Prince Kachō Hirotada

of Japan, was a member of a collateral branch of the Japanese imperial family.

Biography

Prince Hirotada was the second son of Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu. His mother was Tokugawa Tsuneko, the 9th daughter of the last Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu. He succeeded his father to the head of the Kacho-no-miya household when he was only 2 years old in 1904.

Prince Hirotada attended the Gakushuin Peers’ School. He entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1918, and served on the Japanese cruiser Yakumo as an ensign. In January 1922, he served for an obligatory session as a member of the House of Peers in the Japanese Diet, returning to the Imperial Japanese Navy in May of the same year as a second lieutenant. He was soon assigned to the Japanese battleship Mutsu. In 1923, he attended the naval artillery and torpedo schools. He then served on the Japanese cruiser Isuzu. In 1924, he was promoted to lieutenant and awarded the Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum. While serving on the Isuzu, he fell ill and had to be hospitalized at the naval hospital at Sasebo, where he died.

On his death in 1924, the Kwacho-no-miya line became extinct.

However, to preserve the Kwacho-no-miya name and to ensure that the proper familial and ancestral rites were performed, the 3rd son of Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu agreed to a reduction in status from the imperal household to the "kazoku" peerage, and was renamed Marquis Kwacho Hironobu.

References

* Jansen, Marius B. "The Making of Modern Japan." Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
* Keane, Donald. "Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852-1912". Columbia University Press (2005). ISBN: 0231123418
* Lebra, Sugiyama Takie. "Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility". University of California Press (1995). ISBN: 0520076028