Sayako Kuroda

, formerly , is the youngest child and only daughter of Emperor Emeritus Akihito and Empress Emerita Michiko, and the younger sister of the current Emperor of Japan, Naruhito. She is an imperial Shinto priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine, currently serving as the Supreme Priestess. Kuroda held the appellation "Nori-no-miya" (Princess Nori), until her marriage to Yoshiki Kuroda on 15 November 2005. As a result of her marriage, she gave up her imperial title and left the Japanese Imperial Family, as required by the Article 12 of the Imperial Household Law, and received a payment of approximately US$ 1 million. Education and career Princess Sayako was born on 18 April 1969 at the Imperial Household Agency Hospital in Tokyo Imperial Palace, Tokyo. Her mother, Empress Emerita Michiko, is an alumna of the University of the Sacred Heart and a convert to Shinto from Roman Catholicism. She studied at and graduated from the Department of Japanese Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, Gakushuin University, with the Bachelor of Letters degree in Japanese language and literature in 1992. Later in the year she was accepted as research associate at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, where she specialized in the study of kingfishers. In 1998, she was appointed researcher at the same institute.