Masako

Masako (born December 9, 1963, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese diplomat who became the crown princess of Japan when she married Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993. She became empress of Japan in May 2019.

Owada Masako was the daughter of Owada Hisashi, a high-ranking official of the Japanese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a child she lived in the Soviet Union and in the United States, where her father was on diplomatic missions. In 1985 she graduated from Harvard University with a major in economics, and the following year she enrolled at the University of Tokyo. Having passed the diplomatic service test, she left school and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987. In 1988 the ministry sent her to study at Balliol College, Oxford. Owada returned in 1990, and, as a junior diplomat, she worked long hours, compiling briefing papers on trade issues and translating documents. By the time she became engaged, Owada had won wide respect for the depth of her knowledge on highly technical matters and for her skills as a diplomat who could speak several languages.

When Naruhito and Owada met for the first time—in 1986 at a tea party—the prince was favourably impressed. Owada, however, was reportedly not interested in courtship. By that time, women had achieved an unprecedented level of freedom in Japan, which Owada would lose by marrying. In addition, she would have to give up her successful diplomatic career for life in the imperial household, where the emperor’s family, by tradition, lacked both privacy and autonomy. It was not until December 1992 that Owada finally accepted Naruhito’s proposal.

Naruhito (who by then was crown prince) had persuaded his bride-to-be that her duties would be largely diplomatic in nature; he also had promised to protect her for her entire life. The idea of protecting was widely interpreted to mean that he was determined to guard her from the traditional and rigid ways of the Imperial Household Agency courtiers. The newlyweds were expected to accelerate the transition to an imperial family that was more relaxed and accessible. Moreover, they were well prepared to take advantage of the experience they had in the world beyond the palace walls.

Their much-anticipated wedding took place on June 9, 1993, in Tokyo, amid worldwide media attention. Naruhito had followed in the footsteps of his father, the emperor Akihito, by marrying a commoner. The couple made some trips abroad together in the first years of their marriage. However, expectations mounted through the 1990s for them to give birth to a son (as, by Japanese law, only a male could succeed Naruhito), and Masako largely stopped traveling. She had a miscarriage in 1999, and then a daughter, Princess Aiko, was born in 2001. This only increased the urgency for a son, especially as the crown princess entered her 40s. In addition to curtailing her travels, Masako was now seen less frequently in public, and by 2004 she was reported to be afflicted by a stress-related health disorder. She did not have another child, but the birth of a son to Prince Akishino (Naruhito’s younger brother) and his wife in 2006 resolved the succession issue. Subsequently, her health was reported to have improved.

In 2016 Akihito delivered a televised address in which he announced his desire to give up the throne, and in 2017 the Diet amended the Imperial Household Law to codify that process. Lawmakers added a supplementary resolution to consider the role of women in the imperial household, as current law stripped women of their imperial status if they married a commoner. This prevented the establishment of female-led branches in a royal house that had already faced public struggles on matters of succession. Conservative lawmakers strongly opposed such changes, which they argued paved the way for a woman to sit on the throne, while proponents noted that Japan had been ruled by numerous empresses and that patrilineality dated only to the Meiji period. On April 30, 2019, Akihito formally abdicated, and at midnight on May 1 Naruhito became the 126th emperor of Japan. According to the Imperial Household Law, neither Masako nor the other women of the imperial household were allowed to be present at the ceremony where Naruhito formally accepted the regalia of office.