Manipulation by the "Princess Masako" Author? Styron and Okinawa Books

Late afternoon yesterday, I went to the clinic by “Bus 123” as I needed to replenish tablets. Getting off, I noticed my “ezlink” value was negative. “How can I go home?” The nearest value-adding machine is only at Orchard Station. There was no choice but to walk all the way there…

On my way to the station, I dropped by Borders. The atmosphere of bookstores is always nice. There is something that make me calm, even uplifting my mood.

First, I browsed “Princess Masako” by an Australian author, Ben Hills, whose publication of a Japanese version was scrapped. The book mentions in Page 117 a rumoured “fling” between her and Oku Katsuhiko, a foreign ministry official killed near Tikrit, Iraq, in November 2003, along with another official and their local driver. This rumour was first reported by the Sunday Times of the UK, citing anonymous sources (below). Her depression is said to have been triggered by his death.

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Land of the rising daughter
The Sunday Times, June 4, 2006
By Michael Sheridan

… According to three authoritative sources in Tokyo, [Oku] became a close friend of Masako while she was in the foreign ministry, and later supported her vision as crown princess. There were even murmurings in Japanese high society of a romance between the two, before they met their future spouses…
The news reached Tokyo on a quiet Sunday morning…
The funerals, on December 6, 2003, were attended by Japan’s prime minister. However, protocol bars members of the imperial family from attending funerals apart from those of its members, so Masako remained inside the Tobu palace compound a mile or two away. The allied investigation concluded that the murders were the result of a terrorist conspiracy. If so, it had unintended consequences. Later that month, Masako fell into a deep depression. It was as if, after a decade of frustration and conflict, something had broken. One by one, her engagements were cancelled. She would vanish from sight for almost two years…

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Wait a second. The Hills book does mention this article, but the impression one would perhaps get by finding the word “fling” is that she, a single woman, and a married man, Oku, were involved in a romance when both were working at the Foreign Ministry. If I remember my browsing of the page correctly, Hills conveniently omitted the part, “before they met their future spouses.” And what does Sheridan mean by “Japanese high society”? Also, the “Tobu” palace must be the “Togu” (東宮) palace.

I checked what titles of William Styron Borders got and found “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Maness.” It was so irresistible for me. Price: $21.95. I found that “Crime and Punishment,” which has far more pages, was priced less than $30. Strange pricing. Saying, “Sorry, I know you don’t have money, but I really wanna read this book” to myself, I brought “Darkness Visible” to a counter and paid. Only after leaving Borders did I realise that it could have been cheaper at Kinokuniya using my discount card… Too late.

But then, at Kinokuniya, I would have spent far longer, walking around its Japanese book area and I might buy another book or two, making the total amount go higher, especially when I have a shopping list of a few Japanese books in my head. I’m keen on a book (「密約」) by Sawachi Hisae (澤地久枝) that chronicled the saga of a newspaper reporter and his foreign ministry “girlfriend” (this was a fling) over the leak of an Okinawa secret agreement between Japan and the US. And another book on Okinawa (「集団自決の真実」). This one is authored by Sono Ayako (曽野綾子), who studied the role of the Imperial Army in mass suicide of local residents. Coupled with the book by Sono, I should read an Oe Kenzaburo (大江健三郎) book (「沖縄ノート」), whose study Sono rebutted.