Kei Komuro, the husband of Japanese former princess Mako Komuro, has failed the New York state bar examination for a second time, a source familiar with the matter revealed Friday.
Having previously failed the state bar exam last July, he took the test again in February this year. Komuro is expected to take it again in July.
He married the niece of Emperor Naruhito in October amid public criticism over a financial dispute involving his mother and her former fiancé, and the couple, both 30, left Japan the following month to start a new life in the United States.
According to the organiser, 3,068 people sat the bar exam and 1,378, or 45%, passed it.
Komuro has already started working as a law clerk at a legal firm in New York after graduating from Fordham University's law school with a Juris Doctor degree in May 2021.
In an unprecedented step for an imperial marriage, the eldest daughter of Crown Prince Fumihito skipped the usual traditional rites and declined a lump-sum payment of about 150 million yen (US$1.2 million) in taxpayer money amid public unease over the financial dispute.
The 1947 Imperial House Law, which limits heirs to the imperial throne to males with an emperor in the paternal line, requires female royals to give up their status when they marry commoners.
When the couple held a press conference on Oct 26, the day they registered their marriage, Mako Komuro revealed it was she who had asked her husband to move forward his plans to study abroad and "set up a base (for living) overseas."
