Slightly disappointingly, it turns out that the real name of Harry Knowles wife is Patricia Cho. Harry has been calling her "Yoko" on his website for some time now so presumably that has just been his running joke on marrying an Asian girlfriend.
In other developments, one usually informed source is adamant that Pete Shelley, lead singer and guitarist of UK band the Buzzcocks has married a Japanese girl. This would be somewhat surprising since Shelley is bisexual and seems to prefer the less fairer sex but it wouldn't be the first time for such a union. Another Japanese friend who tracks the comings and goings of old UK punk bands is equally convinced that it can't be true and a cursory search of the net throws up no real supporting evidence. He does like Japanese food, apparently. This is all I could find:
December 2000:
...As a footnote, years later me and my girlfriend (now wife) Beatrice were in a Camden Town pub gig when i saw "Pete Shelley" (Buzzcocks) amongst the audience at the bar. I thought i must say hello (pissed probably) and offered to get him and his Japanese girlfriend a drink (Guinness).
Charlie Harper of the UK Subs says:
Pete Shelley is a great mate and great person. I heard a funny story about Pete Shelley. He ran off with a young girl or something, because he had this Japanese girlfriend in London, but he’s run off somewhere, I think it’s South America to live in Rio or some place. When we were down there we heard these things
[/floatr]George Dennison Morgan, nephew to the banking colossus J P Morgan, married Yuki Kato in 1904. Born in 1881,she was the daughter of a samurai family who had fallen on hard times. Her elder sister had been sold to Gion where she had gone on to manage one of the teahouses so Oyuki became a maiko when she turned 14 and soon established herself as a leading geisha. Morgan met her in 1901 and began courting her. She already had a lover at the time enrolled in Kyoto University and her story became the stuff of scandals in the newspapars. Morgan bought her out of her contract for 40,000 yen which was an unheard of sum at the time and they married in Yokohama. Accounts say that the marriage meant that she lost her Japanese citizenship and the couple went to America. Morgan's family did not approve, however, and shunned her which led them to relocate to high society in Paris. They were a famous couple in Europe but Morgan died alone during a trip to Spain in 1915. This left her in some difficulty since she could not become an American citizen and a major battle began over George's money with the Morgans determined to deny her his inheritance. She seems to have won her case and stayed in Paris where she is said to have had a lover but never remarried. Possibly a second marriage would have meant forfeiting the inheritance. In 1938, she left France as the threat of war prompted her to move back to Kyoto. She was never really accepted back into polite company in Japan and lived out of the public eye. She had become a catholic during her marriage and donated considerable sums to the church in Kyoto. When she died in 1963, some of her ashes were placed in a catholic plot on the grounds of Kinkakuji.
[/floatl]The visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea has thrown up a new candidate for this thread. The main sponsor for the trip is Lady Yoko Nagae Ceschina who is the widow of an Italian business magnate. The Wall Street Journal says "Mrs. Ceschina, 75, inherited her title and her $190-million fortune from her late husband, Count Renzo Ceschina". 
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