JAPAN: A Black Lily for the Prince

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In the presence of so exalted a person as the Crown Prince Akihito. 24, the young girl who guided his tour of Lake Akan on the northern island of Hokkaido last week had observed the strictest decorum. But suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, she burst into an island song. "The black lily," she crooned, "is the flower of love. Shall I give this flower to you?" Then she presented the surprised prince with a real black lily "to symbolize our hope that he will soon marry a beautiful girl as his princess." The girl who spoke out of turn was only expressing a wish that was agitating almost every reader of Japan's excited press.

Ever since Akihito turned 18 six years ago, his father's Imperial Household Board has been looking for a bride for him, and the Japanese have been in an agony of suspense over who their 125th Empress will be. To find her, the Board, whose staid members are the guardians of protocol, has canvassed the families of 860 former princes, counts, viscounts, barons and assorted daimyo (warlords). It has investigated the state of each family's finances, made copious notes on the looks, talents, and IQs of all eligible daughters. It also sent emissaries to all local ward offices, which keep such complete genealogical records that they can trace a scandal, a case of insanity or an illegitimacy back for centuries. In Japan such precautions are important: Akihito's own mother almost lost out as fiancée to her crown prince when a rival accused her of being color-blind and insisted that she would taint the royal line.

False Addresses. While the Household Board worked away at its list, Japan's major newspapers set up "special sections" of 30 to 170 staffmen to pry out the favorites. The papers knew that all the eligible girls would be past or present students at the Gakushuin, the Tokyo peers' school. Armed with pocket cameras, reporters followed girls to school, trailed them when they went home at night. One paper smuggled a woman reporter into the school disguised as a student. Another tried to get a list of all girls enrolled—something that is by tradition kept secret —by saying that it wanted to send them "bargain-sale circulars."

The newshawk squads hounded the Household Board just as relentlessly. In self-defense, board members invented a special code to use over the telephone, gave false addresses to taxi drivers to confuse reporters. "I myself." says Board Director Takeshi Usami. "have been forced into such subterfuges as abandoning my own car and using streetcars, and then getting off the streetcar to walk, just in order to throw the press off my trail."