picture from Yahoo! News

Although she is better known for her love for gardening and pottery, Princess Aiko proved to be a promising sportswomen-in-making yesterday, after helping her team win a relay race.

As the last member of her team crossed the finish line well ahead of the others, Aiko and the other members of her team run into the field to celebrate their victory. Aiko was a key factor in the victory: she was running second to last and managed to gain a considerable lead, which secured the eventual victory.

picture from Yahoo! News

The relay contest is an annual event of the Autumn Athletic Festival at the Gakushuin school, where Aiko is a student.

Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako were on hand for their daughter’s big day: seated next to other students’ parents, they couldn’t hide their wide smiles as Aiko confidentially crossed the finish line.

For more pictures and information, visit this thread.

Marsel Japanese Royals Prince Naruhito, Princess Aiko, Princess Masako, Sport

Click here to read an article at royalblog.nl

At the request of Tokyo’s Governor Shintaro Ishihara, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has asked Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Crown Princess Masako, to represent Tokyo’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. (See also this post.) He has invited them to accompany Tokyo’s bid officials to Copenhagen where the vote on the host for the 2016 Olympic Games will take place on October 2. In the past, the support of heads of state, like Tony Blair for London 2012 or Vladimir Putin for Sochi 2014, has played an important role in bringing the Olympic Games home to their cities. Accordingly, Tokyo’s rivals for the Olympics 2016, Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, are rumoured to have asked their respective heads of state to attend. This is why Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, the head of the Olympic bid committee, has deemed it “absolutely necessary to solicit kind help from the imperial family for the benefit of the Japanese people and for the history of Japan.” Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Denmark, Environment, IOC, Olympics, Prince Naruhito, Princess Masako

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 Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan met his future bride Masako Owada first on October 18, 1986. A party had been arranged to celebrate the visit of Princess Elena of Spain; but it was also a way of enabling the heir to the throne to meet a selection of forty eligible young women, among them Masako. The prince was immediately smitten: Masako, a charming, attractive and intelligent Harvard-graduate, had only recently passed the Foreign Ministry entrance exam (as one of only five per cent of those to pass the test that year). She seemed to incorporate everything that he had always wanted from his future partner.

Click here to see the photo at ANP

After the prince had in 1985 come back from his studies in Oxford, he had told a press conference: “My ideal partner should have the ability to boldly speak her mind. Another wish is that she should know a foreign language to a certain degree because we will often meet with foreigners.” The court journalists were a bit at a loss to imagine a Japanese woman matching this picture. But it was known that the prince had a penchant for American actress Brooke Shields whom he enthusiastically praised: “She says things in a clear, fearless way.” (Only to add, with a sad smile: “But, of course, I cannot marry a foreigner…”) Now, he finally seemed to have met a Japanese woman whom he was able to truly love and admire. Masako’s strong-willed nature was combined with a natural knack for diplomacy. “She has the wisdom to adapt herself to any environment,” a classmate said about her. Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Prince Naruhito, Princess Masako, Wedding Anniversary

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 Tokyo’s Olympic bid committee will be soliciting help from Japan’s imperial royal family for its bid campaign that was launched last month by Prime Minister Taro Aso. The final decision about the Olympic host 2016 will be taken by the International Olympic Committee on October 2nd. Tokyo’s committee will make a formal request through the government for Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako to present the city’s bid on the day before.

The request of the Tokyo committee for support from the imperial family has been rendered necessary as rival cities can boast high profile public figures representing their case, including Barack Obama for Chicago and King Juan Carlos for Madrid. Within this context, Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako are probably the very members of the imperial family whose help might increase Tokyo´s chances the most. Ivan Hall, a former professor at the law faculty of Gakushuin University, has once said about the couple: “They are among the more open-minded, liberal people in the country today because of their education and the time they came to intellectual maturity. They represent a monarchy that the whole world can be comfortable with.” Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Olympics, Prince Naruhito, Princess Aiko, Princess Masako

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On Saturday, Prince and Princess Akishino arrived back home from their tour to the Danube countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. In Romania, the fourth and last leg of their journey, the couple paid a courtesy visit to President Basescu on Wednesday and met with Chairman of the Romanian Senate Mircea Geoana and Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Roberta Anastase.

On the programme of the four-day visit were also a series of cultural and social events, such as visits to Cotroceni National Museum, the building of the Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage, the Sinaia Monastery and Peles Castle. The royal couple also planted cherry trees at the Village Museum and met professors and students of the Japanese Section of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of the Bucharest University. (Article) Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Prince Akishino, Prince Naruhito, Princess Kiko

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 During a state visit of Singapore president S. R. Nathan to Japan, the Singapore leader and his wife were hosted by Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko at a state banquet on Monday. In his welcome speech, the emperor remembered that during his first visit to Singapore in 1970, he and his wife (who were still crown prince and crown princess at the time) had planted seedlings of the Japanese cycad in the Jurong industrial estate. On the couple´s most recent visit to Singapore, in 2006, they were delighted to behold that those very seedlings had become well grown trees in the Japanese Garden.

