Word: michiko
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...Imperial Household declared that while the Crown Prince's wishes had been considered, it was the Imperial Council who had in the end found "Miss Shoda the most suitable." So as not to lose face, everybody solemnly accepted this version and formally approved the marriage. An hour later, Michiko and her parents were at the Imperial Palace to pay their respects to the Emperor and Empress, and Akihito, dressed now in ancient court costume, went off to the three Shinto shrines on the palace grounds to tell his ancestors about his betrothal. Michiko herself went on TV to tell...
...Believe." Michiko was not always so sure about her feelings for Akihito ("I do love him," she told a friend. "His sincerity won me over.") Perhaps she was aware of the grueling education in protocol and punctilio that lies ahead. Always the sensible girl, who once earned the nickname "Antelope" because of her bouncy, athletic ways, she was valedictorian of her class and president of the students' committee at Tokyo's University of the Sacred Heart (though she is not a Roman Catholic). She wrote her thesis on The Forsyte Saga, insisted on typing every...
...prince, hampered though he was by not being allowed to see Michiko alone, turned out to be an insistent suitor. As the Imperial Household combed through the dossiers of hundreds of candidates, he ardently phoned and wrote the girl he had already selected. Finally Akihito...