<figure id="attachment_207622" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 3500px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-207622"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="91c60a3b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/09/62afa391f3a992b7ed076fe464f94ee0.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-207622" class="wp-caption-text">The happy couple at their engagement conference four years ago. I sincerely hope that it will be a long time, but if it does happen, there will be a variety of options Photo: Representative Photography/Reuters/Afro</figcaption></figure>
On September 24, Kei Komuro, wearing a suit and no tie, with earphones in his ear, was shown on TV walking briskly down a street in New York. He was wearing his long hair tied back in a &#8220;samurai hairdo. Some people seem to be praising him as &#8220;cool,&#8221; but of course there are those who are raising their eyebrows.
In any case, it would be harassment in this day and age to criticize someone&#8217;s appearance. He didn&#8217;t give a second thought to the reporters chasing after him and kept walking with a perfect blank expression. He didn&#8217;t look annoyed when people were talking to him, and he didn&#8217;t just duck and say, &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, I&#8217;m in a hurry,&#8221; but he had the audacity to ignore them so completely.
 &#8220;So I can&#8217;t allow someone like that to become the husband of a princess.
That&#8217;s what my friend said to me. Mr. Komuro is no doubt unaware that the whole of Japan is turning into his mother-in-law. But three days before his return to Japan, he exposed himself to us.
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<h2>For the first time in her life, Mako has a family name.</h2>
After that, the lawyer&#8217;s office where he works was found, and when he returned to Japan on March 27, it was reported that he had arrived home. The media is in a frenzy.
 &#8220;I wonder if Princess Mako, who will have her own family name for the first time in her life, is excited.
That&#8217;s what another friend said. That&#8217;s true. It must be a complicated position to be the uchikohin, isn&#8217;t it? He grew up without any financial hardship. She didn&#8217;t have to borrow money for scholarships, and she could even study abroad if she wanted to. But he can&#8217;t even go to a convenience store by himself, let alone watch a movie on his way home from university. The public always looks at him as if he is eating off the taxpayers&#8217; money.
Of course, there are people who are happy to see you perform your official duties. However, it would be unpleasant to be forced to &#8220;put the public before the private&#8221; just because you happen to be born into the royal family. Moreover, no matter how much selflessness and devotion he puts into his life, he will never become the emperor. The only time you are released from your &#8220;home&#8221; is when you get married. Even then, the Emperor&#8217;s approval is required. In some cases, the younger brother may become the emperor first, and then the emperor may ask the younger brother to approve his marriage. This is a family where the perfect patriarchal system is alive and well.
As long as a female emperor is not realized, the patriarchal system will not disappear from Japan. There will never be true gender equality.
When a couple gets married, they are allowed to use either their male or female surname, but according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare&#8217;s 2016 Special Report on Vital Statistics, &#8220;Statistics on Marriage,&#8221; 96 percent of couples choose the husband&#8217;s surname. There are also a very small number of couples who choose their wives&#8217; surnames.
However, Princess Mako, who does not have a family name, does not have a choice. &#8220;She will have to become &#8220;Mako Komuro. What will happen to her if she gets divorced? She could continue to take the name Komuro, or she could adopt a child from Princess Noriko&#8217;s family and take the surname &#8220;Kawashima.
Marriage and divorce are one and the same. If you get married, there is always the risk of divorce. Of course, no one marries for the sake of divorce, but since divorce is not possible without marriage, it would be better to consider the risk of divorce as long as one is married.
<h2>Marriage can happen as many times as you want it to.</h2>
When I was talking about this with my female friends, the men objected, &#8220;That&#8217;s not true.
&#8220;They seemed to think that after all the trouble they went through to get married, there was no way they would get divorced. &#8221; That&#8217;s not true,&#8221; said the women.
Even ordinary people don&#8217;t realize the difference in their upbringing until after they are married. And their environment is very different. Even though they had surrendered their marriages, they were in different positions. I can&#8217;t even imagine how different their sense of life, finances, and values on various things are.
Even if she did not want to, the royal family would grow up under the parasol of a nanny. On the other hand, she was raised in a single-parent household, determined to &#8220;protect her mother&#8221; and ambitious in the name of ambition. It would be nice if they could reconcile to get along, but if they think that &#8220;love transcends all,&#8221; they might regret it. That&#8217;s why divorce is an option when that happens.
