THE NEW YORK TIMES: Her death reduces Japan’s rapidly dwindling imperial family to 16 people, and only 4 men, as the country faces questions about the future under a male-only succession law.
Princess Yuriko of Japan, the wife of Emperor Hirohito’s brother and the oldest member of the Japanese imperial family, died on Friday in Tokyo. She was 101.
Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the Imperial Household Agency. The announcement did not cite a cause of death, but the Japanese news media said she died of pneumonia.
Born into an aristocratic family on June 4, 1923, Yuriko was 18 when she married Prince Mikasa, the younger brother of Hirohito and the great-uncle of the current emperor, Naruhito. The wedding took place on Oct. 22, 1941, weeks before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
She recounted living in a shelter with her husband and their baby daughter after their home was burned down when the United States firebombed Tokyo in 1945, in the final months of the war. » | The Associated Press | Friday, November 15, 2024
