Family drives prince to booze
2007-08-21 14:03
Tokyo - The first Japanese royal to publicly admit to alcoholism said he started drinking as a teenager and that his habit has drastically worsened lately due to problems in the imperial family.
Prince Tomohito, 61, a cousin of Emperor Akihito known for his staunch opposition to allowing a woman on the Chrysanthemum throne, told a magazine he started drinking at 15. The drinking age in Japan is 20.
"I was first diagnosed as an alcoholic in my 30s. My hands were shaking and I couldn't hold a cup of tea in the VIP room" of Tokyo's Haneda airport, he told the latest edition of the Aera weekly.
The prince took a blood test shortly afterwards and found his level of an enzyme used as a yardstick of liver complications was more than 10 times worse than normal.
"I was immediately admitted to the Japan Red Cross Medical Centre. I was in an awful condition, hallucinating auditorily and visually for a week," he said, as quoted by the magazine published by the leading daily Asahi Shimbum.
"The volume I drank swelled rapidly over the past three years," he said, "as there were various problems that drove me into a towering rage".
The prince said among the problems were the controversy over male-only imperial succession and the 2004 remark by Crown Prince Naruhito that his wife Masako, a former career woman, was being stifled by the palace.
Tomohito also mentioned "troubles in my family" but did not go into details. He is married to Nobuko, the sister of Foreign Minister Taro Aso.
Tomohito, who is sixth in line to the throne, made his alcoholism public in June. He left the Imperial Household Hospital in Tokyo in late July after being treated for about a month.
No other royals have ever admitted alcoholism publicly, according to a palace spokesperson.
- SAPA