Princess Mako , the eldest granddaughter of the Emperor of Japan Naruhito, registered her marriage to the Tokyo Municipality with her former university friend and middle-class citizen Kei Komuro, effectively abandoning the royal family.
The agency of the royal house had presented the official documents last week to celebrate the wedding of the two young people, both 30 years old, thus avoiding any solemn ceremony, four years after the official announcement of the couple.
The couple were supposed to hold a press conference in the early afternoon today, immediately after the wedding, but the two young people opted for a short presentation.
The decision was made to avoid excessive mental fatigue of the princess, who in recent years has suffered from post-traumatic stress, due to the abusive comments received on the Internet for her choice.
The princess was wearing a light green dress and clutching a bouquet of flowers when she left her residence at around 10am (local time): she took leave with a series of bows from her parents, Crown Prince Fumihito and Princess Kiko, while she reserved a long hug to her younger sister Kako, before getting into the representative car that took her to the Municipality. Ten other people from the imperial agency were present for the final farewell.
From now on Mako will be deprived of the royal title and will go to live in a condominium in the center of the capital, pending her move to New York with her husband, probably as early as next month.
Under the rules of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the oldest hereditary monarchy in the world without having suffered interruptions, women are excluded from the line of succession and, if they marry a bourgeois, they lose all ties of belonging to the imperial house.
Mako also decided not to receive the government compensation that she was entitled to after marriage, valued at around 152 million yen (equal to 1.17 million euros), designed to guarantee "the maintenance of a dignified life" after removal from the family.
For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the compensation is not paid.
(Unioneonline / F)
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