ROYAL RUNAWAY BRIDE

THE JAPANESE PRINCESS FLEES TO THE US AFTER BEING FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN LOVE AND HER STATUS

- Kylie Walters

Picking up their bags in New York’s JFK Airport back in November, Mako Komuro and her husband Kei looked like hundreds of other ordinary newlywed couples who might have been returning from their honeymoon that day. But as she coolly walked through the terminal towards her new life with her university sweetheart, the former Japanese royal, 30, showed no signs of the simmering tension their union had left in their wake.

The princess fled to the US to join her lawyer husband, also 30, after she was forced to choose between being with her love and her royal status. In a tale not unlike the events that precipitated Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s move across the pond a year earlier, their fresh start came after years of hounding by Japanese tabloids and unrelenting public disapproval, which led to severe mental health issues for Mako.