Tokyo — Japanese Princess Yuriko, the spouse of wartime Emperor Hirohito’s brother and the oldest member of the imperial household, has died after her well being deteriorated just lately, palace officers stated. Yuriko died Friday on the age of 101 in a Tokyo hospital, the Imperial Family Company stated. It didn’t announce the reason for dying.
Born in 1923 as an aristocrat, Yuriko married at age 18 to Prince Mikasa, the youthful brother of Hirohito and the great-uncle of present Emperor Naruhito, months earlier than the beginning of World Warfare II.
She has recounted dwelling in a shelter together with her husband and their child daughter after their residence was burned down within the U.S. hearth bombings of Tokyo within the last months of the struggle in 1945.
Imperial Family Company through AP
Yuriko raised 5 kids and supported Mikasa’s analysis into historical Close to Jap historical past, whereas additionally serving her official duties and collaborating in philanthropic actions, together with promotion of maternal and little one well being. She outlived her husband and all three of their sons.
Her dying reduces Japan’s quickly dwindling imperial household to 16 folks, together with 4 males, because the nation faces the dilemma of how you can preserve the royal lineage as conservatives within the governing occasion insist on retaining male-only succession.
The 1947 Imperial Home Regulation, which largely preserves conservative Japanese prewar household values, permits solely males to take the throne and forces feminine royal relations who marry commoners to lose their royal standing. That rule got here into impact comparatively just lately, when Princess Mako married her non-royal fiancé Kei Komuro in October 2021, promptly shedding her royal title and trappings — and depriving the shrinking imperial household of one other member.
The youngest male member of the imperial household, Prince Hisahito — the nephew of Emperor Naruhito — is at present the final inheritor obvious, posing a serious downside for a system that does not enable for empresses. The conservative-led authorities is debating how you can hold succession steady with out counting on girls.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, visiting South America to attend the Asia Pacific Financial Cooperation and Group of 20 summits, issued an announcement expressing “heartfelt condolences.”
Naruhito, Empress Masako and their daughter Aiko and different kin visited the Mikasa residence to mourn Yuriko’s dying. The palace introduced that most of the people wishing to supply condolences can signal a e book starting Saturday.
Yuriko had lived a wholesome life as a centenarian earlier than struggling a stroke and pneumonia in March.
Douglas Glynn/Toronto Star/Getty
She loved train within the morning whereas watching a every day health program on tv, the Imperial Family Company says. She additionally continued to learn a number of newspapers and magazines and loved watching information and baseball on TV. On sunny days, she sat within the palace backyard or was wheeled in her wheelchair.
Yuriko was hospitalized after her stroke and had been out and in of intensive care since then. Her total situation deteriorated over the previous week, the Imperial Family Company stated.