Prince Takamatsu
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Prince Takamatsu (Nobuhito) of Japan (高松宮宣仁親王 Takamatsu no miya Nobuhito Shinnō?, 3 January 1905 - 3 February 1987) was the third son of HIM Emperor Taishō and HIM Empress Teimei and a younger brother of the HIM Emperor Shōwa. He became heir to the Takamatsu-no-miya (formerly Arisugawa-no-miya), one of the four shinnōke or branches of the imperial family entitled to inherit the Chrysanthemum throne in default of a direct heir. From the mid-1920s until the end of World War II, Prince Takamatsu pursued a career in the Japanese Imperial Navy, eventually rising to the rank of captain. Following the war, the prince became patron or honorary president of various organizations in the fields of international cultural exchange, the arts, sports, and medicine. He is mainly remembered for his philanthropic activities as a member of the Japanese imperial family.
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[edit] Early life
Prince Nobuhito was born at the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo to then-Crown Prince Yoshihito and Crown Princess Sadako. His childhood appellation was Teru no miya (Prince Teru). Like his elder brothers, Prince Hirohito and Prince Yasuhito, he attended the boy's elementary and secondary departments of the Peers' School (Gakushuin). When Prince Arisugawa Takehito (11 February 1862 - 10 July 1913), the tenth head of the collateral imperial house of Arisugawa-no-miya, died without a male heir, Emperor Taishō placed Prince Nobuhito in the house. The name of the house reverted to the original Takamatsu no miya. The new Prince Takamatsu was a fourth cousin, four times removed of Prince Takehito.
[edit] Military service
Prince Takamatsu attended the Imperial Naval Academy from 1922 to 1925. He received a commission as a sub-lieutenant (second class) in December 1925 and took up duties aboard the battleship Fusō. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant (first class) the following year after completed the course of study at the Torpedo School. The prince studied at the Naval Aviation School at Kasumigaura in 1927 and the Naval Gunnery School at Yokosuka in 1930 - 1931. In 1930, he was promoted to lieutenant (first class) and attached to Naval General Staff in Tokyo. He became a squadron commander of warship Takao, two years later and subsequently was reassigned to the Fusō. Prince Takamatsu graduated from the Naval Staff College in 1936, after having been promoted to lieutenant commander. He was promoted to the rank of commander in September 1940 and finally to captain in 1942. From 1936 to 1945, he held various staff positions in the Naval General Staff Office in Tokyo.
[edit] Marriage
On 4 February 1930, Prince Takamatsu married Tokugawa Kikuko (26 December 1911 - 17 December 2004), the second daughter of Prince Tokugawa Yoshihisa (peer). On her father's side, the bride was a granddaughter of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate. On her mother's side, she was a granddaughter of the late Prince Arisugawa Takehito. Prince and Princess Takamatsu had no children.
[edit] During World War Two
Prince Takamatsu expressed grave reservations about the decision to wage war on the United States in autumn 1941. He urged Emperor Shōwa to sue for peace after the Japanese naval defeat at the Battle of Midway in 1942; an intervention which apparently caused a rift between the royal brothers.
After the battle of Saipan in July 1944, Prince Takamatsu joined his mother empress Teimei, his uncles Prince Higashikuni, Prince Asaka, former prime minister Konoe Fumimaro, and other aristocrats, in seeking the ouster of the prime minister, Tojo Hideki.
[edit] After the surrender
After the war, Prince Takamatsu became the honorary president of various charitable, cultural and athletic organizations including the Japan Fine Arts Society, the Denmark-Japan Society, the France-Japan Society, the Tofu Society for the Welfare of Leprosy Patients, the Sericulture Association, the Japan Basketball Association, and the Saise Welfare Society. He also served as a patron of the Japan Red Cross Society.
In 1975, the Bungei shunjû published a long interview of Takamatsu in which he told of the warning he made to his brother Hirohito on 30 November 1941, the warning he made to him after Midway and that, before the surrender, he and prince Konoe had considered asking the emperor's abdication. The interview implied that the emperor had been a firm supporter of the Greater East Asia War while the prince was against.
In 1991, Princess Takamatsu and an aide discovered a twenty-volume diary, written in Prince Takamatsu's own hand between 1934 and 1947. The diary, which the magazine Chuo Koron obtained, revealed the late prince had opposed the Kwantung Army's incursions in Manchuria in September 1931 and the expansion of the July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident into a full-scale war against China.
Prince Takamatsu died of lung cancer on 3 February 1987 at The Red Cross Medical Center in Tokyo. His remains were buried at Tokyo's Toshimagaoka Cemetery.
[edit] External links
[edit] Bibliography
Kase Hideaki, Takamatsu no miya kaku katariki, Bungei shunjû, February 1975, pp.193, 198, 200
