The life of a princess is not always as rosy as you imagine. And it is not Mako Komuro, eldest daughter of Prince Fumihito, heir apparent to the Japanese Crown, who will say the opposite. By marrying a commoner, the young woman found herself deprived of her title of princess and will no longer be a member of the imperial family.
Note that in Japan, women are prohibited from reigning. To remain members of the imperial family, they are therefore obliged to marry a nobleman. Mako’s decision, although criticized by some Japanese, is therefore courageous. And she is far from the only crowned head to have given up her title. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle indeed made a somewhat similar decision in January 2020.
The ex princess Mako therefore flew Sunday with her husband Kei Komuro for New York, where the couple intends to settle. Under good escort, the couple took a commercial flight to New York from Tokyo-Haneda airport, without saying a word to the many journalists who were present for the occasion.
Mako and Kei Komuro, both aged 30, were married at the end of October in Tokyo, without the ostentatious imperial rites and also waiving financial compensation from the state normally granted to women leaving the imperial household. A unique case in the history of post-war Japan.
Since the announcement of their engagement in 2017, Mako and Kei Komuro had been the subject of intense media coverage, mostly negative in Japan, due to a financial dispute between the mother of Mr. Komuro and the former fiancé of this one. This quarrel had caused a scandal in the country, where irreproachable behavior is expected of members of the imperial family and their entourage.
AFP specifies that the Emperor of Japan no longer has any political role since the post-war period but remains an important symbolic figure of the nation. Faced with the controversy, the young couple had postponed their wedding and Kei Komuro left for the United States in 2018 to pursue his law studies.
Mako suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to media pressure around her wedding plan, the Imperial Household Agency recently revealed. After his marriage, Mako told a press conference that he felt “fear, sadness and pain“because of the allegations in the media about her and Kei Komuro’s family, which she called”unfounded rumors“.
Media pressure continued after their marriage, with Japanese media subsequently focusing on the fact that Mr. Komuro failed the New York Bar entrance exam. He obtained a law degree in the United States earlier this year and is currently working in a law firm in New York.
Mako meanwhile studied art and cultural heritage at the International Christian University in Tokyo, where she had met her future husband, and spent a year at the University of Edinburgh. She also holds an MA in Museum Studies from the UK University of Leicester.