Crown Princess Masako - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born in Tokyo, Japan, she was originally named Masako Owada (小和田雅子, Owada Masako?). She is eldest daughter of Hisashi Owada, a senior diplomat, and former President of the International Court of Justice. She has two younger sisters, twins named Setsuko and Reiko.

Masako went to live in Moscow with her parents when she was two years old, where she completed her kindergarten education. Upon returning to Japan, she attended a private girls' school in Tokyo, Denenchofu Futaba, from elementary school through her second year of senior high school. Masako and her family moved to the United States, and settled in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts called Belmont, when her father became a guest professor at Harvard University and vice ambassador to the United States. In 1981, she graduated from Belmont High School, where she was president of the National Honor Society. Masako enrolled at Radcliffe College.

Princess Masako holds an A.B. magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard College and attended but did not finish the graduate course in International Relations at Balliol College, Oxford University. Her senior thesis advisor at Harvard was Jeffrey Sachs. She also studied briefly at the University of Tokyo, where her father taught, in preparation for the entrance examinations at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In addition to her native Japanese, she is fluent in English and French, and is said to be of conversational standard in German, Russian, and Spanish.