Who is Kei Komuro, Japan’s Princess Mako’s fiance-to-be?
“This morning, I said to her over the phone ‘I’m going [to speak to the media]’ and she said ‘Talk to you later’,” Komuro said of the short conversation he had with Princess Mako, the first grandchild of Japanese Emperor Akihito and the elder daughter of Prince Akishino.
The couple, who were in the same year at International Christian University in Tokyo, is expected to get officially engaged in mid-June at the earliest and marry sometime in 2018, agency sources said.
The 25-year-old princess will become the first to get engaged among the four grandchildren of the emperor and Empress Michiko.
Dressed in a dark suit with a tie, Komuro revealed little else when speaking with the press in the lobby of a Tokyo law firm where he works, saying that he will speak about the engagement when “the time comes”.
He repeatedly declined to comment on a slew of questions about his relationship with the princess and even on some questions about himself.
Komuro met with the press in the morning after Imperial Household Agency chief Shinichiro Yamamoto confirmed media reports of their impending engagement at a hastily arranged press conference on Tuesday night.
Princess Mako was seen smiling and bowing her head slightly in a car when she left the Akasaka Palace, her residence, on Wednesday morning.
Her envisioned marriage will decrease the number of imperial family members to 18, including the emperor, as Japanese law states that female members of the family lose their status as members of the household when they marry a commoner.
Of them, 14 are women and seven are unmarried. Excluding Crown Prince Naruhito’s only daughter Princess Aiko, 15, all of the unmarried female imperial members are in their 20s and 30s, so if they are to marry commoners in the future the number of imperial family members will further decrease.
Princess Mako and Komuro met about five years ago through a university friend. They soon hit it off and Komuro proposed marriage about a year later, according to an agency source.
According to The Japan Times, Komuro, a former bank employee has been working for a law firm since spring last year He currently attends the Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, and majors in business law. He has not yet qualified as a lawyer.
His boss at the law firm said Komuro called on Tuesday night to apologise for not telling him of the engagement beforehand, according to the English newspaper.
One of the few details known about him is that he served as a “Prince of the Sea” to promote tourism at the Shonan beaches in Kanagawa Prefecture in 2010. Kumoro also held part-time jobs at a French restaurant and a cram school where he taught English, The Japan Times reported.
The news comes just days before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is expected to finalise a bill for submission to the current Diet session to enable the 83-year-old emperor to hand over the Chrysanthemum throne to Crown Prince Naruhito, in what would be Japan’s first abdication in around 200 years.
Japan’s imperial succession is far from assured as Princess Mako’s younger brother, Prince Hisahito, 10, is the only male among the youngest generation of the royal family. Under Japanese law, women cannot ascend the Chrysanthemum throne.
The last marriage of a Japanese princess took place in October 2014 when Princess Noriko, a daughter of Emperor Akihito’s late cousin Prince Takamado, tied the knot with Kunimaro Senge, the eldest son of the chief priest of Izumo Taisha, a Shinto shrine in Shimane Prefecture.
Emperor Akihito’s only daughter, Sayako Kuroda, formerly Princess Sayako, left the imperial household when she married a Tokyo government official in 2005.
