<figure id="attachment_212221" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1024px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-212221"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="6c711fb4"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/10/2021102604163.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-212221" class="wp-caption-text">Mako Komuro leaves the palace residence where she spent time as a member of the royal family. I hope she will be free to shine as an individual. Photo: Kyodo News</figcaption></figure>
<p>Princess Mako of Akishino has become &#8220;Mako Komuro. Until yesterday, the media referred to her as &#8220;Princess Mako,&#8221; but as soon as she registered her marriage, they referred to her as &#8220;Mako-san. Yesterday and today, she is still her.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been nine years since she met Kei Komuro, and four whole years since the engagement announcement. On October 26, her love for Kei Komuro was fulfilled after she put her entire 20s on the line, shaking off all the events and lump sums of money that she had to endure as a married royal princess. At the press conference, the two took turns reading from the document, and the originally scheduled oral question and answer session was cancelled.</p>
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<p>Mako said that she had never had the opportunity to express her feelings before, and repeated the phrase, &#8220;For some reason, false information is taken up as if it were an undoubted fact, and it spreads as an unjustified story. He did not go into details in the document, saying that he could not list what constituted false information, but he did say that the &#8220;financial problems&#8221; of his mother led to various allegations, such as where the money for his trip to the U.S. and study abroad came from and whether he used the royal family to gain admission. I guess it&#8217;s about everything.</p>
<p>For the past four years, Mako has been bashed by the public. The suspicion that would normally be directed at her mother has been replaced by a bashing of her son, Kei Komuro. But in reality, Mr. Komuro is not in Japan. So they turned to Mako, and then to the Akishino family, saying that they had raised a daughter like her.</p>
<p>The people who kept on beating her must have lost sight of why and for what purpose they were beating her. It seemed as if the purpose was to beat them. I don&#8217;t know how many of them knew the people involved and were able to know the details of what was going on.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know if it was envy or jealousy, but I was even told that it was about taxes. If we are talking about the use of tax money, it would be easier to monitor politicians to find out how they are spending it.</p>
<h2>Mako&#8217;s Continued Quest for Freedom</h2>
<p>The more opposed a couple is to love by their parents and the world, the more passionate they become. Surrounded by external enemies, the bond between two people becomes stronger.</p>
<p>At the press conference, Mako confessed that she was the one who initiated everything that led up to the marriage. She said that Mr. Komuro had originally planned to study abroad, but she asked him to move up his plans and establish a base overseas. Even going to that extent, Mako probably wanted to leave the Imperial Family and was seeking a free life.</p>
<p>As she grew older, she must have come to think that her origins and the way she was raised, in which official duties had always taken precedence over her family&#8217;s, were &#8220;not human. He may have cursed the fact that he happened to be born into the imperial family, and yet he had to devote himself to &#8220;public service&#8221; even if it meant putting himself on the back burner.</p>
<p>Even if you are the son of the emperor&#8217;s younger brother, or even if you are not a woman to become the emperor, you have to live &#8220;for the people&#8221; from a young age. The average person would probably think, &#8220;How can I live like that? &#8220;I wonder how many people say, &#8220;I want to be a member of the Imperial Family because I don&#8217;t have to worry about living. How many people would say, &#8220;I want to be a member of the Imperial Family because I don&#8217;t have to worry about living? I don&#8217;t think there are many people who would want to live a life where they cannot have a drink at a food stall or drop by a movie or theater.</p>
<p>Seventy-six years have passed since the end of the war. During this time, the symbolic emperor has relied on the support of the people to survive. If that is the case, perhaps it would have been better if he had delivered more of his &#8220;real voice as a human being&#8221; to the people. Whenever there was a disaster, scenes of the royal family&#8217;s visits were shown on TV, but what kind of conversations took place and what they thought were not conveyed. I think it would be good to shift to an environment where reporters can conduct interviews in a very normal way. This would make it easier to understand what the female members of the Imperial Family in their twenties are thinking and what the Emperor and Empress want to do now. I think that in order to gather support, there should be such activities.</p>
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<p>In this case, I heard the voice of an elderly person who said, &#8220;She is a child who is selfish and leaves. Falling in love with and marrying one man is a common occurrence and &#8220;just a matter of celebration&#8221; in general, but because she is a member of the Imperial Family, she becomes &#8220;selfish. What do people want from the Imperial Family? Aren&#8217;t people still just assuming that marrying the man of their choice is the way it should be for a woman in the Imperial Family? I asked her, but she did not give me a clear answer.</p>
<p>Wasn&#8217;t everyone just dancing around the words &#8220;money problem&#8221; and &#8220;suspicion&#8221; instead of their own opinions? If there really is something legally wrong, it may be revealed in the future. However, it is unlikely that this will be a problem for Kei Komuro himself, but only for his mother.</p>
<h2>What is the &#8220;right marriage&#8221;?</h2>
<p>No one can say whether Mako&#8217;s choice of him was the right one or not. But that&#8217;s what marriage is about, isn&#8217;t it? What was decided at the time can only be corrected later if it turns out to be a mistake.</p>
<p>Even if you are a member of the royal family, it does not mean that the relationship between parent and child is severed. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll ever forget the tearful look on Princess Kiko&#8217;s face when she greeted her daughter, or the impatient expression on Prince Akishino&#8217;s face as he looked into the car and waved. And the way Princess Kako placed her hands on Mako&#8217;s back.</p>
<p>They, too, must be feeling torn between &#8220;public and private&#8221;.</p>
<p>What Mako confronted him with was, &#8220;Don&#8217;t the members of the Imperial Family have any freedom as human beings? Even if they are not allowed to make political statements, it is no longer taboo for the royal family to talk about their lives and thoughts. In fact, it is only when they talk about these things that they can become the new Imperial Family. Furthermore, I believe that the &#8220;Imperial Family of this age&#8221; should actively adopt the idea of a female emperor and a female line of emperors.</p>
<p>I cannot understand why the patriarchal system, which is male-dominated, is still rooted in the Imperial Family, which is also considered to be the symbol of the Japanese family. Shouldn&#8217;t the emperor be elected in the order of birth, as in the United Kingdom? Such a change in the Imperial Family would make it easier to sweep away the sense of patriarchy in Japan. I also hope that Mako, who has left the Imperial Family in an &#8220;unprecedented way,&#8221; will be able to establish an equal marital relationship with her husband in the free country of the United States.</p>


 Sanae Kameyama

 Princess Mako of Akishino has become "Mako Komuro. Until yesterday, the media referred to her as "Mako", but as soon as she registered her marriage, they referred to her as "Mako-san". Yesterday and today, she is still her. I met Kei Komuro.

Mako, a married woman, is surrounded by the freedom to live “as an individual

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