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Japanese princess weds, loses title

Sayako Kuroda and her husband Yoshiki exchange smiles during a news conference following their wedding at a Tokyo hotel yesterday. The daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko married the Tokyo government official in a private ceremony. PHOTO: AP

Japanese Princess Sayako descended to the rank of commoner and housewife yesterday by marrying a government employee, but for many of the thousands of women watching it was still a Cinderella story.

Although Japanese women seek careers and are settling down later than ever, few families, let alone the emperor's, would talk proudly about their first-born daughter not marrying until age 36.

Perhaps that's why the well-wishers who lined the streets of Tokyo saw the wedding of the emperor's only daughter as a special happy ending.

"I myself had so much pressure [to get married] from my family members because I'm the first daughter," said Azusa Hirai, 31, who tied the knot in April.

Hirai waited more than an hour on the roadside to witness Sayako's seven-minute parade, a modest affair for a princess who turned into a commoner under imperial tradition.

"I was really excited about her wedding," the housewife said. "I had been checking today's weather forecast for a week."

"I think she is different from Princess Masako or Princess Kiko, who married into the imperial family," she said, referring to the wives of Sayako's two elder brothers. "Sayako must have had a lot of tough time because everyone was watching her."

The crowd that gathered on the roadside from the the Imperial Palace to the Imperial Hotel, where she had the Shinto-style wedding ceremony, was not large compared with the wedding parade in June 1993 when Masako married Crown Prince Naruhito.

But about 6,000 people came out on the work day and more than 2,000 lined up to enter their names in the congratulatory books.

Sayako is the youngest child of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko and the last of their three children to wed. No female royal has married in her late 30s in recent history.

Sayako has married Yoshiki Kuroda, a childhood friend of her one of her brothers.
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