Haha, Is That A Man???

Last night I went to an opening/here's-to-the-start-of-a-new-year party for my taiko group. It was fun and the members in our group are really great. As we were socializing a stack of pictures were being passed around. I took my turn of browsing through them and I came across a picture of what appeared to be a man dressed as a fancy woman. I asked the group,

"Is this a man!?!?!?"

At first they were confused by my question, and after a few seconds our friend replied,

"No, no - that's the, what do you call it... Princess of Japan."

LOL whooopssss. My bad... good thing most of them were really drunk, so they might not remember me asking that.

The picture looked a lot like this:

Princess Masako

And nowadays you just never know! But I apologize.


So to make up for it, I looked her up. She is the Crown Princess Masako and she's in her 40's I think. Prior to entering the Imperial Family she had a stellar career and an impressive educational background, which included a Bachelor's in Economics from Harvard. She can speak 4-5 of languages - English, of course, being one of them. She went on to study law in Tokyo and I believe I read that she also studied in Oxford. One of her jobs was as a speech writer for the Prime Minister. Props to her.

As I was reading all of this, I thought: wow, she's amazing. But, in recent years she has been mentally and physically drained - and as a consequence has been avoiding public appearances. One of the reasons being that she is under a lot of pressure to have a son. I can understand how that has taken a toll on her.

Japan had high hopes for her. She was smart, young and up-to-date, but ever since she married into the Imperial Family she has taken a step back. They thought she would bring about change, but she hasn't, and in a way, she seems to have lost her spunk.

Aside: An Excerpt of the Imperial Household Requirements for a Perfect Candidate

These included that any bride-to-be should be less than 5ft 5in, under 30 and free of surgery and piercing. Any potential royal bride would also be a virgin.


I thought the height requirement was amusing.

A few weeks ago I read a news article about her walking her daughter to her first day of kindergarten. The picture below accompanied the article. I thought she looked smart and classy - happy, too. I didn't really take note of who she was and I didn't know what the big deal was about taking your child to school.

But now I know.



So I guess to spin that mistake of mine around...
Initially I thought she was a man. But because of that incident, I now know a lot more about her and the Imperial Family.