“There was a lot of criticism in the Japanese press that she was too American,” said Nadine H. Jacobson ’85, Owada’s Thayer floormate. “I remember thinking, as I knew Masako she was the quintessential Japanese. She was smart and respectful and reserved.”

And if she married the prince, Owada would have to give up her position as an economic specialist in the Foreign Ministry’s North America Division.

“In some ways I was a little surprised because she had such a potential for a brilliant career of her own right,” Juhon said.

Amid rumors and pressure from the Japanese media, Owada left Japan in 1988 for a two-year, Foreign Minsitry-sponsored study at Oxford. But in 1993, the Imperial Household announced the engagement, and that June Owada became Crown Princess of Japan, only the second commoner to ever marry into the royal family.

“It was a little bit of a surprise that she would want to choose that life,” Donnelly said. “But she had a strong background and a strong sense of herself. She was somebody who made up her mind, and she made up her mind about her marriage.”

Owada’s marriage was seen by many as a hope for a new step forward for women in Japanese society.

“We thought that she was going to be a more intellectual version of Princess Diana,” Donnelly said.

But the pressures of royal life were more than Owada had anticipated, and she has had difficulty dealing with the pressures of the Japanese Press and royal obligations.

The pressure to produce a male heir in the years before and after the birth of her daughter Princess Aiko in 2002 is seen by many as the Crown Princess’s breaking point. While the succession crisis ended with the birth of her nephew Prince Akishino in 2006, Owada has been suffering from an adjustment order and still remains out of the public eye.

“She is somebody who put her family and her country first,” Juhon said. “You knew that she was really studying and destined for great things, you just didn’t really anticipate it being this route.”

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.