Princess Mikasa, oldest member of the Japanese imperial family and great-aunt of the current emperor, died on Friday November 15 in Tokyo at the age of 101, the Japanese imperial agency announced. She was hospitalized in March following a stroke and pneumonia and had been kept under observation ever since, after being treated in an intensive care unit.
Coming from an aristocratic family, Princess Mikasa, born Yuriko Takagi on June 4, 1923, married at the age of 18 Prince Mikasa, youngest brother of Emperor Hirohito – the grandfather of the current Emperor Naruhito. Together they had two daughters and three sons, as well as nine grandchildren. The princess gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in 1944, while Japan was still at war. The imperial couple’s house was burned down during an air raid, forcing her to live in a shelter with her baby, according to the daily Asahi.
Emperor Hirohito, commander-in-chief of the Japanese army during its brutal march across Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, delivered a surrender speech on August 15, 1945, days after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Prince Mikasa, who died in 2016 at the age of 100, supported the decision to end the war. But a young officer, who was opposed to it, visited him to try to change his mind. Princess Mikasa remembered that the atmosphere during this lively discussion was “very scary”.
The imperial dynasty is threatened
Her life in the decades that followed was marked by her family’s financial difficulties, with the princess taking care of domestic chores herself. “When I was raising my children, Japanese society was going through a difficult time, and I remember with deep gratitude how many people, including my husband, always supported me”declared the princess in a press release published on the occasion of her 100th birthday, in June 2023.
Princess Misaka’s three sons predeceased her, one at the age of 47, while playing squash at the Canadian Embassy. With succession to the throne open only to men, the imperial dynasty is threatened, with only one young heir currently: Emperor Naruhito’s nephew, Prince Hisahito, aged 18. Daughter of the current Emperor, Princess Aiko, 22, is excluded from the throne under the law on the imperial household, in force since 1947.
