She was the oldest living member of the Japanese imperial family. Now Princess Yuriko has died in a hospital in Tokyo.
Princess Yuriko of Japan has died at the age of 101. As the Imperial Court Office announced, the oldest living member of the imperial family died on Friday morning (local time) in St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo. Yuriko was admitted there in March because of a mild cerebral infarction.
The exact cause of death was not disclosed by the imperial court office. But according to Japanese media reports, Yuriko is said to have died as a result of pneumonia. “I am deeply saddened by the news of the death of Her Imperial Highness Princess Yuriko of Mikasa,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in a statement.
Married for 75 years
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, and uncle of the Emeritus Emperor Akihito. The two were married for 75 years and had five children together, three of whom are already dead.
Yuriko’s husband Mikasa died in 2016 at the age of 100. Yuriko lived her final years in seclusion in the Akasaka 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 wasn’t until spring that her health began to deteriorate.
After Yuriko’s death, the Japanese imperial family only numbers 16 people, including four men. As before, only male heirs are allowed to continue the family line. Women have no place in the line of succession and are excluded from the family as soon as they marry commoners.
