Akiko

Akiko (あきこ; born 20 December 1981) is Empress of Japan. She ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne on 6 June 2012 upon the death of her father Tomohito, beginning the Reiwa era. According to Japan's traditional order of succession, she is the 127th monarch and the ninth empress regnant in Japanese history.

Born in 1981 as the oldest of two daughters of Crown Prince Tomohito and Crown Princess Nobuko, Akiko graduated from Gakushuin University in Tokyo before furthering her education at Oxford University in London, England. In 2006, following her grandfather Takahito's abdication, a succession crisis arose due to the scarcity of male heirs in the Japanese imperial family given that two of the former emperor's sons only have daughters as children while the third is childless. Consequently, in 2007, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe successfully amended the succession laws to the throne, thereby allowing women to succeed to the throne once more while also discontinuing the practice of female members of the imperial household having to renounce their titles upon marrying a commoner. Therefore, with the change in succession laws, Akiko was officially proclaimed crown princess in 2008 and later ascended to the throne herself in 2012 after the death of her father who predeceased his own father by roughly four years. Aged thirty-one at the time of her ascension, Akiko was the youngest reigning monarch and the youngest serving state leader in the world before such distinctions were later held by the United Kingdom's Queen Alexandra who is fifteen years younger.

In 2016, Akiko married Kawano Haranobu, a Japanese lawyer and former classmate of hers, becoming the first female member of the Japanese imperial family to marry without having to renounce their royal titles as previously required. The couple have two sons, namely Yokohito and Fuchihito.