SOME weeks ago, the Japanese Cabinet - the power and puppeteer behind the public face of Japan's Imperial Family - approved a curious resolution by the National Parliament. Crown Prince Naruhito and his fiancee Masako Owada, it decreed, would not legally be able to accept wedding gifts from friends and relatives.
The ruling limited gift-giving at tomorrow's wedding to politicians, Supreme Court judges and a few other groups under requirements stipulated by the autocratic Imperial Household Agency (IHA), and was apparently inspired by a wish to protect the happy couple.
Japan was so enraptured by the 33-year-old Crown Prince's fairy-tale engagement story and by his beautiful future empress, the agency reasoned, that unless limits were put on the largesse, the poor souls would be inundated with presents.
What Naruhito and Masako thought about the arrangement is not on record, and whether or not they are allowed to receive wedding day trinkets from well-wishers may be immaterial to them.
But has the IHA, a government-appointed body which rigidly controls the world's oldest monarchy, misread popular feeling? In January, when news slipped out that after a long search Prince Naruhito had at last found his perfect bride, a 29-year-old diplomat from Tokyo's upper social strata, Japan evidently approved of the choice.
For a few weeks, it seemed as if the nation had stepped back to 1959 and was again preparing for the Cinderella-land wedding of the then Crown Prince Akihito and flour miller's daughter Michiko Shoda, now Japan's Emperor and Empress.