Prince Takehito Arisugawa

Infobox Military Person
name= Prince Arisugawa Takehito
lived= 13 January 1862&ndash 5 July 1913 [Nishida, Imperial Japanese Navy]
placeofbirth=Kyoto, Japan
placeofdeath=Tokyo, Japan


caption= Prince Arisugawa Takehito
nickname=
allegiance=Empire of Japan
branch=navy|Empire of Japan
serviceyears=1874 -1913
rank=Fleet Admiral
commands=
unit=
battles=First Sino-Japanese War
awards= Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath
Order of the Golden Kite (3rd Class)
Collar of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum.
family=
laterwork=

nihongo|Prince Arisugawa Takehito|有栖川宮威仁親王| "Arisugawa-no-miya Takehito-Shinnō" (13 January 1862 – 5 July 1913 was the 10th head of a cadet branch of the Japanese imperial family and a career officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Early life

Prince Takehiko was born in Kyoto as a scion of the nihongo|Arisugawa-no-miya|有栖川宮家| house, one of the "shinnōke" branches of the Imperial Family of Japan, which were eligible to succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne in the event that the main line should die out.

Marriage & family

On 11 December 1880, Prince Takehito married Maeda Yasuko (15 March 1864 – 30 June 1923), the fourth daughter of Maeda Yoshiyasu, the last "daimyo" of Kaga Province (modern Ishikawa prefecture), by whom he had three children.

Prince and Princess Arisugawa made an extensive tour of Europe and America in 1889.

In 1896, the prince represented Emperor Meiji at the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria. Takehito succeeded to the Arisugawa-no-miya title upon the death of his half-brother, HIH Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, on 15 January 1895.

The prince and his wife returned to Europe in 1905 to represent the Emperor at the wedding of the German Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951) to Duchess Cecile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He visited Great Britain again on his way back to Japan. King Edward VII granted Prince Arisugawa the Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath.

Military career

In 1874, the prince attended the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and five years later, embarked upon the HMS Iron Duke, the flagship of Britain's Royal Navy, for further training. He served in the Channel Squadron. In 1881, he was a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich in England.

His first naval command was that of the corvette "Katsuragi" in early 1890, followed by the cruiser "Takao" later that year. He was assigned to the escort of Russian Crown Prince Nikolai (later Tsar Nicholas II) of Russia during his tour of Japan in 1891. While under Prince Takehito's care, Nikolai was wounded in an assassination attempt (the Otsu Scandal), which led to a considerable worsening of diplomatic relations between Japan and Russia. In 1892, he was captain of the cruiser "Chiyoda". During the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), he commanded the cruiser "Matsushima", and subsequently the "Hashidate", The Prince attained the rank of rear admiral on 11 November 1896, and vice admiral on 26 September 1899.

Promoted to full admiral on 28 June 1905, Emperor Meiji awarded the prince the Order of the Golden Kite (3rd Class) for his service during the Russo-Japanese War. He visited Europe from March – August 1905. He advanced to the honorary rank of fleet admiral on 2 July 1913, and died two days later. He was awarded the Collar of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum posthumously.

Since the prince died without a male heir (his son Tanehito having died of appendicitis while attending the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy), the directly line of descent of the house of Arisugawa-no-miya became extinct.

However, his boyhood friend Yoshihito, Emperor Taishō, revived the house (which reverted to its original name of Takamatsu-no-miya) in favor of his third son, Prince Takamatsu Nobuhito (1905 - 1987), in 1913 / ?1924. The Imperial Prince Nobuhito afterwards married Kikuko Tokugawa, granddaughter of Takehito Arisugawa.

Memorials

* The site of Prince Arisugawa’s Tokyo palace is now the Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park. It is located in Minami Azabu, Minato, Tokyo and its extensive gardens are open to the public. The site of his seaside summer home in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture is now the site of the annex of the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

* A large standing bronze statue of Prince Arisugawa exists outside the site of his former summer residence in Fukushima Prefecture, north of Tokyo.

References

Books

*cite book
last = Dupuy
first = Trevor N.
year = 1992
title = Encyclopedia of Military Biography
publisher = I B Tauris & Co Ltd
location =
id = ISBN 1-85043-569-3
* Jansen, Marius B. "The Making of Modern Japan." Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
*cite book
last = Keane
first = Donald
year = 2005
title = Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852-1912"
publisher = Columbia University Press
location =
id = ISBN 0-231-12341-8

External links

*cite web
last = Nishida
first = Hiroshi
url = http://homepage2.nifty.com/nishidah/e/px00.htm#p001
title = People of the IJN: Arisugawa, Takehito
work = Imperial Japanese Navy

Notes