Prince Naruhito and Masako Owada, Japan’s Royal Wedding (1993)
Crown Prince Naruhito proposed to diplomat Masako Owada. Three times. Twice she refused. The third time she accepted, marrying him in June of 1993. Masako was a modern Princess. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford. She had a diplomatic career with the Foreign Ministry. This was controversial; traditionalists felt she was “too outspoken and Americanized.” Modernists wanted her to keep her career instead of leaving to be married. Despite the couple’s modern lives, their wedding was traditional. They wore 8th century Heian-era attire. Crown Princess Masako’s twelve-layered silk kimono weighed 13.5 kilograms (30 pounds). Prince Naruhito wore the orange robe representing Japan’s rising sun, which only the Crown Prince can wear. The couple’s daughter, Aiko, was born in 2001. Masako withdrew from public life in 2004 for personal reasons. She has slowly been returning to public life after she and Naruhito became Emperor and Empress of Japan in 2019.
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