There's a Princess at Gristedes

Attention, shoppers! You can find royalty in Aisle 4, next to the Del Monte canned corn. But don't gawk, don't snap pics, and whatever you do, don't call the paparazzi!

- BY TIM TEEMAN ILLUSTRATION BY TIM O'BRIEN

Princess Mako left Japan to marry a handsome lawyer. Now she's living a rare royal happilyever-after: privacy in the digital age.

The woman in the produce section of the Hell's Kitchen grocery store is clad casually, to say the least, in T-shirt and sneakers, a shopping bag slung over her shoulder. Is it her? Or is she the one in the wool overcoat and jeans, strolling down Fifth Avenue just south of the Met? Or perhaps that's her, with the to-go coffee cup strolling inconspicuously down Madison?

The world of royalty is many things ostentatious, dramatic, and headline-making—but rarely is it as supremely discreet as Mako Komuro, formerly Princess Mako of the Japanese imperial family, who has managed to create a life of anonymity in gossip-, camera-, and event-saturated New York City. Have you never seen her or her husband Kei Komuro on Page Six? Can't even picture their faces? Good, that's exactly as they've orchestrated it.

In her quest for total privacy while living in a place renowned for invading it, Komuro has bucked every prevailing trend of show-and-tell fame, particularly the royal kind. She has become the anti-drama princess, the front page–allergic flipside of certain other formal royals.

“If you passed Mako and Kei Komuro on the street, you wouldn’t recognize them,” says Tom Sykes, author of the Daily Beast’s Royalist newsletter. “That’s what makes their story so striking. This is in obvious contrast to Harry and Meghan, who also left royal life behind but have pursued maximum visibility. As a result their life is a blizzard of books, Netflix deals, interviews, and Instagrams. What Mako and Kei have shown is that it is possible to leave a royal family and live a genuinely private life—if that’s what you really want.”