HER DAUGHTER CROWN PRINCESS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30539, 7 September 1964, Page 2

HER DAUGHTER CROWN PRINCESS

There was a touch of restrained sadness the way Mrs Fumi Shoda talked of her daughter, the Crown Princess of Japan, last evening. “We both lead very different lives now; she is busy and so am I.” Mrs Shoda said. “My daughter is young and she is happy.

Mrs Shoda is in Christchurch with her husband, president of the Nisshin Flour Milling Company and a member of the visiting Japanese Trade Mission. “Proud to be the mother of the Crown Princess? You might think so, but it carries a burden,” she said. Mother and daughter chat together by telephone and see each other “quite often” in Tokyo. But it is at the summer resort of Karuizawa that the Shodas, their daughter and the little Prince Hiro meet as a united family again.

It was too soon to know whether the young prince was going to be like the Royal family or take after his mother’s folk, she said. The Crown Princess, as Miss Michiko Shoda, was the first commoner to marry into the Imperial family of Japan in 1959. It was part of a changing way of national life after the war and one of the big breaks with tradition.

Tall, gracious Mrs Shoda has accepted her daugher's new and full role with the tranquillity of an Eastern mother. She has three other children—two of them married—and her family is her primary concern. She is an active member of the International Ladies’ Benevolent Fund and belongs to several clubs, as outside interests.

“I like fishing, but I am not a good sailor in a little boat,” she laughed. With Mrs Shoda are Mrs Yasuko Adachi, wife of the president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and

Industry, and Mrs Yuriko Fujino, wife of the vice-presi-dent of the Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha, Ltd., in the visiting Japanese Trade Mission. To welcome them at the Christchurch airport last evening was Mrs S. Konda,

■ wife of the Japanese Am- ■ bassador to New Zealand. It i was her first Visit to Christ- ; church since her husband’s appointment. i Describing herself as an : ordinary housewife who loves , to cook and play golf, the

■ vivacious Mrs Kondo has two ; daughters married to diplo- ■ mats—one in Paris, the other ; in Tokyo. Referring to her visiting i countrywomen, Mrs Kondo ; said: “That is about all there : is to tell about me.”