Nobuhito, Prince Takamatsu

Nobuhito, Prince Takamatsu (高松宮宣仁親王) was the third son of Emperor Taishō (Yoshihito) and Empress Teimei (Sadako) and a younger brother of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito). 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 Imperial Household of Japan.

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 an ensign on 1 December 1925 and took up duties aboard the battleship Fusō. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant the following year after completing 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 and attached to the 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 on 15 November 1935. He was promoted to the rank of commander on 15 November 1940 and finally to captain on 1 November 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 Kikuko Tokugawa (December 16, 1911 - December 17, 2004), the second daughter of Prince Yoshihisa Tokugawa (peer). The bride was a paternal granddaughter of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, 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 Kikuko, 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 the 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 Shunjū 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 Chūō Kōron 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 Japanese Red Cross Medical Center. His remains were buried at Tokyo's Toshimagaoka Cemetery.

Titles and styles

 * 3 January 1905 – 5 July 1925: His Imperial Highness The Prince Teru
 * 5 July 1925 – 3 February 1987: His Imperial Highness The Prince Takamatsu

National honours

 * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (1 February 1925)
 * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun
 * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure
 * Order of the Golden Kite, Fourth Class (29 April 1940)
 * China Incident Medal (29 April 1940)

Foreign honours

 * 🇸🇪 Sweden : Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim (1930)
 * 🇮🇹 Italy : Knight of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation
 * 🇬🇧 United Kingdom : Recipient of the Royal Victorian Chain, conferred in 1930, revoked in 1942.