Japan’s empress is praying for her ailing daughter-in-law and worries about the cancer her husband is fighting, but gets great joy from her grandchildren, she said in her annual birthday statement released yesterday.
Empress Michiko, the wife of Emperor Akihito and the first commoner to marry into the Chrysanthemum Throne, turned 74 yesterday.
Public comments are rare from the imperial family, whose members are cloistered, but most of them release statements through the Imperial Household Agency on their birthdays.
“The Crown Princess is a precious person for the Crown Prince as well as for our entire family,” Michiko said in the statement.
The prince’s wife, Masako, has been suffering from depression for five years.
“I will continue to pray for the full recovery of the crown princess and will watch over her,” she said.
Masako, 44, a former diplomat and Harvard graduate, has rarely been able to carry out her official duties, although she married into the family in 1993 with great fanfare as well as public expectations about how her brilliance would make her a role model for women.
Tabloids have been rife with stories about how Masako may have crumbled under pressure to produce a male heir to succeed Crown Prince Naruhito, Michiko’s eldest son.
After suffering a miscarriage in 1999, Masako had a daughter, Aiko, in 2001.
Michiko said she is also concerned about her husband, Emperor Akihito, who has been undergoing surgery and treatment for cancer for six years.
Michiko — a frail but stately looking silver-haired woman pictured in a pale beige kimono for her official birthday photo — has also had her share of sickness.
In the early 1990s, she was unable to speak for months after suffering a nervous breakdown, reportedly over unflattering tabloid stories.
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