Princess Tomohito of Mikasa was born Nobuko Asō on 9 April 1955 as the daughter of Takakichi Asō and Kazuko Yoshida. She was their third daughter daughter and youngest child. She was born into a Catholic family, and she was baptised.
Nobuko went to school in England and graduated from Rosslyn House College in 1973. When she returned to Japan, she taught England at Shoto Kindergarten in Tokyo. She met her future husband during her studies in England. Prince Tomohito of Mikasa was a student at Oxford University. He was the eldest son of Takahito, Prince Mikasa and Yuriko, Princess Mikasa, and thus a first cousin of Emperor Akihito.
Their engagement was announced on 18 April 1980, and the engagement ceremony was held on 21 May 1980. Their wedding took place on 7 November 1980, and from then on, she was known as Princess Tomohito of Mikasa. Her personal emblem is the flower of peach.
The couple went on to have two daughters together, Princess Akiko (born 1981) and Princess Yōko (born 1983). They lived together within the Akasaka Estate complex in Tokyo until 2009. She and her husband represented the Emperor of Japan on various occasions in Japan and abroad. Noboku holds various positions in welfare charities. She also enjoys cooking and has published two cookbooks.
Nobuko had a brain ischemia in May 2004, and she recuperated away in a villa belonging to the Sōma family. She had additional medical issues from menopause and asthma, after which she separated her household from that of her husband and children. She lived in the official residence of the Commissioner of the Imperial Household Agency.
Her husband had his fair share of health issues as well. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1991 but went into remission. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 2003, and he fractured his jaw, which had been weakened by the chemotherapy, in 2006. In 2007, he announced he had alcohol use disorder and was going to undergo treatment. His cancer continued to spread, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia after being unable to swallow food properly. After his bout of pneumonia, he was only able to speak with the help of a mechanical larynx. He was eventually hospitalised, and he died of organ failure on 6 June 2012. His mother and daughters were at his bedside, but Nobuko was not. Princess Akiko acted as chief mourner at her father’s funeral. There were reportedly some family issues that kept Nobuko from her husband’s sickbed.
Princess Akiko wrote an article in the Huffington Post in which she touched on a “long-standing feud between my father and mother.” She also wrote, “Since my mother left the Prince Tomohito household to recuperate from her illness, I have not been able to speak to her properly for over 10 years. I have repeatedly expressed my desire to speak to her, but each time I have received a refusal through my representative.”1
Nobuko returned to public duties in 2013, but she still had to deal with several health issues. She fractured a vertebra in 2019. In 2022, she was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. She had surgery to remove the tumour, and she underwent radiation therapy. In 2024, she underwent surgery for primary angle closure and cataracts.
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