■Princess Masako:
For years, a bride-hunting committee of the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) had been searching for someone to share the world's oldest inherited job with Crown Prince Naruhito. Close to 100 women were reportedly introduced to the shy, guppy-loving prince, but it was Masako Okawa who caught his eye.
For reasons that have since become obvious, the Oxford-educated diplomat was in no rush to scrap her career and walk three steps behind the prince for the rest of her life.
Indeed, they had met as early as 1986, but she is said to have repeatedly spurned his approaches before relenting in December 1992, reportedly after pressure from both her diplomat father and even Empress Michiko.
The wedding was scheduled for June 1993, but how was it to be kept secret? No problem — the IHA demanded and got a vow of silence from the massed ranks of the big Japanese media.
So, although the story was an open secret among journalists in Tokyo, it was not until early 1993 that it was "scooped" in the media — by T.R. Reid of The Washington Post.
A decade later, rumors began to circulate about Princess Masako's mental well-being.
With the Imperial taboo fading, Japanese magazines carried anonymously sourced articles that even suggested she had suffered a nervous breakdown and wanted out of her marriage. But those journalists officially accredited to cover the IHA, who had heard rumors that she was being treated for depression, steered clear.
In May 2004, when The Times (London) newspaper ran a story headlined "The Depression of a Princess," it was initially condemned, then accepted, by royal watchers in the Japanese media.
As Richard Lloyd Parry, the paper's Tokyo-based Asia Editor who wrote that story, said at the time: "Japanese journalists knew all about (Princess) Masako's illness and it didn't surprise any of them when I spoke to them."
Many also suspected that the princess had received fertility treatment to conceive the now 10-year-old Princess Aiko. However, that story too — despite having been published in many foreign news outlets — was off-limits, and Japan's media was happy to accept the IHA's denials that that was the case.
"Journalists who inquired about the rumor to the IHA were told to expect trouble if they ran it," recalls Yasunori Okadome, editor of the now-defunct magazine Uwasa no Shinso.
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