Japanese princess buried

2004-12-26 10:13

Tokyo - Several hundred people attended the funeral Sunday of Japanese Princess Kikuko, an aunt of Emperor Akihito who died at age 92 after years of ill health.

Princess Kikuko, also known as Takamatsu, the name of her royal line, died in a Tokyo hospital of blood poisoning related to kidney problems on December 18.

The death came just hours before the scheduled wedding announcement for Akihito's only daughter, 35-year-old Princess Sayako. The Imperial Household Agency said the wedding was being put off until further notice.

At the Toshimagaoka Cemetery in Tokyo, some 560 mourners, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Akihito's eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, and his wife Princess Masako, paid their respects to the late princess.

Princess Sayako, who is set to marry commoner Yoshiki Kuroda, 39, a childhood friend who works in the city planning bureau for the Tokyo metropolitan government, was also at the funeral.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, however, did not attend the funeral in accordance with imperial custom.

Kikuko, who would have turned 93 on Sunday, was the widow of late emperor Hirohito's younger brother Prince Takamatsu, who died in 1987.

She will be cremated and her remains will be placed at the tomb of her husband later in the day.

She was the granddaughter of the last of the shoguns, Japan's feudal rulers until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 which gave power to the emperor and marked the start of Japan's modernization.

The princess took an unusually modern role for someone so entrenched in the world's oldest monarchy when she wrote a magazine article in 2002 in favour of changing dynastic rules to let a female ascend Japan's Chrysanthemum Throne.

Under the 1948 Imperial Household Law, only a male heir can ascend the throne. No boys have been born to the imperial family since 1965, potentially spelling crisis for royal succession.

Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako have only one child, three-year-old Princess Aiko.

- AFP