Early Life
Empress Michiko was born in Tokyo, the eldest daughter of Hidesaburo Shōda (1904–1999), president and later honorary chairman of Nisshin Flour Milling Company, and his wife, Fumiko Soejima (1910–1988). She attended Futaba Elementary School in Tokyo, but was obliged to leave during the fourth grade because of the American bombing during World War II. She returned to school after the war ended and attended the Seishin (Sacred Heart) junior high school and High School in Tokyo.
In 1957, She earned a bachelor of arts in English literature from the Faculty of Literature at the University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo with summa cum laude.
Biographers of the writer Yukio Mishima report that he had considered marrying Michiko Shoda, and that he was introduced to her for that purpose some time in the 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Empress Michiko
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Thou gav’st me life, but mortal; for that one
Favour I’ll make full satisfaction:
For my life mortal, rise from out thy hearse,
And take a life immortal from my verse.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)