The Long, Fascinating Century of a Japanese Princess

The Princess Mikasa, great-aunt of Emperor Naruhito, died last week in Tokyo at the age of 101, after witnessing a remarkable century of change in Japan

When Princess Mikasa, the 101-year-old great-aunt of the Emperor of Japan, passed away in Tokyo last week, it was the end of an era for the imperial family. The princess, born into an aristocratic family, was the last witness to a difficult and controversial era of Japanese imperial history, one that left lasting scars and spurred changes that continue to impact the family of the Emperor and Empress today.

Yuriko Tagaki leaves her family home en route to marry Prince Mikasa, the Emperor’s youngest brother, in Tokyo on October 22, 1941 (Wikimedia Commons)

A photograph of eighteen-year-old Yuriko Tagaki taken on October 22, 1941, shows the young woman standing at the threshold of her family home, with a modest downcast gaze, wearing the elaborate, heavy layered robes of the jūnihitoe, a form of traditional Japanese court dress. Yuriko looks motionless in the image, but one small detail—the outline of her right shoe pressing forward against the robes as she stepped toward the exit—reveals that she was simply pausing in the midst of perhaps the most important journey she would take in her life.

The shadow of the shoe against the skirts also emphasizes the difficulty of moving in the garments, with the constant threat of tripping over the heavy robes—an apt metaphor for the challenging road ahead. But, with a twist of her mouth, Yuriko appears determined to continue forward, as two suited men make heavy bows beside her and a group of kimono-clad women look on wistfully from inside the house.

Yuriko was on her way that day from the home of her parents, Viscount Masanari Takagi and Kuniko Irie, to the Imperial Palace to marry a prince. Prince Takahito, her groom, was the youngest brother of Emperor Hirohito. The baby of the family, Takahito had still been at school when the death of his father, Emperor Yoshihito, had placed Hirohito on the Chrysanthemum throne in 1926. By the time he became an adult himself, Takahito had watched his brother reign for almost a decade, and he had seen the two brothers that fell between them in the family order, Prince Chichibu and Prince Takamatsu, marry and embark on military careers.

Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan with his brothers, Prince Mikasa, Prince Takamatsu, and Prince Chichibu, in 1921 (Wikimedia Commons)

When Prince Takahito came of age in 1935, Emperor Hirohito granted his youngest brother both a new title and permission to start his own branch of the imperial family. The presentation of the new title, Prince Mikasa, was similar to that of the royal dukedoms bestowed on contemporary princes in Britain (the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent), whose children then also carried those titles (Prince William of Gloucester and Prince Michael of Kent, to name two). Like his elder brothers, Takahito looked to the kazoku, the hereditary peerage system that had been established in the nineteenth century, to find a suitable bride.

Prince Takahito found his match in a branch of the aristocracy that was very familiar to the imperial household. Yuriko Takagi was a great-great-niece of Lady Naruko Yanagiwara, the imperial concubine who had given birth to Takahito’s father, Emperor Yoshihito. The family connection made Takahito and Yuriko second cousins once removed. The couple were married in Tokyo on October 22, 1941, just two months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States.