Princess Yuriko was the oldest living member of the Japanese imperial family. She has now died at the age of 101. As the Imperial Court Office announced, she died on Friday (November 15th) in St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo. She was admitted there in March with a mild cerebral infarction.
The Imperial Court Office did not disclose the exact cause of death; according to Japanese media reports, Yuriko died as a result of pneumonia.
Five children with husband Prince Mikasa
Yuriko was born in 1923 into a noble family. After studying at the Gakushuin Women’s Academy in Tokyo, at the age of 18 she married Prince Mikasa, the youngest brother of Emperor Hirohito, who died in 1989. Through marriage, Yuriko became a member of the imperial family and bore the title “Her Imperial Highness Princess Yuriko of Mikasa”.
The couple was married for 75 years and had five children together, three of whom have died. Yuriko’s husband also lived to be very old and died of heart failure in 2016 at the age of 100.
Life expectancy
Japan is one of the countries with the highest life expectancy in the world. On average, people there live to be 85 years old. In addition, there are more than 95,000 people over 100 years old living in Japan. This also puts the country in a leading position.
Reading and sports into old age
The princess spent the last years of her life in seclusion in the imperial palace in Tokyo. According to the Imperial Court Office, she is said to have regularly read magazines there, watched baseball on television and spent sunny days in the palace garden until the end. It was only in the spring that her health began to deteriorate.
Fearful future for the imperial family?
With Yuriko’s death, the Japanese imperial family shrinks to 16 members, including only four men, raising questions about the future of the succession. As before, only male heirs can continue the family. Women have no place in the line of succession and are excluded from the family as soon as they marry commoners.
