Japan is about to have a wedding in the imperial family, but there is no real joy.

The bride, Princess Mako, refuses all pomp.

The Shinto rituals are canceled.

The princess rejects a down payment from the government of the equivalent of 1.17 million euros.

Instead, Mako wants to leave Japan in an unprecedented step and follow her future wife to New York.

It seems like an escape to freedom.

The story is somewhat similar to the dramatic departure of Prince Harry and Meghan from the English royal family.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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The shock hits mainly the Japanese magazines.

They meticulously calculate to the 29-year-old princess how expensive life in New York will be and describe the difficulties and dangers in the strange world.

Neighbors and the police wouldn't protect the couple as well abroad as they did in Japan.

With the Covid pandemic, xenophobia against Asians in America has increased.

The marriage will be a catastrophe, writes Shincho magazine and fears negative consequences for the imperial family.

It reads as if the journalists were offended that the princess is withdrawing from her homeland.

But Mako, the eldest daughter of Crown Prince Fumihito, evades the pressure of this public.

The drama began four years ago when the princess and her bourgeois friend, Kei Komuro, of the same age, announced the impending marriage. Just a few months later, the wedding was suspended after journalists uncovered financial discrepancies in the groom's family. The former fiancé of Komuro's mother asked for money back, with which he had helped finance Komuro's livelihood and education. This confusion did not go down well with the Japanese or with the bride's parents. Under these circumstances, Crown Prince Fumihito, Mako's father, refused to consent to the marriage. He requested that the matter be resolved beforehand. It is still not today. The magazines are now spreading with relish that the mother of the informally fiancé has received social benefits.

The independence of the princess

"It's an odd standard by which the princess and her fiancé are measured," says Kenneth Ruoff, a historian at Portland State University who specializes in Japan and the imperial family.

The Japanese public does not seem to understand properly that female members leave the imperial family when they marry a commoner.

"Mako will no longer formally represent Japan," says Ruoff.

"It is therefore absurd for the population to judge their future partner."

Princesses are not eligible for succession to the throne in Japan. If they marry, they will be discharged from the imperial house with a farewell visit to the emperor and the empress. They then receive their civil rights and can, for example, apply for a passport. The government pays a one-off sum of money so that the former imperialists can live adequately. Usually the former princesses disappear from the public eye. They live cautiously so as not to make headlines.

According to media reports, Mako wants to forego the down payment of 152.5 million yen (1.17 million euros).

Apparently she wants to avoid any impression that the taxpayer has to pay for the financial difficulties of the Komuro family.

“We learn how independent the princess is,” says Ruoff.

"Everyone would argue that she deserves the money for all the work she did as a princess for the imperial family."