Tokyo University Hospital is one of the most advanced, reputable and best equipped medical institutions in Japan,so it is no surprise that it is the first choice for poorly Top People. Only yesterday, none less than Crown Prince Naruhito checked in for a routine but uncomfortable sounding operation - the removal of a polyp from his botto- ... er, his duodenum.
The polyp is benign, the operation went well and the direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-no-Omikami, should be back home in a week genki as a fiddle. Meanwhile, though, his hospitalisation is causing more than usual anxiety because of a delicate security problem.
The difficulty arises because of the presence in the hospital of another eminent patient, a 64-year old man named Tadamasa Goto. Mr Goto is suffering from liver cancer, and like the Prince wants the best medical treatment that his considerable wealth can buy. He has acquired his fortune, however, in an unconventional way - as the head of the Goto-gumi, a syndicate of the Yamugichi-gumi, Japan's largest gangster organisation.
Yup, Japan's next Emperor is sharing a hospital with one of its biggest and scariest yakuza. [The photograph depicts a generic yak, by the way, not Goto-san himself.]
All kinds of fascinating scanarios present themselves. Will criminal grandee and monarch-in-waiting encounter one another, perhaps in the gents or at the hospital vending machine? Will the Prince comment admiringly on Mr Goto's tattoos - and will the racketeering kingpin ask Naruhito where he got his chrysanthemum pjyamas? Perhaps Naruhito will offer to swap his copy of Hello magazine for Goto's World of Interiors - or borrow his boxed set of Sopranos DVDs. Whatever transpires, it cannot fail to be a fascinating and mutually eduational conversation.
Of more pressing concern, though, are the security arrangements at Tokyo University Hospital. A source close to the Metropolitan Police tells me that they are in quite a tizzy, and that three different security details are on duty in the hospital. There are the Prince's regular body guards from the Imperial Police. There are Mr Goto's personal goons. And then there are police from the anti-organised crime division, there just to keep an eye on things and anticipate the unexpected.
"The worry is that someone will turn up to pop Goto," my friend tells me, "and end up wandering into Naruhito's room by mistake." Which would be very, very messy.