Japan's Prince Naruhito Still Searching For His Empress Bride

TOKYO - Wanted: intelligent, attractive, athletic and discreet young Japanese woman from a leading business, diplomatic or academic family; fluent in English and also, ideally, French; with no ex-boyfriends. Must be no taller, in heels, than 5 feet 4 and no older than 25. Should be prepared to give up considerable freedom in Japan in exchange for ladies-in-waiting, overseas travel and opportunities to meet world leaders. Independent-minded career women acceptable, but no daughters of politicians, please.

The Japanese are worrying these days about war, political infighting among would-be prime ministers and the slump in the Tokyo stock market. But from time to time, their attention is diverted by another pressing issue. Crown Prince Naruhito, the 30-year-old future emperor of Japan, cannot find a wife.

As Naruhito's 31st birthday and formal investiture as crown prince approach, the Japanese media are in a lather of speculation over who, if anyone, will become his bride and Japan's future empress.

No one has a clue whom she might be, but that hasn't stopped Japan's salacious weekly magazines and lowbrow television shows from filling their pages and programs with reports of possible brides. Reporters have set up camp outside the homes of the leading ``candidates'' and have pestered their friends and family for interviews. One top ``candidate,'' Naoko Taki, a 21-year-old college student and a friend of Naruhito's younger sister, was chased by cameras every time she walked out her front door. Things got so bad that she once didn't go out for three days. Finally, her desperate mother implored: ``Naoko is terribly distressed. If any more fuss is made, she will be scarred physically and mentally, and may even lose her will to live.'' The media, mindful that this is the hottest story in Japan, ignored her.

Last week, Shinichi Nakazawa, a leading anthropologist, tried to explain why the royal bride hunt has people so transfixed. ``The only real significance the imperial family has in the modern world is based on blood bondage - the continuity from father to son,'' he said. ``So the bride problem is very important. To get married and have a son is a condition for continuity.''

Six years ago, while a student at Oxford, Naruhito laid out his marriage plans and soon lived to regret it. ``It is better if I marry before I become 30 years old, is it not?'' he said at a news conference in London. Last year, on his 30th birthday, he had to backpedal and say he meant 30 only as a ``yardstick'' age. ``I do not intend to become pessimistic about this problem at all,'' he said.

He may not be, but the prince's chamberlains and top officials of the Imperial Household Agency, the intractable, obsessively secretive group of 1,100 bureaucrats and aristocrats who run the lives of the imperial family, are said to be on an all-points search for suitable women from whom the crown prince may choose. ``It is everyone's wish that a bride be selected as soon as possible,'' a palace chamberlain in the office of the crown prince said.

Conjecture about possible brides for Naruhito dates back more than a decade, since the summer day in 1980 when he was spotted on a tennis court with the daughter of the president of a Japanese securities firm. Some 70 women have been mentioned over the years; in recent weeks the media narrowed their focus to five or six. Among them is an old standby, Masako Owada, a 1985 Harvard graduate and an official at the Second North America Division of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. She is one of the few candidates who is actually said to have been invited several times by Naruhito to his palace.

One recent afternoon, Toshiaki Kawahara, a courtly, white-haired journalist who has written 15 books on the imperial family, went into great detail on the sterling attributes of a current candidate. The woman, he said, is a graduate of Tokyo's Sacred Heart University - the current Empress Michiko's alma mater - and is both intelligent and beautiful. She skis, is not too tall (the crown prince is only 5 feet 4) and is related to one of the 11 Mitsui families that built the industrial cartel of the same name. Her family has money, but not too much, and a great tradition of scholarship.

So what is the problem? Why is Naruhito dragging his heels? ``It seems,'' says Kawahara, ``that he has not met her.''

The larger question is why it should prove so difficult for the most eligible bachelor in Japan to find a wife. Imperial-family watchers say several elements are at work here, among them:

-- The Michiko Factor. The current Empress Michiko, wife of Emperor Akihito, was the first non-royal to marry into the imperial family. Tales of her unhappiness have scared off candidates afraid of the same torment. From the start, Michiko was criticized by her mother-in-law and a chief lady-in-waiting as an unworthy commoner who dared to breast-feed her infant son and carry him in public. In 1963, she was hospitalized for a first-trimester abortion, which, according to news reports quoting Michiko's doctor at the time, was performed because the fetus was ``abnormal.'' Four months later, the Imperial Household Agency was forced to publicly deny reports Michiko had suffered a nervous breakdown.

-- The ``Old Daddy'' Factor. By all accounts, the crown prince is a mature and dignified young man. (His younger brother, Prince Akishino, who last year married the wildly popular commoner Kiko Kawashima, is said to be haughty and headstrong.) At Oxford, Naruhito wrote a thesis on the Thames River, and these days is researching transportation in medieval Japan at Tokyo's Gakushuin University. He likes mountain climbing, tennis and playing the viola. But he is nearly 31. The elite women mentioned as candidates are in their early 20s, and very choosy. Reporters claim that such women find a 31-year-old, even if he is the crown prince, a boring ``ojin,'' colloquial Japanese for ``Old Daddy.''

-- The Rich Girl Factor. Most young women worthy of mention as candidates come from such prominent, wealthy families that they could easily marry into a life more luxurious and less confining than the one they would lead at the palace. The Japanese imperial family has a relatively modest existence; certainly the crown prince's ``palace,'' an undistinguished Western-style house built of concrete about a three-minute walk from his parents' home on the grounds of a large parklike area in central Tokyo, is not lavish.

-- The Stubbornness Factor. Although the Imperial Household Agency is searching frantically, the crown prince says he is determined to fall in love on his own. He has been inspired by his parents, who say they met by chance on a tennis court. (To this day, the members of the 1950s Imperial Household Agency insist the meeting was arranged.) Whatever the case, nobody denies that after centuries of arranged royal marriages Michiko and Akihito were the first to fall in love.