Engagement
In August 1957, she met then-Crown Prince Akihito on a tennis court at Karuizawa. The Imperial Household Council (a body composed of the Prime Minister of Japan, the presiding officers of the two houses of the Diet of Japan, or Parliament, the Chief Justice of Japan, and two members of the Imperial Family) formally approved the engagement of the Crown Prince to Michiko Shōda on 27 November 1958. Although the future Crown Princess was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she was a commoner. During the 1950s, the media and most persons familiar with the Japanese monarchy had assumed the powerful Imperial Household Agency (Kunaicho) would select a bride for Crown Prince Akihito from among the daughters of the former court nobility (Kazoku) or from one of the former branches of the Imperial Family. Some traditionalists opposed the engagement, as she comes from a Catholic family, and it was widely rumored that Empress Kōjun also was against her son's engagement. When the Dowager Empress died in 2000, Reuters news agency reported that she had bullied her effervescent new daughter-in-law into a rumored nervous breakdown in the early 1960s. The young couple, nonetheless, proved widely popular among the Japanese public.
Read more about this topic: Empress Michiko
Famous quotes containing the word engagement:
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