Love & the Chickens

In the salad days of war, meek, myopic Prince Hironobu Fushimi, distant cousin of Emperor Hirohito, was a middle-aged captain in the Imperial navy. His country's defeat left him a civilian, and like other kinsmen of the Imperial family, without title. His Tokyo mansion had been bombed; he built himself a modest cottage on the site of the ruins. There he and his wife, the former Princess Hanako Kanin, settled down as plain Mr. & Mrs. Hironobu Kacho.

To make ends meet, the ex-prince raised chickens in his backyard, and was happy.

He explained that he had always been a "biologist" at heart, and never a sailor. "Being a member of the Imperial family," he said, "I had no freedom of choosing my vocation."

The Old Way. His wife of 25 years found the new freedom strange at first, then heady and engrossing. She had been an old-fashioned bride (the bridegroom had chosen her by photograph), a subservient wife & mother (three children), sheltered by the taboos of a feudal-minded patrician society. Her most daring departure from tradition had been to learn modern dancing. In her first days as a commoner, while her husband tended his fowl, she gave dancing lessons to other former lords and ladies in her living room. The dances became parties, and the parties moved to the fashionable Industry Club. Mrs. Kacho began to get around. As she explained it all later, "Immersed only in his chickens . . . my husband was not the type of person who could wrap you in warmth . . . and you know what that does to a passionate woman."

Then last year she met a type of person who wrapped her in warmth: Tokyotaro Toda, 52, a chunky playboy, graduate of Cambridge and son of a Kobe landowner. Mrs. Kacho, then 40, was collecting for the Women's Welfare Society. Toda, a divorced man, contributed handsomely, added gifts on the side for Mrs. Kacho.

Mr. Kacho stuck to his chickens, though he saw a change come over his wife. "Each time they met, I thought each cup of coffee or tumbler of whisky she accepted was drugged. At first one drop, then two--until he had completely won her heart." One night last July, Toda called at the Kacho cottage, presumably to talk charities. "Unsuspectingly," said the ex-prince, "I opened the door to the cloakroom and there I discovered the figures of Toda and Hanako as I should never have seen them."

The New Way. The cuckolded ex-prince pummeled Toda, fracturing two fingers in a left to the jaw. Then, in his remorse, he thought of suicide. After consulting his kinfolk and the Imperial Household Office, he sued for and won a divorce.

Last week, news of the scandal splashed into the newspapers. It was the first time members of the Imperial family had ever been involved in a divorce, the first time such stories had been bandied about in the papers. The principals concerned spoke with remarkable candor. Of his former wife, the ex-prince said sadly: "She is past the age of 40, but she is unaware of the dangers of the world and of men. She acts and lives like an ordinary girl younger than 20." Of her former husband, the ex-princess complained in words that showed she had learned Western lessons: "If I was his beloved wife, why didn't he try to win back my love?"

At first the philanderer Toda slyly told the press: "I was fond of her but I have no thought of marrying her." Then, as the affair became the talk of Tokyo, he turned gallant. "Since things have come to this state," he pledged, "I will take on the responsibility . . . I will marry her."

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