Mr Nathan, in his turn, stressed the importance of exchange agreements between the universities in the two countries. This is in a line with the very open and positive view that the president took towards all possible forms of cultural exchange in his speech at a lunchtime reception for some 450 Singaporeans living in Japan on Sunday. He said that the diversity of experiences, knowledge and networks acquired by the increasing number of Singaporeans living overseas would “add to the rich fabric of our nation when they return home”. (Article)

The welcome ceremony for the Singapore President was also attended by Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako. The latter has now entered her sixth year of convalescence from a stress-induced illness that has raised worlwide public interest and has led to discussions about the life quality of Japanese royals, and, especially, of Japanese crown princesses. (Princess Masako´s mother-in-law, Empress Michiko, suffered a nervous breakdown a few years after her marriage.) However, of late, the number of Princess Masako´s appearances in public has remarkably increased, a fact that may well strengthen hopes for the former career diplomat´s full recovery.

Read more about the Singapore state visit in this TRF thread.
Read more about the current events of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako in this TRF thread.

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, President Nathan, Prince Naruhito, Princess Masako, Singapore, State Visit

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 On Sunday, when the Shunyukai Symphony Orchestra performed Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Tokyo, Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan played the viola. (Article) This has been the sixth time for the prince to perform in the amateur orchestra, of which he is an honorary member. The prince who is known to be passionately fond of music also sometimes plays viola in the orchestra of Gakushuin University, his old school in Tokyo, as he did last December.

Click here to see the photo at belgapicture

But the crown prince is not only playing in public. Music is a very popular evening entertainment with the imperial family: Empress Michiko plays the harp or the piano, Emperor Akihito cello and Prince Naruhito viola. (Initially, Naruhito´s instrument had been the violin, but he later switched to the viola because the violin seemed to be “too much of a leader, too prominent” for the modest prince´s taste.) Friends of the imperial family use to make up the rest. And maybe some day the musical ensemble will receive another “imperial addition”: last year, the crown prince´s only child, Princess Aiko, started to take violin and piano lessons.

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Music, Prince Naruhito, Princess Aiko

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On May 10, 2004, Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan was scheduled for a news conference. Nobody expected anything spectacular or even especially interesting from this event. All public relations of the imperial family members are organized by the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) which sets up news conferences only on certain occasions, the most frequent being birthdays and visits of the royals to foreign countries. The journalists who are invited to attend – usually from a carefully selected pool of “court journalists” – ought to submit the questions they are intending to ask weeks in advance to the IHA officials on duty, for approval. The answers that the imperial prince or princess will give are also written down for them by the IHA before the news conference starts. All very well organized, no surprises involved for anybody, the worst thing one could say: that all this might be a little bit boring…

Click here to see the photo at ANP beeldbank

In May 2004, the crown prince was planning a trip to Europe where he was going to attend the royal weddings in Denmark and Spain. It was to be supposed that, on the obligatory press conference, he would discuss the trip’s schedule, make a few remarks concerning the friendly relations to the other royal families and maybe mention what everybody knew already: that his wife, Crown Princess Masako, was not so far recovered yet from her bout with shingles in December 2003 as to be able to accompany him. But his audience was going to be surprised… Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Imperial Household Agency, Press Conference, Prince Naruhito, Princess Masako, Scandal

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 Last weekend, on a trip to the imperial ranch outside Tokyo, Princess Aiko, only daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako of Japan, happily showed her new puppy, Yuri, to the public. Princess Aiko entered the second grade at Gakushuin Primary School this April.
Sometime this year, Mari, one of the two dogs of the crown prince´s family, died. The dogs Mari and Pippi had already been living for many years with the crown couple, before Aiko was even born. In 1995, a stray dog had been found on the grounds of the Togu Palace where the family lives: the mother of Pippi and Mari. The childless crown couple took care of the little puppies, as soon as they were born, and grew very fond of them. In summer 2003, when the crown princess was already fighting against a looming depression (at that time still unbeknownst to the public) she said that “living with our two dogs Pippi and Mari … has always calmed and rejuvenated my spirit.” The two dogs were treated just like beloved family members. Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Animals, Pets, Prince Naruhito, Princess Aiko, Princess Masako

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 Last Sunday, Crown Princess Masako of Japan, who has suffered stress-induced illness while struggling to adjust to royal life, made her first public appearance outside of Tokyo in about 15 months. The princess attended the 20th national “Midori no Aigo” green conservation event at the Yokohama Animal Forest Park, along with her husband, Crown Prince Naruhito. After an address of the crown prince on the importance of greenery in attempts to tackle global warming, he and the princess both planted cherry trees, in commemoration of the event. After that, the couple visited the park zoo and the Japan Guide Dog Association’s Kanagawa training center to watch guide dog training. Read more…

ChiaraC Japanese Royals Prince Naruhito, Princess Masako