The Japanese Princess Mako and her fiancé will marry next month, but there will be no wedding festivities.
The public does not entirely accept their marriage due to a financial disagreement involving her prospective mother-in-law, according to the palace.
The dispute surrounding Mako’s fiancé Kei Komuro’s mother has caused the imperial family shame and has caused their marriage to be postponed for more than three years.
Komuro, 29, returned to Japan last week after studying to be a lawyer in New York. His ponytail was seen as a provocative statement for someone marrying a princess in the traditional family, and it just contributed to the criticism.
The couple will marry on Oct. 26 and conduct a joint press conference, according to the Imperial Household Agency. Later this year, they plan to start a new life together in New York.
The pair will not have a wedding meal or other rituals “because their marriage is not widely celebrated,” according to the outlet.
Mako has also turned down payment of 150 million yen ($1.35 million) for leaving the imperial family, according to palace authorities. Mako would be the first female member of the imperial dynasty to marry a commoner without receiving payment since World War II.
According to the news agency, she was recently diagnosed with a mental illness that palace doctors classified as a sort of traumatic stress disorder.
Mako, who will turn 30 three days before the wedding, is Emperor Naruhito’s niece. When she and Komuro announced their intention to marry the following year in September 2017, they were classmates at Tokyo’s International Christian University. However, a financial issue arose two months later, and the wedding was postponed.
The disagreement centered on whether the money his mother received from her former fiancé and spent for Komuro’s Japanese schooling was a loan or a gift.
Komuro moved to New York to study law in 2018, and this is his first trip back since then.
The Imperial House Law stipulates that only males can succeed to the throne. When female members of the royal family marry a commoner, they must forfeit their royal status, which has resulted in the royal family’s number shrinking and a scarcity of heirs to the throne.
