Empress Michiko of Japan
Empress Michiko of Japan, (born
October 20,
1934) formerly and later the Crown Princess of Japan (
April 10,
1959 to
January 7,
1989), is the wife and consort of the reigning
Emperor of Japan,
HIM Emperor Akihito. She was the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. As crown princess and later as empress, she has become the most visible and widely travelled imperial consort in Japanese history. Her full title is
Her Imperial Majesty Empress Michiko of Japan.Empress Michiko was born in
Tokyo, the eldest daughter of Hidesaburo Shoda, president and later honorary chairman of Nisshin Flour Milling Company, and his wife, Fumiko Soejima. She attended Futaba Elementary School in Tokyo, but was obliged to leave during the fourth grade because of the American bombing during
World War II. She returned to school after the war ended and attended the Seishin (Sacred Heart) High School in Tokyo.
She earned a bachelor of arts in English literature from the Faculty of Literature at the
University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo in 1957. In August of that year, she met then-Crown Prince Akihito on a tennis court at
Karuizawa. The Imperial Household Council (a body comprised of the
prime minister of Japan, the presiding officers of the two houses of the
Diet of Japan (or parliament), the chief judge of the Supreme Court, and two members of the imperial family) formally approved the engagement of the Crown Prince to Michiko Shoda on
November 27,
1958. (Biographers of the writer
Yukio Mishima report that he had considered marrying Michiko Shoda, and was introduced to her for that hopeful purpose sometime in the 1950s.)
Although the future crown princess was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she was a commoner. During the 1950s, the media and most persons familiar with the Japanese monarchy had assumed the powerful
Imperial Household Agency (
Kunaicho) would select a bride for Crown Prince Akihito from among the daughters of the former court nobility (
kuge) or from one the former branches of the imperial family. Some traditionalists opposed the engagement, and it was widely rumored that the Empress
Kōjun also was against her son's engagement. When the
dowager empress died in
2000,
Reuters news agency reported that she had bullied her effervescent new daughter-in-law into a rumored nervous breakdown in the early 1960s. The young couple nonetheless proved widely popular among the Japanese public. The couple married on April 10, 1959.
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HIM Emperor Akihito and HIM Empress Michiko of Japan |
Three children were born to the couple: #
HIH Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, b.
February 23,
1960; #HIH
Prince Akishino (Fumihito), b.
November 30,
1965; and #The former HIH
Princess Nori (Sayako), b.
April 18,
1969.
Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko again broke precedent by preferring to raise their children instead of entrusting them to the care of court chamberlains; the crown princess even breastfed. Her efforts to break free of suffocating court etiquette regarding childrearing may have been even more serious than is popularly known. An article written by Sheila K. Johnson and published in 1997 in the
JPRI Critique, the journal of the
Japan Policy Research Institute reported that in the 1960s, rumors abounded that Crown Princess Michiko underwent an
abortion partly to spite her controlling father-in-law, Emperor
Hirohito.
Upon the death of the
Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) on
January 7,
1989, her husband became Japan's 125th emperor and she became empress (consort). The new Emperor and Empress were enthroned (
Sokui Rei Seiden no Gi) at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on
November 12,
1990.
As Crown Prince and Crown Princess, Akihito and Michiko made official visits to thirty-seven countries. Since their enthronement, the Imperial couple have visited an additional eighteen countries, and have done much to make the Imperial family more visible and approachable in contemporary Japan.
*
Kunaicho | Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress*
Hello! Magazine | Empress breaks her silence over Masako's illness*
Japan 101 | Empress Michiko
