page_title: Empress Michiko
section_title: Engagement and marriage
hierarchical_section_title: Empress Michiko / Engagement and marriage
caption_attribution_description: English: Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko with three children; Prince Naruhito, Prince Fumihito and Princess Sayako. (September 1969)
context_page_description: Michiko is a member of the Imperial House of Japan who served as the Empress consort of Japan as the wife of Akihito, the 125th Emperor of Japan reigning from 7 January 1989 to 30 April 2019.
  Michiko married Crown Prince Akihito and became the Crown Princess of Japan in 1959. She was the first commoner and the first member of a religious minority to marry into the Japanese Imperial Family. She has three children with her husband. Her elder son, Naruhito, is the current emperor to the Chrysanthemum Throne. As crown princess and later as empress consort, she has become the most visible and widely travelled imperial consort in Japanese history. Upon Emperor Akihito's abdication, Michiko received the new title of Jōkōgō, or Empress Emerita.
context_section_description: In August 1957, she met then-Crown Prince Akihito on a tennis court at Karuizawa near Nagano. The Imperial Household Council formally approved the engagement of the Crown Prince to Michiko Shōda on 27 November 1958. At that time, the media presented their encounter as a real "fairy tale", or the "romance of the tennis court". The engagement ceremony took place on 14 January 1959.
  The future Crown Princess was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, but she was still a commoner. During the 1950s, the media and most persons familiar with the Japanese monarchy had assumed that the powerful Imperial Household Agency would select a bride for the Crown Prince from the daughters of the former court nobility, or from one of the former branches of the Imperial Family. Some traditionalists opposed the engagement, as Shōda came from a Roman Catholic family, and although she was never baptized, she was educated at Catholic institutions and seemed to share the faith of her parents. It was also widely rumored that Empress Kōjun had opposed the engagement. After the death of Empress Kōjun in 2000, Reuters announced that the former Empress was one of the strongest opponents of the marriage, and that in the 1960s, she had driven her daughter-in-law to depression by persistently accusing her of not being suitable for her son. Death threats alerted the authorities to ensure the security of the Shōda family. Yukio Mishima, known for his traditionalist position, said at the time: "The imperial system becomes 'tabloidesque' in its move toward democratization.  It's all wrong—the idea (of the Imperial Family) losing its dignity by connecting with the people."
  However, the young couple had by then gained wide public support.  That support also came from the ruling political class. Additionally, everyone showed affection for the young "Mitchi" who had become the symbol of Japan's modernization and democratization (the media at the time hinted at the phenomenon of a "Mitchi boom"). The wedding finally took place as a traditional Shinto ceremony on 10 April 1959. The wedding procession was followed in the streets of Tokyo by more than 500,000 people spread over an 8.8 km route, while parts of the wedding were televised, thus making it the first imperial wedding to be made available for public viewership in Japan, drawing about 15 million viewers. In accordance with tradition, Shōda received a personal emblem (o-shirushi (お印)): the white birch of Japan (Shirakaba (白樺)) upon admission to the imperial family.
caption: Michiko and her family in 1969
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