The young women who are getting married know this too. When someone gets divorced, people ask, &#8220;Why? When someone gets divorced, people ask, &#8220;Why?&#8221; but when someone gets married, they don&#8217;t ask, &#8220;Why are you getting married? But when someone gets married, they don&#8217;t ask, &#8220;Why are you getting married? Personally, I am interested in people who choose to get married, so I always ask, &#8220;Why are you getting married? In the past, women would say, &#8221; Because I love you&#8221; or &#8220;Because I thought there was no one else &#8221; in an embarrassed manner.
In the past, women would say, &#8220;Because I love him,&#8221; or &#8220;Because I thought there was no one else.&#8221; Recently, however, the most common answer is, &#8221; Because I want to have children,&#8221; or &#8220;Because I wanted to experience marriage for the time being. And in most cases, they add, &#8220;If it doesn&#8217;t work out, you can always get a divorce.
 &#8220;If it doesn&#8217;t work out, I can just get a divorce.
Yes, you can get married as many times as you want.
However, in reality, there are many women who lament that they want to get divorced but cannot. This is because of financial problems. There are many couples who work full-time together, but in this country where there is a wage gap between men and women, it is difficult for women to take in children and maintain their standard of living. At one meeting, when I asked married women what they would do if they won 300 million yen, I was surprised to find that most of them answered, &#8220;I would get a divorce.
On the other hand, I have never heard a man say, &#8220;I want to get a divorce, but I can&#8217;t. I think men are basically &#8220;reluctant to divorce,&#8221; unless their wives have some flaw. One reason is that it is difficult for them to lead their daily lives on their own because they leave everything related to &#8220;life&#8221; to their wives, and another reason is that their daily lives are built on habit and inertia (not in a bad way), and they don&#8217;t like to see that change drastically.
In general, women are more likely to be &#8220;flexible to change. Even in the case of a unilateral divorce, where a woman is betrayed and forced to divorce, she is able to look forward and stand on her own feet. The fact that women who have lost their husbands live much longer than men who have lost their wives suggests that women adjust more quickly to life without their husbands.
Of course, it is also because women are more likely to have been oppressed in their previous marital relationships. Husbands tend to praise women when they are single, and then suddenly want to think of them as &#8220;mine&#8221; when they get married. I think this may change in the future, but when I look at social networking sites, I am sometimes pained by the fact that there are more posts about &#8220;moral harassment and domestic violence by husbands&#8221; than I expected.
&#8220;Mako&#8217;s marriage has been called an &#8220;elopement marriage&#8221; and a &#8220;disowned marriage,&#8221; but therein lies the cry of a woman&#8217;s soul, &#8220;I want to live freely&#8221; and &#8220;I want to live by my own will.
<h2>Becoming a free &#8220;Mako Komuro</h2>
At least she has been able to live a life with restrictions, but she has accepted them and done her part. And she was allowed to freely choose her university. &#8220;She might have thought that more freedom awaited her when she got married, since she wasn&#8217;t going to stay in the royal family anyway.
But marriage was suddenly a &#8220;no-go&#8221; for her. She must have realized the double standard of her parents when they opposed her marriage, which was the most important thing for her, even though she had been encouraged to have her own will and independence of mind. There is a tendency to say that the people won&#8217;t forgive her, but she may not have forgiven the people for ruining her life now.
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Whenever something happens, people bash the Imperial Family. Maybe that&#8217;s how much attention they get, but that&#8217;s also how hard the bashing is. Some people are quick to say, &#8220;Taxpayers&#8217; money&#8230;&#8221; In order to stop such people from talking, the Imperial Family may want to think about changing its system so that it can earn its own income, following the example of the British Royal Family. In this way, the royal family would have more freedom.
Furthermore, since she is going to live in the U.S., I would like Mako Komuro to meet Henry and Megan and talk with them, and I&#8217;m sure that if a roundtable discussion between the three of them were broadcast on Youtube and published as a book, it would sell well. Yes, Mako Akishino may not have freedom, but Mako Komuro has all kinds of freedom waiting for her.

 Sanae Kameyama

 Representative photo/Reuters/Afro

 On September 24, Kei Komuro, wearing a suit and no tie and wearing earphones, was shown on TV walking quickly down a street in New York. His long hair was tied back in a bun, giving him "samurai hair". Some people praised it as "cool.

All kinds of freedom await Mako & Kei on their way to New York

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