After 19 years of marriage and an “amicable divorce” – When you were 49 years old, you married Moto FUYUKI, a 59-year-old TV personality at the time. I heard that you divorced a civilian man at the age of 41, and remarried a short time later. When did you first get married?
Ms. Muto: It was when I was 22 years old, after graduating from university. At the time, I had come to Tokyo from Shimane, where my parents lived, to attend university, and that is when I met my first husband. He had also come to Tokyo from Osaka and was planning to return to Osaka after graduation. So I decided to follow him to Osaka to get married. I have always been the type to go with my gut, but at that time I thought, “This is the right time for me to get married,” and I did. My daughter was born when I was 29, but my ex-husband was running a company and traveling a lot, so by then we were already rarely at home together. We began to live separately, and I think the feeling of being married became less and less mutual.
TM: Is that why you divorced? Mr. Muto: Yes, we did. When I was 41 years old, we talked to each other and decided to go our separate ways. I think it was a very amicable divorce, because there was no resentment and it was not a quarrel. TM: Did your daughter object? Ms. Muto: My daughter was in junior high school at the time, and she only saw my ex-husband twice a year for New Year’s and her birthday, so she didn’t really object.
■The reason for your relationship was, as I thought, a sports paper. – There were about eight years between your divorce and your remarriage to Moto FUYUKI. When did you get to know him? Motofuyuki: I actually met him when I was in my 20s. Because of my ex-husband’s work, I went to a dinner show that Moto held at a hotel, and that is how we met. From there, including some acquaintances, we had been friends for about 20 years. When Moto came to Osaka, we all had dinner, played golf, and traveled together. On several occasions, my daughter attended dinner parties.