Princess Diaries

Jap

an's crown prince Naruhito recently stunned the nation by confirming the country's worst-kept—though rarely discussed—secret: his wife, Crown Princess Masako, is utterly miserable.

During an extraordinarily blunt press conference in May, Naruhito indirectly blamed the Imperial Household Agency, the royal family's ultra-traditional official minders, for "negating her career and character." Last week the prince issued a written "clarification" in which he effectively apologized for his comments, but the furor has focused Japan's attention on its unhappy princess, a Harvard-educated former diplomat whose fairy-tale life has become a nightmare. "She is really just a doll in a doll case now," says Toshiya Matsuzaki, a magazine reporter who covers the royal family. "She cannot take advantage of her career experience or do what she wants. The palace has just proven too different from her former life."

Such strains, along with what some Japanese media see as pressure to produce a male heir to the throne from those in the household agency who see that as her only real function, seem to have pushed the princess to the breaking point. After suffering a bout of stress-induced shingles this winter, Masako has lived in virtual seclusion. It's widely assumed that Naruhito and Masako would prefer to live like many modern European monarchs: basically as regular citizens but with nicer houses, cool crowns and invitations to all the best parties. And opinion polls indicate that most Japanese would approve of changing the laws to allow Masako's two-year-old daughter, Princess Aiko, to become Empress someday. But that doesn't seem to be the opinion of the household agency, the powerful and secretive bureaucracy that controls every facet of the royals' lives, including their finances, their (practically nonexistent) social lives and even access to their phone lines.

Many royal watchers interpreted Naruhito's comments in May as a play to loosen the household agency's grip on his family's affairs—and see last week's "clarification," although the agency denies it, as a punishment by a displeased bureaucracy that has no intention of changing its ways.