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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS