Word: akihito
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...palace grounds, where unpaid volunteers tended the gardens. As her chauffeur-driven car passed through the tall gateway, guarded by policemen with gold chrysanthemums on their collars, Michiko was carried into the secluded "world within the moat" that will be hers next month on her marriage to Crown Prince Akihito, 25. Slim, curly-haired Michiko Shoda is the first commoner in 2,600 years to marry an heir to the imperial throne...
Years ago Mrs. Elizabeth Gray Vining, the American Quaker who tutored Akihito during his childhood, said to Dr. Koizumi: "She who marries the crown prince must be a girl of spirit who will not be a doormat; she must not be someone who will be easily overwhelmed." Michiko Shoda, standing straight and slim beside her devoted prince, seems precisely that girl...
...romance of Japan's Prince Akihito and his commoner fiancée Michiko Shoda, which ripened shyly on the tennis courts of Tokyo, a love match after all? Cruelly thwacking the charming legend, a spokesman for the imperial household told the astounded Diet that nothing so silly as affection had a part in the troth-pledging; plain, old-fashioned parental bride-picking had done the trick. "The engagement of the Crown Prince was not the result of unthinking love," said the spokesman, adding obscurely, "I have observed the Prince and was compelled to admire his mature and deliberate...
...ancient custom, a Japanese fiancé seals the engagement by buying the bride. Last week Crown Prince Akihito made a small investment (two fish, five rolls of white silk, six bottles of sake), officially sealed his troth to Michiko Shoda, who then knuckled down to the weary task of studying the archaic imperial wedding lore under Palace Ritualist Osanaga Kanroji. His bride in hand, the prince was free to join his parents. Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagoko, at a heady gala: the annual poetry-reading contest. Fired by this year's contemporary topic (windows), an astounding 22,427 waka...
Turning 25, Japan's slender, donnish Prince Akihito downed green tea and bean cakes at a sedate trio of parties (one with his kin, another with Fiancee Michiko Shoda, a third with 60 old classmates at Gakushuin University), tentatively accepted a birthday gift designed to cement the bonds between the budget-conscious imperial family and a local construction firm: an offer to build the foundations and outer shell (cost: $150,000) of Akihito's new, 45-room palace for a kowtowing $27.78. Apparently more concerned with imperial honor than with imperial bargains, however, Tokyo's noisy newspapers...