Princess Yuriko, the oldest member of the Japanese imperial family. and great-aunt of Emperor Naruhito, died Friday at the age of 101 in a Tokyo hospital, a spokesman for the Japanese Imperial Household Agency said.
The news comes days after that agency reported that his heart and kidney functions were worsening. after being hospitalized in a hospital in the Tokyo capital for months.
Yuriko was admitted to St. Luke’s International Hospital in the center of the Japanese capital this March for a stroke and pneumonia, and had not made any public appearances since New Year’s Day.when he attended a ceremony at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and visited the residence of the emeritus emperors.
Yuriko is the widow of the late Prince Mikasa whom she married in 1941, and who was one of the three brothers of Emperor Hirohito, grandfather of the current Emperor Naruhito, and who died in 2016 at the age of 100.
The women of the Japanese imperial family currently hold an important role in the performance of official duties and public appearances of the institution, where they are in the majority despite having no inheritance rights.
Of the 16 current members of the Japanese imperial family, 11 are womenThe women of the imperial family, wives of princes or their unmarried daughters, because when the women of the imperial family married plebeian men, they had to abandon the family genealogy and their functions.
This has caused a pressing succession problem in a country with a Salic law in which only three members currently have succession rights: Crown Prince Akishino, 58; his son, Prince Hisahito (18); and the latter’s great-uncle, Prince Hitachi, 88, brother of Emperor Emeritus Akihito (90).