Prince Kacho Hirotsune

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HIH Prince Kacho Hirotsune
19 April 1851 - 24 May 1876
Image:Replace this image male.svg
Place of birth Tokyo, Japan
Place of death Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance Empire of Japan
Service/branch Naval flag of Empire of Japan Imperial Japanese Navy
Years of service 1876-1877
Rank Vice Admiral

Prince Kacho Hirotsune (華頂宮博経親王 Kachō no miya Hirotsune Shinnō?, 19 April 1851 - 24 May 1876) of Japan, was the founder of a collateral branch of the Japanese imperial family.

[edit] Biography

Prince Kwacho Hirotsune was the twelfth son of Prince Fushimi Kuniye (24 October 1802 - 5 August 1875), the twentieth head of the Fushimi-no-miya, the oldest of the four branches of the imperial dynasty allowed to provide a successor to the Chrysanthemum throne should the main imperial house fail to produce an heir.

On 12 October 1852, he was assigned to the Buddhist temple of Chion-in in Kyoto as a monzeki prince. However, on 27 October 1860, he was recalled by Emperor Komei, who formally adopted him as a potential heir to the imperial throne. However, a few months latter that same year, the 14th Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, requested that a prince from the imperial family be assigned to the Tokugawa household as potential heir to the Shogunate.

The Meiji Restoration in 1868 eliminated this possibility, and Prince Hirotsune returned to the Imperial household. Emperor Meiji granted him permission to start a new branch of the Imperial Family, and he took the name of Kwacho-no-miya (from the mountain name of the temple of Chion-in).

Prince Hirotsune traveled to the United States for study at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1870, but fell ill and returned to Japan in 1872. On 13 May 1876, he was commissioned as a rear admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, but he died later that year.

His wife was the daughter of Count Nambu Toshihisa, the last daimyo of Morioka.

Preceded by
none		 1st Kwacho-no-miya
1868-1876		 Succeeded by
Prince Kwacho Hiroatsu

[edit] References

  • Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
  • Keane, Donald. Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852-1912. Columbia University Press (2005). ISBN: 0231123418
  • Lebra, Sugiyama Takie. Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility. University of California Press (1995). ISBN: 0520076028
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