TOKYO —
A Japanese princess who gave up the throne to marry her commoner faculty sweetheart left for New York on Sunday, because the couple pursued happiness as newlyweds and left behind a nation that has criticized their romance.
The departure of Mako Komuro, the previous Princess Mako, and Kei Komuro, each 30, as they boarded their airplane amid a flurry of digicam flashes at Haneda airport in Tokyo was carried stay by main Japanese broadcasters.
Kei Komuro, a graduate of Fordham College regulation faculty, has a job at a New York regulation agency. He has but to cross his bar examination, one other piece of reports that native media have used to assault him, though it’s common to cross after a number of makes an attempt.
“I really like Mako,” he informed reporters final month after registering their marriage in Tokyo. They did so with no wedding ceremony banquet or any of the opposite standard celebratory rituals.
“I need to stay the one life I’ve with the individual I really like,” he mentioned.
Though Japan seems trendy in some ways, values about household relations and the standing of girls stay considerably antiquated, rooted in feudal practices.
Such views have been accentuated within the public’s response to the wedding. Some Japanese really feel they’ve a say in such issues as a result of taxpayer cash helps the imperial household system.
Different princesses have married commoners and left the palace. However Mako is the primary to have drawn such a public outcry, together with a frenzied response on social media and in native tabloids.
Hypothesis ranged from whether or not the couple might afford to stay in Manhattan to how a lot cash Kei Komuro would earn and if the previous princess would find yourself financially supporting her husband.
Mako is the niece of Emperor Naruhito, who additionally married a commoner, Masako. Masako usually suffered mentally within the cloistered, regulated lifetime of the imperial household. The adverse media protection surrounding Mako’s marriage gave her what palace docs described final month as a type of traumatic stress dysfunction.
Former Emperor Akihito, the daddy of the present emperor, was the primary member of the imperial household to marry a commoner. His father was the emperor below whom Japan fought and misplaced in World Struggle II.
The household holds no political energy however serves as an emblem of the nation, attending ceremonial occasions and visiting catastrophe zones, and stays comparatively widespread.
Solely males inherit the Chrysanthemum Thone. Mako is the daughter of the emperor’s youthful brother, and her 15-year-old brother is predicted to ultimately be emperor.
Complicating the previous princess’s marriage, introduced in 2017, was a monetary dispute involving Kei Komuro’s mom. That problem was just lately settled, in keeping with Kyodo information service.
When Kei Komuro returned from the U.S. in September, the couple was reunited for the primary time in three years. They met whereas attending Tokyo’s Worldwide Christian College a decade in the past.
In saying their marriage, the previous princess, a museum curator, made her selection clear.
“He’s somebody I can not do with out,” she mentioned. “Marriage is that call wanted for us to stay on, staying true to our hearts.”
