The Mikado of the title character as a disrespectful representation of the revered Meiji Emperor; Japanese theatre was prohibited from depicting the emperor on stage. Japanese Prince Komatsu Akihito, who saw an 1886 production in London, took no offence. When Prince Fushimi Sadanaru made a state visit in 1907, the British government banned performances of "The Mikado" from London for six weeks, fearing that the play might offend him – a manoeuvre that backfired when the prince complained that he had hoped to see "The Mikado" during his stay. A Japanese journalist covering the prince's stay attended a proscribed performance and confessed
The Mikado of the issue in Seattle a month later, however, drew a large crowd where nearly all agreed that, although works like "The Mikado" should not be abandoned in their traditional form, there should be "some kind of contextualizing apparatus to show that the producers and performers are at least thinking about the problems in the work". In 2015, a planned production by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players was withdrawn after its publicity materials ignited a similar protest in the Asian-American blogosphere. The company redesigned its "Mikado" production and debuted the new concept in December 2016, receiving a warm