Takako Shimazu

Takako Shimazu (in Japanese: 島津貴子; 2 March 1939 - ), formerly Princess Takako of Japan, is the fifth daughter and youngest child of the Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) and Empress Kojun (Nagako) and the younger sister of the present Emperor Akihito. Her wedding to a former count and descendant of the daimyo of Satsuma in 1961 was the last time a daughter of Japanese emperor would leave the Japanese imperial family until the November 2005 wedding of Princess Sayako.

Princess Takako was born at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1939. Her childhood appellation was "Suga no miya" (Princess Suga). Like her elder sisters, she was educated at the Gakushuin Girls' School. During the American occupation of Japan following World War II, she, her elder sisters Princesses Kazuko and Atsuko, and her brothers Crown Prince Akihito and Prince Masahito (later Prince Hitachi) were tutored in English by Elizabeth Grey Vining. Priness Takako graduated Gakushuin University Women's College with a degree in English literature in March 1957.

On 3 March 1960, Princess Takako wed Shimazu Hisanaga (1934 - ), the son of the late Count Shimazu Hisanori and, at the time, an analysts at the Japan Import-Export Bank in Tokyo. Upon her marriage, the princess relinquished for membership in the imperial family and adopted her husband's surname, in accordance with the 1947 Imperial Household Law. Shortly after Described by Western media sources at the time as a "commoner bank clerk," the groom was actually a direct descendant of the last daimyo of Satsuma (and thus a maternal cousin to Empress Kojun) and a classmate of then-Crown Prince Akihito at the Gakushuin. Upon his father's death in 1944, Shimazu Hisanaga succeeded to a comital title. However, the postwar Constitution of Japan (in force from 3 May 1947 abolished the peerage. Shimazu pursued a thirty-year career with the Import-Export Bank, including postings to Washington and Sydney with his wife. He became a member of the board of directors of the Sony Corporation upon his retirement from the bank in 1987, served as executive director of the Sony Foundation for Science Education from 1994 to 2001, and is currently research director of the Yamashina Institute of Ornithology in Tokyo. The couple have one son: Shimazu Yorihisa (5 April 1962 - ).

----Sources

Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, "The Japan Year Book" (Tokyo: Kenkyusha Press, 1939-40, 1941-42, 1944-45, 1945-46, 1947-48).

Takie Sugiyama Lebra, "Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

Ben-ami Shillony, "Enigma of the Emperors: Sacred Subservience in Japanese History" (Kent, U.K.: Global Oriental, 2006).