Lady Hiro Saga

Infobox Person
name = Hiro Saga


caption = Prince Aisin-Gioro Pujie and Hiro Saga, 1938 Wedding Photo
birth_date = birth date|1914|4|16
birth_place = Tokyo, Japan
death_date = death date and age|1987|6|20|1914|4|16
death_place = Beijing, China
spouse = Pujie (1938-1987)
children = Huisheng (1939-1957)
Yunsheng (b.1941)

Lady nihongo|Hiro Saga|嵯峨浩|Saga Hiro, (April 16, 1914 - June 20, 1987), was the daughter of Marquis Saga and distant relative of Japanese Emperor Shōwa. She was married in 1938 to Prince Pujie, brother of the Emperor Puyi (China 1908-1912 and Manchukuo 1934-1945). After her marriage to Prince Pujie, she was known as, and identified herself as, Aisin-Gioro Hiro (愛新覺羅•浩), or Aisin-Gioro Hao in Manchu language.

Biography

The Saga family was of the "kuge" court nobility and a branch of the Ogimachi Sanjo branch of the northern Fujiwara lineage. Hiro was born in Tokyo as the eldest daughter of Marquis Saneto Saga in 1914. She was educated at the Women's branch of the Gakushuin Peers’ School.

In 1937, she was introduced to Prince Pujie, younger brother of the Manchukuo Emperor Puyi, who was attending the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, in an arranged marriage interview. Pujie had selected her photograph from a number of possible candidates vetted by the Kwangtung Army. [ Lebra, Above the Clouds pp.213] As his brother Emperor Puyi was without a direct heir, the wedding had strong political implications, and was aimed at both fortifying relations between the two nations and introducing Japanese blood into the Manchurian Imperial family.

The engagement ceremony took place at the Embassy of Manchukuo in Tokyo on February 2 1938 with the official wedding held in the Imperial Army Hall at Kudanzaka, Tokyo on April 3. In October, the couple moved to Hsinking, the capital of Manchukuo.

During the Evacuation of Manchukuo during Operation August Storm, Hiro was separated from her husband. While Prince Pujie accompanied Emperor Puyi in an attempt to escape by air, Princess Hiro and her younger daughter were sent by train towards Korea together with the Empress Wan Rong. The train was captured by Chinese communist troops at Talitzou, Manchukuo, in January 1946. In April, they were moved to a police station in Changchun, eventually released only to be rounded up again and locked up at a police station in Kirin in the north. When Kuomingtang forces bombed Kirin, the royal prisoners were moved to Yanji Prison. [Behr, The Last Emperor, p. 268-9] , and Princess Hiro and her daughter were then taken to prison in Shanghai, and eventually repatriated to Japan. In 1961, after the release of her husband from prison, the couple was reunited with permission by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, and lived in Beijing from 1961, until her death in 1987.

Descendents

Princess Aisin-Gioro Huisheng 慧生 (1939-1957) - H. H. Princess (Chün Chu Kung Chu) Huisheng, was born at Hsingking on February 1938 and educated privately and then studied at Gakushuin University. She was killed (murdered) in Izu, near Tokyo on 10 December 1957 in what appears to have been a double-suicide.

Princess Aisin-Gioro Yunsheng 嫮生 (1941- ) - H.H. Princess (Chün Chu Kung Chu) Yunsheng was educated privately and then studied at Gakushuin Women's University in Tokyo. She later married Kosei Fukunaga, a former Japanese aristocrat employed in the automobile industry in Tokyo. She has five children.

While being the closest male relative of Puyi, Pujie some believe he was not in the line of succession for the Qing throne, since according to legend Puyi appointed his cousin Prince Yuyan as his heir in 1950. However, Puyi's autobiography only states that he proposed such an appointment while imprisoned by the Soviets in order to secure his loyalty there. [http://www.4dw.net/royalark/China/china.htm]

Dramatization

A dramatization of the life of Prince Pujie and Hiro Saga appeared as a television drama on TV Asahi in Japan in the autumn of 2003, under the title "Ryuuten no ouhi - Saigo no koutei" (流転の王妃・最後の皇弟). The role of Hiro Saga was played by actress Takako Tokiwa.

References

*cite book
last = Behr
first = Edward
coauthors =
year = 1977
title = The Last Emperor
publisher = Bantam
id = ISBN: 0553344749
*cite book
last = Lebra
first = Takie Sugiyama.
coauthors =
year = 1987
title = Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility
publisher = University of California Press
id = ISBN: 0520076028

External links

* [http://www.jdorama.com/drama.794.htm Information about TV Asahi's (Japan) Autumn 2003 dramatization of Pujie and Lady Hiro Saga's marriage]

Notes