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Troubled Japanese royal Crown Princess Masako is making her first official trip outside Tokyo. The 41-year-old was pictured smiling with her husband Naruhito and daughter Aiko as they left for a snowy break in the city of Nagano.
The family will spend the first few days in the mountain resort skiing. But later this month the pretty royal, who withdrew from public life over a year ago, will be joining her husband at the Special Olympics Winter Games.
Crown Prince Naruhito will be alone when he attends a ceremony to mark the opening of the games on February 26, but Masako will join him the following afternoon to take in a hockey match. "The game-watching was planned as attendance at the opening ceremony was expected to put a considerable burden on her," revealed one of Naruhito's aides.
It will be the first time the princess has attended an official event outside Tokyo since November 2003. On that occasion she went along to another sporting event for disabled people, but a month later she suspended all royal duties. The Harvard graduate was said to be suffering from an "adjustment disorder" brought on by the demands of her role. Not the least of these, according to royal watchers, was the pressure to produce a male heir.
Masako gave up a promising career as a diplomat when she married into the royal family. Her husband is said to have promised her freedom within the role, but she found herself in conflict with the tradition-bound Imperial Household and later slipped into depression. The 41-year-old seems to have been recovering in recent months, however, and in January she made an appearance on the balcony of the Imperial Palace. |
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