Empress Masako

Established by the Congregation of the Holy Infant Jesus in 1872, Masako's mother and maternal grandmother had graduated from this school as well.

It was here that Masako learned to play piano and tennis, joined a handicrafts club, and became interested in animals, tending several after school and deciding to become a veterinarian.

Masako also studied her fourth and fifth languages, French and German.

With a school friend, Masako revived Futaba's softball team, serving as third base and after three years bringing her team to the district championships.

She is the eldest daughter of Yumiko Egashira (b. 1938) and Hisashi Owada (b. 1932), a senior diplomat and former president of the International Court of Justice.

Masako Owada (小和田雅子) was born on 9 December 1963 at Toranomon Hospital in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo.

She has two younger sisters, twins named Setsuko and Reiko (b. 1966).

Masako went to live in Moscow with her parents when she was two years old, where she attended Detskiy Sad (kindergarten in Russian) No. 1127 daycare.

At the age of five, Masako's family moved to New York City, where she attended kindergarten at Public School 81 in Riverdale.

In 1971, the Owadas returned to Japan, moving in with Masako's maternal grandparents in Meguro while Hisashi returned to the Foreign Ministry office.

She entered Futaba Gakuen, a private Roman Catholic girls' school in Den-en-chōfu, Tokyo.

In 1979, her second year of senior high school, Masako and her family moved to the United States and settled in the Boston suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, where her father became a guest professor of international law at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs.

In 1981, she graduated from Belmont High School, where she was president of the National Honor Society and participated in the school's math team and French club.

Masako joined the school's softball team and won a Goethe Society award for her German poetry.

Masako participated in a production of M*A*S*H.

Masako's father was posted to Moscow after her high school graduation, but Masako remained in Boston to continue her education; In 1981 she enrolled at Harvard College, where she chaired the school's Japan Society, "became quite close friends with the then Japanese consul in Boston, and volunteered as a kind of self-appointed diplomat and cultural ambassador" in the wake of mounting Japan–United States trade tension.

Masako liked to ski and traveled overseas during vacations, staying with a host family in France and studying at the Goethe-Institut.

Masako is fluent in English and in French, which she learned in 1983 at the University Center for French Studies at Université Grenoble Alpes.

Masako worked with Jeffrey Sachs to obtain a B.A. magna cum laude in economics in March 1985.

Masako met Naruhito in 1986.

After graduation Masako moved back to Japan, where for six months (April to October 1986) she studied law at the University of Tokyo to prepare for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs's entrance examination.

Out of 800 applicants only 28 passed; Masako was one of them, along with two other women.

"She was assigned, first, to the oddly named Second International Organizations Division which deals with Japan's relations with international agencies, such as the OECD, a club of 30 rich countries committed to free trade and development. Her assignments included dealing with the OECD's environmental affairs committee ... by all accounts she acquitted herself well—her command of spoken languages, so rare in Japan, was a huge advantage—and was popular with most of her workmates."

During her free time, Masako attended cooking classes to, according to interviews with her instructor, "be able to cook proper Japanese dishes when she was entertaining [foreigners]."

Masako first met Prince Naruhito at a tea for Infanta Elena of Spain, in November 1986, during her studies at the University of Tokyo.

The prince was immediately captivated by her and arranged for them to meet several times over the next few weeks.

Two years later, in 1988, Masako was chosen by the Ministry to be sponsored for two years' postgraduate study overseas with full pay, just as her father Hisashi had been years earlier.

Masako "desperately wanted to go back to Harvard to do her master's".

According to her former Harvard adviser Oliver Oldman, she "tried to re-enroll to work towards ... a Juris Doctor. However, Harvard's bureaucrats would not give her credit for her study-time at the University of Tokyo."

Therefore, Masako enrolled in her second choice, studying international relations under Sir Adam Roberts at Balliol College, Oxford.

However, for unclear reasons Masako did not finish her thesis and instead returned to Japan in 1990.

The two were married in 1993 and welcomed their only child, Princess Aiko, in 2001.

The birth of their daughter fueled the ongoing Japanese imperial succession debate, which had resulted in some politicians holding a favorable view on rescinding agnatic primogeniture imposed by World War II allies on the constitution of Japan.

The pressure to produce a male heir took a toll on Masako's health and she was officially diagnosed with adjustment disorder in 2004, which forced her to withdraw from public life periodically.

As crown princess and empress, Masako has accompanied her husband on official visits to foreign countries and at ceremonies within the imperial court.

However, with the birth of a son to Naruhito's brother, Prince Fumihito, in 2006, no amendments to the law were made and Princess Aiko remains at present legally ineligible to inherit the throne.

Masako (雅子) is Empress of Japan (皇后) as the wife of Emperor Naruhito, who ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne following his father's abdication in 2019.

Born in Tokyo, Masako was educated at Belmont High School before attending Harvard College and earning a B.A. magna cum laude in economics.

She also studied law at the University of Tokyo and international relations at Balliol College, Oxford.

She then worked for Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.