I've just a few minutes ago finished "The Commoner," by John Burnham Schwartz. It is a novel, with its roots in a true story - the marriage of the Emperor of Japan to a commoner in the late 1950s.
The book begins just after the war, when Haruko, the future Empress, is a young girl. It follows her meeting with the Crown Prince, her marriage, and its effect on her family - her parents, first, and later, her children.
The world of the Japanese nobility and royalty is a very secluded one (at least according to the book) - much more so than the British royals. Haruko's introduction to the Prince occurs only a few years after the Japanese Emperor has been declared to be human, and not a god. The book does a good job of portraying the enormous loss of freedom in the transition from commoner to royal, and the price it extracts from the human mind.
It's well-written, and I love reading about other cultures. I can't say there's any one thing about this book that jumped out at me, but I've wanted to post it here for three days. The passages I really wanted to quote are just too long, and can't be cut without ruining the flow.
Well worth the $25 (I didn't want to wait for the library copy, and it's only available in hardback.)
