Former chess champion Bobby Fischer's plans to marry a Japanese woman are based on genuine emotions, his fiancee said Tuesday, suggesting the engagement is not a ruse to help him avoid deportation to the United States.

Fischer's fiancee, Miyoko Watai, the president of Japan's Chess Association and a longtime friend of Fischer, said in a statement Tuesday that the two first met in 1973 and had been living together in Japan for the past four years.

"We have taken the very serious decision to marry in the midst of this crisis in the hope that disclosing . . . that we have been living together as man and wife might help the two of us return to that happy life we had been sharing," she wrote.