Word: masako
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...president, was involved with the settlement of lawsuits. Second, Owada did not seem that interested in an imperial future. Furthermore, she may have had a boyfriend or two. And then there was the press, which caught on to Naruhito's interest almost at once. The Owadas were besieged. Masako-san was tough with reporters, often demanding their business cards, and even slamming her hand against photographers' lenses. As celebrities before her have learned, retaliatory action doesn't do much good. By the time she flew off to Oxford in 1988 for two years' study assigned by the Foreign Ministry...
...Masako evidently agreed. In 1986 she entered the law department of the University of Tokyo to study for the Foreign Ministry entrance exam. The stocky teenager was becoming sleek and turning heads in a division that is only about 5% female. She passed the stiff exam after just one year -- most people require two years of study, and only 5.3% succeeded in 1986, Owada's year. Even now, Tokyo professionals can be heard to say, "She did what a man can't do," and then hurriedly correct themselves...
...Owadas wanted their daughters -- Masako has younger twin sisters -- to "have some solid base to stick to," says an immediate-family member. "The parents wanted them to avoid becoming rootless people. It was simple things, like customs and observing traditional Japanese festivals...
...October 1986 she met her fate at a reception given for Spain's Princess Elena in Tokyo. It was a typical ceremonial trade-off: young women were invited to amuse the pretty Spanish royal and also to be reviewed by the bachelor crown prince. Naruhito liked Masako-san at once. Shigemitsu Dando, a former Supreme Court justice and longtime adviser to the imperial household, confided to his diary that "she was very graceful but also cheery and ! outgoing." Four meetings were arranged, and the imperial watchdogs began a routine background check over three generations...
...gossip goes that on his return he pursued at least two other eligible young women. But it was always really Owada. The prince wanted no other, and the imperial household had persuaded itself that her grandfather was blameless in the Chisso disaster and that any dalliances Masako-san may have had were unimportant. She, meanwhile, was laboring at the ministry, scrupulous about providing up-to-date information and taking pains with the phrasing of documents so as not to nettle other parties to a negotiation...