Posted on 06/02/2010 11:56:16 AM PDT by Niuhuru
TOKYO — The drizzly weather didn’t dampen the excitement at the annual spring imperial party last month as the royal family strolled along Tokyo’s Akasaka Palace grounds. Mao Asada, the Olympic figure skating silver medalist, was so overwhelmed when Emperor Akihito spoke to her that she managed only to repeatedly reply “yes,” and “thank you very much.”
It was a typical reaction that shows the magnetic hold the emperor and empress have over the Japanese people.
Missing as usual from the festivities was Crown Princess Masako who suffers from a stress-related disorder that causes anxiety and distress and only occasionally attends official functions. On that day, however, she was caught up in another issue compounding her personal difficulties. Princess Masako was with her eight-year-old daughter at school, encouraging the young princess who is struggling to overcome absenteeism.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They make it sound as though absenteeism is an illness.
Royalty has the same problems as everybody else, usually kept quiet though.
My niece, a very bright little girl had great difficulties attending school, I well remember the struggles my sister had with her just to make her go and that lasted from K. through about the 10th or 11th grade. Said niece is about 40 years old now and an R.N. so she did survive.
It is thought that she expected to be free to live a fairly westernized life given her upbringing, but when she joined the royal family, discovering that her main purpose in life henceforth would be to provide a male heir to the throne, she may have experienced a real culture shock.
Hope she is getting some useful counseling and appropriate medication. Japan doesn't need a reluctant princess.
Well, here’s hoping then that she somehow manages to find some balance.
She has to be much dumber (or naive to give her the benefit of the doubt) than she is presented if she didn't understand this from the start. It's the story of crown princesses around the world in every culture through every era in history. Why would she think she she would be treated differently, especially in a royal household as culturally conservative as Japan's?
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