Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko met former Hansen's disease patients Sunday at a sanitarium on Miyako Island as part of their trip to Okinawa.
The Imperial Couple greeted each of the 25 residents in a meeting at the Miyako Nanseien sanitarium. The facility's 127 residents, with an average age of 77, have lived there for an average of 44 years.
The facility, set up in 1931, is one of the sanitariums across Japan where Hansen's patients were forcibly confined under a government quarantine policy repealed in 1996.
The government segregated them in isolated sanitariums for decades, even after it was learned that Hansen's disease, which was commonly called leprosy, is difficult to transmit.
It was the Imperial Couple's first trip to Miyako.
Later in the day, they flew to Ishigaki Island for the first time as they had only visited the main island of Okinawa during previous visits to the prefecture.
