The Prince and Georgie

Or, keep a lock on the wine list when these royals come to dinner

I recently learned that Prince Matsumoto*, first cousin of Japan’s 125^th emperor, died 21 years ago. He was a mere 47.

This was a prince that you would only know if you had encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese royal family lines or if you were a foreign businessperson in need of a “royal sprinkle” at a semi-important visit or event. More on those sprinkles in a sec.

I wasn’t surprised when I learned Prince Matsumoto had died young.  “Ah, that lifestyle,” I mused to myself.

To be terribly blunt, the prince and his princess wife were raging alcoholic party attenders. That was their sole function it seems. She’s still around and I can’t say whether she carries on the Grand Matsumoto Tradition to this day. Would she even be able to?

There is simply no way I would include a real photo of our royal couple. So here’s a look at where they likely honeymooned.

I first learned about the Matsumotos from Georgie, an upper-level event arranger for a British merchant bank that I was working for in the early 1990s. Georgie, also passed now, had a huge head of carefully coiffed white hair. He dressed impeccably in tailored suits and ties in the office, and on weekends or on vacation nothing less than wool trousers and a blazer. Thick wafts of (now discontinued) ‘English Fern’ Penhaligon cologne preceded and followed him as he busily glided through the office halls. He was a 50-year-old homosexual so flamboyant that he was in the closet only in his own very British mind.

Georgie—also a raging alcoholic—was excellent at his job and the man the bank would turn to for expert advice on all things requiring high-level protocol and formal courtesy. You might understand that British banks with commissioned oil portraits of Queen Elizabeth II in their client lobbies needed these sorts around full time. “I know which forks go where and what spoons are essential to what courses,” he self-deprecated often.

It turns out Georgie knew Prince and Princess Matsumoto well.

One day I came to the office and was walking past Georgie’s desk on the way to my own. I think I was in my late 20s, and despite our age difference Georgie was not only an in-office mentor but also a friend. He particularly mentored me in the ways of all things British—guidance that was essential for a young (dumb) American attempting to progress within the Thatcher-like staid environment.

Georgie was flustered that day. He let out a big sigh and firmly shut a drawer in his desk.

“Good morning, what’s up?” I asked. Georgie couldn’t wait to cry on a friendly shoulder. “I’m stuck with an absolutely gi-normous check from a dinner we had a few nights ago,” he said. “I can’t seem to find the right time to put it in front of either Phil or Mike for signing. It’s killing me.”

He then told me about Prince and Princess Matsumoto. In those days when a foreign company needed royal presence at an event—whether a gala reception for a visiting Prime Minister or a simple dinner with a key client—the Imperial Household Agency would invariably trot out the Matsumotos.

The Emperor and Empress as well as any others vaguely in line were simply off the list for anything as “street” as corporate handshaking. The Agency needed to search a bit deeper into the ranks to do business outreach.

The Matsumotos were educated abroad and, though still not entirely fluent in English, seemed to enjoy the engagements with “the global people.” Most likely, they found the events to be welcome distractions from their more usual appearances at high school poetry readings and highway overpass dedications.

“We arranged a dinner for a single London client the other night and he hoped we could help bring Royal Family presence to the table.  The palace offered Prince and Princess Matsumoto and—stupid me—I knew they adore the Belle Epoch restaurant on the top floor of the Okura Hotel,” said Georgie.

It turns out that what they really adored was the Belle’s curated wine list.

According to Georgie after perfunctory introductions the royal cousins sat down and took direct control of the List Almost Nobody Sees which the hotel management had presumptively placed at their spots. “They only ordered off the vintage collection," said Georgie. "And these two can drink.”

Coming from Georgie, a man that regularly took bartenders to task in Japanese for mixing Gin & Tonic with anything less than 90% gin, that was quite a statement.

The Matsumotos only ordered Margaux and Pauillac from the 1960s and 1970s that night. There were no pedestrian white or even house Pinot pre-ambles…the Prince and Princess leaned into the best black ink the Okura could serve. Bottle after bottle was opened and splashed into glasses around the table. The meal was an afterthought.

“They were giggling to each other about past trips to France as they wrecked me,” Georgie said.

The bill at the end of the evening was of course deposited with Georgie nary a thought. I almost never saw Georgie visibly shaken but he told me the bill at the end came to just shy of a million yen per person. “It’s here in my desk now,” he said. “I’m waiting for a fabulous trading day so I can toss it in the middle of a stack of more normal bills and then pray Phil and Mike don’t notice. Maybe if they are amid a flurry of other happy signings, this one can slip by.”

I thought of Radar O’Reilly pulling similar stunts with a distracted Colonel Blake at the 4077^th.

I asked Georgie if the “dinner” wouldn’t lead to some open doors and fabulous trades we could play a role in for our client—i.e., more than pay for itself if we take a long view. “I somehow doubt that,” said Georgie. “Our client spoke to the Matsumotos about his deadbeat son getting accepted to a University of Tokyo exchange program despite awful grades. What a fucking waste of time.”

Our bank does often say we support higher education, I weakly joked.

The story stuck with me for decades. It encapsulated so much. The deeply ridiculous bubble era, a wine list nobody needed, the hoodwinking of overly confident foreign companies, and professional drinkers lurking within the royal family who really found their niche.

I liked Prince and Princess Matsumoto after that, and kept soft tabs on them as their names occasionally crept into news reports. (Nothing interesting, just more highway dedications.)

Years later when I was with an American bank, I overheard a colleague, half the experience level of Georgie and not able to speak a word of Japanese, crowing that members of the royal family would be attending a reception he was arranging for us. Reading from a crisp and wax-embossed postal letter he had received from the Imperial Household Agency, he told us, “Prince and Princess Matsumoto have accepted.” I kept my lips zipped. I wasn’t after all even vaguely in charge of client entertainment or Favor Fishing.

I silently wished our mark the best of luck and hoped he had a budget the size of Kyushu set aside.

Adieu, Prince Matsumoto. You were a class act.

*Names have been changed I think for good reason.