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TOKYO, Sunday (AFP)

Japan's Emperor Akihito has prostate cancer but he can look forward to a complete recovery, the royal palace said Saturday.

The announcement was made at a press conference with a candour defying the secrecy usually associated with the world's oldest royal dynasty.

"We have confirmed the existence of cancer cells in the prostate gland," Ichiro Kanazawa, medical director of the Imperial Household Agency, told a news conference.

The tumor is of a highly differentiated type that is relatively mild in nature," Kanazawa said, adding that it can be "completely cured".

Akihito, who turned 69 last Monday, will undergo surgery to remove the cancer in mid-January at the Tokyo University hospital and will remain in hospital for about a month, he added.

The emperor spent one night at the Imperial Household Agency hospital after a check-up on Tuesday in which a tissue sample was taken from the emperor's prostate in a biopsy.

The agency said earlier that the emperor underwent the examination after blood test results over the past two to three years had given cause for concern.

Akihito's father, Hirohito, died at the age of 87 in 1989 after seeing his country defeated in World War II but rise again as an economic success.

But it was not announced until after his death that Hirohito had suffered from termial cancer affecting the duodenal papillae.

Akihito and Empress Michiko, the 68-year-old daughter of a billionaire, have two sons and one daughter, in a family which has carefully attempted to become more accessible to the public.

The emperor would not be taking part in Shinto-based rites at the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo during New Year holidays, a spokesman for the agency said, but he will greet government leaders and foreign diplomats in customary New Year functions at the palace.

Akihito will also appear on the glassed-in balcony at the palace's main pavilion to greet the public on January 2.

The customary New Year appearance is one of the two occasions on which the palace, surrounded by high stone walls and moats, is open to the public.

"There is be no cause for concern for his majesty to take part in these events as scheduled," the official said.

He added that the emperor would also attend an annual New Year's poetry reading at the palace on January 15 as scheduled, a tradition which demonstrates the imperial family's place in the country's cultural and spiritual landscape.

Akihito has actively engaged himself in his duties in the emperor's constitutional post-war capacity as the "symbol of the state and of the unity of the people."

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