Empress Michiko of Japan has spoken of the sorrow and anxiety she experienced as the first commoner to marry into Japanese royalty, and of her fantasy of donning a magic coat of invisibility to escape the constraints of life within the Imperial family.

Her remarks represent a remarkable insight into a woman who has suffered repeated nervous breakdowns as a result of bullying criticism first from her mother-in-law, the late Empress, and later from right-wing traditionalists dismayed at the modernising of the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy.

Seated alongside Emperor Akihito at a press conference to herald a visit to Britain later this month, the Empress spoke of the sense of inadequacy and self-doubt that has haunted her throughout her married life and the prayers that she whispers in times of pain and stress.

“After I married, I experienced difficulties in my new life every day, amid many demands and expectations,” she said in a prepared answer to a question submitted by members of the foreign press in Tokyo. “I never expressed it in terms of the word ‘pressure’. I just felt sad and sorry for not living up to people’s expectations and demands.

“I feel the same way even now. Much of the time I find it difficult to be confident in my decisions. It has been a great challenge to get through each and every day with my sorrow and anxiety. When I am sad and concerned about things, I don’t know how to cope, so sometimes I pray or whisper a childish magical charm. I also feel an affinity with the many other people who live wordlessly under sadness and anxiety. Perhaps this is an illusion, but I regard it as a boon, and take solace and encouragement.”

The Empress, 72, suffered intestinal bleeding two months ago that was, according to courtiers, brought on by stress.

Her words yesterday reveal the tension and pain beyond the tranquil moat of the Imperial Palace. The Empress was born Michiko Shoda in 1934, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, who met Crown Prince Akihito over a game of tennis in a fashionable summer mountain resort. When they married in 1959, in a Shinto ceremony followed by a horse-drawn procession based on those of the British Royal Family, it was a source of delight to many Japanese. It did, however, dismay right-wing traditionalists and members of the old and now disempowered Japanese aristocracy.

The Emperor’s deliberate policy of presenting the image of an ordinary middle-class couple, who danced together, played with their children and dressed fashionably, enraged those who believed in a dignified and unapproachably remote emperor, the direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami. Former aristocrats, who were deprived of their lands and titles after the war, regarded her as having robbed their daughters of a place in the imperial family.

They directed their anger against the Empress, who suffered a nervous breakdown after a whispering campaign in the press in 1963 and again in 1993, when she lost the power of speech for seven months. Since then she has had recurrences of shingles, apparently made worse by stress.

Her unhappy history has been repeated, in part, by her daughter-in-law, Princess Masako, who has also been treated for depression after clashing with the courtiers of the Imperial Household Agency, which regulates the lives of the Emperor’s family. At the time of her marriage, the Empress was celebrated for her poise and beauty. Now she is a thin, strained-looking but still elegant woman who is unable to travel freely outside the vast grounds of the Imperial Palace, which occupies the centre of Tokyo.

This week she recalled a Japanese folk story about a coat of invisibility. "If I wore it, the Imperial police officer might say, 'Go and enjoy yourself, but be careful'" she said. "I would practice walking through a crowded railway station. Then I would go to Kanda-Jimbocho and spend much time browsing, as I did in my student days."

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