Japanese Washed His Own Clothes : Prince Back From Oxford With New Ideas on a Wife

Prince Hiro, second in line to the throne of Japan, came home Thursday after 28 months of study at Oxford University in England with fond memories of “washing my own clothes” and some new ideas about what he wants in a wife.

At Oxford, the royal bachelor, 25, took up the custom of Western students of hanging pinups in their dormitory rooms, in his case photographs of actresses Brooke Shields and Jane Fonda. When he visited Princeton University earlier this month, he met Shields, who is a student there.

“She was as beautiful as I had thought,” the prince said.

Hiro, second in line of succession after his father, Crown Prince Akihito, is the first in the direct imperial line to have studied abroad. He returned to Japan after spending three weeks in the United States, where he visited 11 states and chatted in English with President Reagan on Oct. 12.

Japanese newsmen accompanying the prince asked him continuously about what is widely regarded to be his first “official duty” upon return to Japan--getting married.

The prince made it clear he does not expect to find his own wife. “Not a single photograph has been sent to me,” he said when asked about a prospective bride. But he added: “I would be troubled if it were decided for me unilaterally, but because it is a delicate problem, I will respect the opinions of those around me.”

Hiro said he had never thought about “an international marriage” while at Oxford, but he told reporters that his image of an ideal wife has changed. No longer, he said at his last stop in San Francisco, does he want a quiet, shy woman as a wife.

“A woman who speaks without timidity is my ideal now,” he said. “But I can’t marry a foreigner.”

He said he now wants three qualities in a wife: that she participate in some kind of sports, that she be able to express her own opinions clearly and that she be able to speak foreign languages.

His mother, Princess Michiko, the English-speaking commoner daughter of a businessman who met her husband on a tennis court, informed reporters on her 51st birthday Oct. 20 that Hiro has told her he wants to wait until he is 30 to get married. She said she thinks that is all right.

Hiro singled out “washing my own clothes” as one of his “fondest memories” of Oxford, a statement that reminded Japanese of his grandfather’s observation that the only time he actually used money himself was when he paid for a subway ride in Paris in 1921. Hiro said he once put too much soap into a washing machine, causing it to overflow.

Hiro’s stay at the prestigious university was yet another in a long series of slow, but steady, moves to transform the Japanese imperial family, once revered as gods, into an institution with closer ties to ordinary Japanese people and to the rest of the world.

Hiro seemed eager to promote that change. Before leaving London, Hiro said he was “deeply impressed” by the way members of the British Royal Family “go out among the public and meet ordinary people” and said he would like to have the Japanese imperial family do the same.

Hiro was the first heir to the throne of Japan to have been raised by his own parents, to have been educated in public schools all his life and to have been accorded no special privileges in school.

He called his study at Oxford “a very precious experience in my life” and said he wants his children to have the opportunity to live abroad.

His grandfather, Emperor Hirohito, 84, became the first heir to Japan’s throne ever to leave the country when he spent six months on a trip to Europe in 1921. Hiro’s father, Akihito, 51, has traveled extensively abroad.

Hiro, however, is not only the first heir to the throne to have studied abroad but the first who traveled overseas before his coming-of-age-ceremony. Twice before his 20th birthday, Hiro spent summer vacations in foreign countries--in Australia in 1974 and in Belgium and Spain in 1976.

At Oxford, Hiro studied the role of the Thames River in the development, transportation and distribution of commercial goods in the 17th and 18th centuries. He undertook the study while on leave of absence as a graduate student at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, where is is majoring in history.

Hiro planned to finish his thesis after his return to Tokyo.

The prince, who visited 14 European countries while studying at Oxford, told reporters that he has become interested in gardening and wants to continue that hobby in Japan.

His tour of the United States was his first full-fledged visit to that country, although he had stopped over in New York and Los Angeles during an earlier official visit to Brazil. He visited Williamsburg; Morgantown, W.Va., (where he stayed with the family of one of his classmates at Oxford), and Niagara Falls. He also saw a football game and visited Disneyland and UCLA.

In San Francisco, Hiro offered a thought on U.S.-Japan trade problems.

No Politics for Prince

“I realize that as a member of the imperial family, I cannot become involved in politics and economics, but I do think that with mutual understanding, we (Japanese and Americans) can solve U.S.-Japan trade frictions,” he said.

“I don’t know what official duties I will have, but I am prepared to undergo a different life (when I get back to Japan),” he said in San Francisco.

Just how different it is likely to be was illustrated last May when his parents went on their first subway ride in Tokyo. A special train was called out for the crown prince and princess, who, along with Hiro’s sister, Princess Nori, were its only passengers.