Media coverage of the wedding of Crown Prince Akihito to commoner Shoda Michiko included this photo of Michiko standing in her kitchen wearing an apron. Was the image meant to convey that the new couple will lead a normal life around the family hearth, or that Michiko, a graduate of Sacred Heart University, was also in training as a postwar good wife/wise mother?

Igarashi Jin (ed.). Nihon 20-seikikan. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1999.