Word: michiko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Demure, with downcast eyes, displaying a modesty beneath which lies tempered steel, 24-year-old Michiko Shoda last week crossed the blue moat surrounding the Imperial Palace. Behind her lay the roaring, garish city of Tokyo, with huge advertising balloons adrift above the rooftops. Ahead stretched the quiet greenery of the 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...
...Tribesmen. For Japan's 46,780,000 women, Michiko-san's unprecedented break with ancient tradition is the most dramatic illustration of a change that has come to all of them-the direct result of the crushing defeat of Japan in the Pacific war, the unsettling occupation of the green and pleasant islands by U.S. troops, and the new constitution established by the conqueror, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, in 1946. Since then, strange rents have appeared in the densely woven fabric of Japanese society, ranging from Emperor Hirohito's public disavowal of the "false conception...
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...
Police Guard. Prim, convent-bred Michiko Shoda had no part in any such shenanigans. But, just as in the eyes of many Japanese women she is the most successful symbol of their emancipation, so has she to some extent become a symbol of the hated modern world to Japanese traditionalists-mostly men over 30. Some of the kazoku (noble) families make no secret of their chagrin that their own blue-blooded daughters were passed over as a bride for the crown prince. A court lady angrily describes Michiko Shoda as "that little upstart." Recently, as a guest at an exclusive...
Even those imperial officials most anxious to break with the rigid past recognize the danger of fatally damaging the institution of royalty itself. Court ladies declare that Michiko "will always be regarded as 'the girl from outside.' " Old women giggle that the Shodas come from the Kanto Plain, the proverbial home of "high winds and nagging wives." An elderly businessman tells his friends: "Enjoy the royal wedding; it is the last one you will see in Japan...