialise in one species. A farm vet at the Goryo Bokujo works across six, and they could hardly be more different: a horse is not a hen, a pheasant is not a pig, and the daily rhythm of checking, feeding, watching and treating changes with every pen and pasture. The Agency’s film understands this. Its opening frame is not an office or a uniform. It is sheep doing what healthy, contented sheep do, grazing in bright sun under a wide blue sky, with wooded hills behind the fence. Good animal care, the picture argues, is visible in the animals themselves.

An imperial autumn, from stadiums to pasture

The timing gives the reel extra charm. This has been an exceptionally public autumn for the household. On Sunday the Agency shared the opening of the Asian Para Games, when Emperor Naruhito opened the Games in Aichi-Nagoya as 45 nations gathered. On Monday came the sequel, as the Emperor returned to Aichi to applaud the athletes on day two. And on Tuesday the register changed completely, to the soft diplomacy of tea for Queen Suthida of Thailand at the Imperial Residence. Stadium, stadium, tea table – and now a pasture. Each post shows a different working face of the same institution, and the farm film may be the most revealing of the four, because it shows the household not performing a duty but sustaining a place.

There is a unique data point in the engagement, too. The reel had gathered more than 9,500 likes within its first hours, a healthy figure for a post with no royal face in the frame at all. Audiences, it turns out, do not only follow this account for emperors and queens. They follow it for the world around the throne: the horses, the harvests, the craftspeople and, now, the vets. The Agency has learned to feed that curiosity with short, honest glimpses of work, and the farm series is among its most popular ideas.

What should a prospective applicant take from the film? That this is real work, outdoors, with real responsibility, in one of the most storied workplaces in Japan. The Agency does not dress it up. It simply shows the sheep, names the six species, explains who looks after their health, and invites qualified veterinarians to apply through its website. In an autumn of grand occasions, it is a small, sunlit job advert – and one of the most human posts the Imperial Household has made all year.

Photo: @kunaicho_jp

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