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Worm-eaten Apple. Described as a girl who is "always obedient to her parents but also has much will power and drive," Michiko was strictly brought up, still has a monthly allowance of only $2.78. Considered "a brilliant student'' by her former dean, Elizabeth Britt, Michiko in 1955 won a prize in an essay contest sponsored by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Wrote Michiko in part: "We are called the apres guerre generation, and sometimes I feel like Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles who said she had been born into a world like a worm-eaten apple. But must we be handicapped all our lives by the heavy burdens resulting from a disastrous war? The past was bad, but we can free ourselves from its shackles and look forward to a rosy future. The world of the worm-eaten apple is not for us." Michiko's rosy future is likely to arouse some resentment, especially on the part of the top ten noble families who have traditionally supplied the fiancee of the crown prince. Because of a press blackout, most Japanese were unaware that a girl from the Shoda family was about to become the first commoner crown princess in history. But that the news has spread to the Tokyo business world seems obvious : in the past three weeks, stock in the Shoda family's Nisshin Flour Milling Co. has shot up from 153 yen to 188.