Grandfather of Japan’s Princess Mako rushed to hospital days before her wedding to Kei Komuro

Name: Japan’s Princess Mako reports to ancestral deity about her marriage
Uploaded: 2021-10-21T05:34:07.000Z
Duration: 1 min
Description: Japan’s Princess Mako reports to ancestral deity about her marriage

Japanese netizens have suggested the controversy surrounding Mako’s choice of husband has caused her maternal grandfather to become hospitalised

The wedding is due to take place on Tuesday in a scaled-back event as a result of disquiet within the imperial family and the wider society

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Princess Mako visited her grandfather in hospital on October 19, 2021. Photo: Jiji Press / AFP

Julian Ryall

Published: 1:34pm, 21 Oct 2021Updated: 9:45pm, 21 Oct 2021

The wedding of Japan’s Princess Mako has been blindsided by yet another crisis just days before she is controversially due to marry commoner Kei Komuro, with her maternal grandfather experiencing a medical emergency and admitted to a hospital in Tokyo.

Social media has been awash with theories that 81-year-old Tatsuhiko Kawashima, the father of Princess Kiko Akishino and grandfather of the soon-to-be bride, has been taken ill as a result of the whiff of scandal that continues to linger around the wedding.

Others are calling for the wedding – due to take place on Tuesday – to be again delayed or cancelled outright, while some insist it is yet another bad omen, along with the eruption of Mount Aso in southern Japan and a series of recent earthquakes that have struck the length of the Japanese archipelago over the last month.

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Japan’s Princess Mako reports to ancestral deity about her marriage

Kawashima, an honorary professor at Gakushuin University, was admitted to a hospital in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward on Tuesday and is reported to be in intensive care. There has been no word about the illness that he is suffering or his condition.

Princess Kiko and her daughters, princesses Mako and Kako, visited the hospital on Tuesday afternoon. Princess Mako visited the three sanctuaries in the grounds of the Imperial Palace earlier the same day as part of the tradition of reporting her impending marriage and departure from the Imperial family to her ancestors and the nation’s deities.

The princess is due to marry Komuro on Tuesday in a ceremony that has been scaled back as a result of disquiet within the imperial family and wider Japanese society about the wisdom of going ahead with the union.

The couple, who first met at university, announced their engagement in September 2017 and initially planned to marry the following year. That was swiftly put off when reports began to emerge in the tabloid media that Komuro’s mother had borrowed 4 million yen (US$36,000) from a former partner to cover her son’s university education and was refusing to return the money.