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.
PHOTO: AP
"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.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS