was the third son of HIM Emperor Taishō (Yoshihito) and HIM Empress Teimei and a younger brother of the HIM Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito). He became heir to the Takamatsu-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.
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 (1862 - 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.
Military service
Prince Takamatsu attended the
Imperial Japanese 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
Imperial Japanese Navy
General Staff in Tokyo. He became a squadron commander of
cruiser 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.
Marriage
On February 4, 1930, Prince Takamatsu married
Tokugawa Kikuko (December 16,
1911 - December 17, 2004), the second daughter of Prince
Tokugawa Yoshihisa (peer). The bride was
a paternal granddaughter of
Tokugawa
Yoshinobu, the last
Shōgun of the
Tokugawa shogunate, and the
maternal granddaughter of the late Prince Arisugawa Takehito.
Prince and Princess Takamatsu had no children.
The Second World War
From the
1930s, Prince Takamatsu expressed grave reservations regarding
Japanese aggression in Manchuria and the
decision to wage war on the United States
.
In 1991, his wife
Princess
Takamatsu and an aide discovered a twenty-volume diary, written
in Prince Takamatsu's own hand between 1934 and 1947.
Despite opposition
from the entrenched bureaucrats of the Imperial
Household Agency
, she gave the diary to the magazine Chūōkōron which published
excerpts in 1995.
The diary
revealed that Prince Takamatsu bitterly opposed the Kwantung Army's incursions in Manchuria in September 1931, the expansion of the
July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident
into a full-scale war of aggression against
China
and in November 1941 warned his brother, Hirohito that the Imperial Japanese Navy could not
sustain hostilities for longer than two years against United
States. He urged Emperor Shōwa to seek peace after
the Japanese naval defeat at the Battle of Midway
in 1942; an intervention which apparently caused a
severe rift between the 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.
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
Japanese Red Cross
Society.
In 1975, the
Bungei Sunjū
literary magazine published a long
interview with Takamatsu in which he told of the warning he made to
his brother Hirohito on November 30, 1941, the warning he made to
him after Midway and that, before the surrender, he and Prince
Konoe had considered asking for 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 not.
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
February 3, 1987 at The Red Cross Medical Center in Tokyo. His
remains were buried at Tokyo's Toshimagaoka Cemetery.
Honours
References
External links
Bibliography
Kase Hideaki,
Takamatsu no miya kaku katariki, Bungei
shunjû, February 1975, pp.193, 198, 200
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