Photo: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty
Japan’s Empress Emerita Michiko has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will have surgery in the fall.
On Friday, the Imperial Household Agency said the 84-year-old’s cancer is at an early stage and preparations are underway for her to undergo surgery as early as September.
For six decades, Michiko, the popular face of Japan’s modern royalty, has largely ceased her public functions, assuming the title of ‘Jokogo’ or Empress Emerita since her husband’s April 30abdicationin favor of the couple’s son.
The former empress had complained of shortness of breath during morning walks since the beginning of the year, according toThe Japan Times. In June, examining doctors diagnosed her condition as heart abnormalities, specifically, an irregular heartbeat and a weakness of the atrioventricular valves which prevent a reverse flow of the blood.
Although she had first experienced cardiac problems in 2015, royal doctors announced her symptoms as relatively mild in June. After reducing her daily activities, cataract surgery proceeded later that month following initial plans of postponement until after the formal abdication ceremonies.
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The daughter of a wealthy industrialist, partially educated at Harvard and Oxford, Michiko is widely considered Japan’s first “modern” Empress.
She met Akihito in August 1957, when the two played opposite one another in a tennis doubles match outside Tokyo. In April 1959, despite objections from Empress Kojun (Japan’s wartime Empress who wished a noble marriage for her son), Michiko became not only the first commoner but also the first religious minority member (her family was Roman Catholic) to marry into the Japanese line.
She and Akihito are widely credited with creating a royal image which sat comfortably with Japan’s burgeoning middle-class in post-war society.
source: people.com
