Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni

• 1. Introduction

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  Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni held the office of Japanese prime minister for exactly 54 days. He took power on the 17th of August 1945, two days after Emperor Showa announced Japan's surrender, and resigned on the 9th of October of the same year. No other member of the Japanese imperial family has ever headed a cabinet before or since. And no other Japanese prime minister has served a shorter term.

  The questions his life raises are striking ones. How does a man born into the innermost circle of imperial privilege end up running a provisions store and a second-hand goods shop as a private citizen? How does the general who authorized poison gas attacks against Chinese forces in 1938 become, by the end of his life, the world's oldest surviving former head of government? And how did a man once considered too risky to be trusted with the prime ministership in wartime end up being the only person his emperor trusted to manage the surrender?

  Higashikuni's 102 years spanned the rise of imperial Japan, its catastrophic collapse, and the long reconstruction that followed. His story passes through French finishing schools and battlefield command, through conspiracy and capitulation, through religious experimentation and a quiet death of heart failure in Tokyo on the 20th of January 1990.

• 2. Imperial Roots

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  Prince Naruhiko was born on the 3rd of December 1887 in Kyoto, the ninth son of Prince Kuni Asahiko and a court lady named Terao Utako. His father traced his lineage to Prince Fushimi Kuniie, the twentieth head of the Fushimi-no-miya, the oldest of the cadet branches of the imperial dynasty from which an emperor could be chosen if the direct line failed.

  The family tree branched in unusual directions. Prince Naruhiko was a half-brother of Prince Kuni Kuniyoshi, whose daughter would become Empress Kojun, wife of Emperor Showa. That made Higashikuni an uncle-in-law of the man who would one day appoint him prime minister. Three other half-brothers, Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, Prince Nashimoto Morimasa, and Prince Kaya Kuninori, each founded new branches of the imperial family during the Meiji period.

  On the 3rd of November 1906, Emperor Meiji formally granted Prince Naruhiko the title Higashikuni-no-miya and permission to establish his own branch of the family. Nine years later, on the 18th of May 1915, he married Toshiko, Princess Yasu, the ninth daughter of Emperor Meiji, born on the 11th of May 1896. The marriage produced four sons. One died in the Great Kanto earthquake. Another relocated to Lins, Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1950 after renouncing his imperial title.

• 3. A Soldier Abroad

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  Higashikuni graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1908 as a second lieutenant, and by 1914 had completed the Army War College. The trajectory of his early career was conventional enough: a captain's commission in the 29th Infantry Brigade, a promotion to major in the IJA 7th Division in 1915.

  Then Paris. From 1920 to 1926, Higashikuni studied military tactics at the Ecole Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and the Ecole Polytechnique. The years abroad changed him, or revealed what was already there. He acquired a French mistress. He developed a taste for fast cars and high living. He left his wife and children behind in Japan, and when his second son died, he did not return. The Imperial Court was scandalized. In 1926, the Imperial Household Ministry sent a chamberlain all the way to Paris to collect him.

  What those years did produce, alongside the scandal, was a reputation as something of a rebel within an institution that did not reward rebellion lightly. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1920 and to colonel in 1926 while still in France. Back in Japan, promotions continued to accumulate: major-general in August 1930, lieutenant-general in August 1934, and full general in August 1939. The Order of the Golden Kite, 1st Class followed in 1940.

• 4. War and Authorization

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  A memo discovered by historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi established that on the 16th of August 1938, Higashikuni authorized the use of poison gas against Chinese forces. At that point he commanded the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, a post he held from 1937 to 1938, before taking command of the IJA 2nd Army in China from 1938 to 1939.

  The political dimension of his wartime role was equally complicated. On the 15th of October 1941, outgoing Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe proposed Higashikuni to Emperor Showa as his successor. Konoe's logic was specific: only an imperial prince with military credentials could check the pro-war faction led by Generals Hajime Sugiyama, Hideki Tojo, and Akira Muto. Both the Army and Navy chiefs of staff supported the nomination.

  Emperor Showa and the Lord Privy Seal, Kido Koichi, refused. Their objection was not personal but structural: if a member of the imperial family held the prime ministership and the war went badly, the damage to the imperial house would be irreversible. The emperor later explained: "when there is a fear that there may even be a war, then more importantly, considering the welfare of the imperial house, I wonder about the wisdom of a member of the Imperial family serving." Two days after that refusal, General Hideki Tojo was appointed prime minister. Six weeks later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

  Higashikuni subsequently served as commander of the General Defense Command from 1941 to 1944. He remained opposed to the war throughout. He was part of the group, including Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, Prince Nobuhito Takamatsu, and former prime minister Konoe, that worked to force Tojo out of office. That effort succeeded in July 1944, following the fall of Saipan to American forces. American researchers with SCAP later found evidence that Higashikuni had also planned to depose Emperor Showa near the war's end, installing Crown Prince Akihito on the throne with himself serving as regent.

• 5. Fifty-Four Days

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  Emperor Showa appointed Higashikuni prime minister on the 17th of August 1945, replacing navy Admiral Kantaro Suzuki. Japan had just accepted the Potsdam Declaration. The appointment carried two distinct mandates: manage the orderly disbandment of the Japanese armed forces, and reassure the Japanese population that the imperial institution was not going to disappear.

  Higashikuni presided over the formal signing of the surrender on the 2nd of September 1945. The days that followed were consumed with demobilization, a process that required dismantling one of the largest military establishments in Asia under the watch of Allied occupation authorities.

  The end of the cabinet came over a piece of legislation that was already twenty years old. The Peace Preservation Law of 1925 had been enacted largely to suppress Communist organizing. The Allied occupation authorities ordered its abolition. Higashikuni refused to comply and resigned on the 9th of October 1945. His tenure of 54 days remains the shortest in Japanese prime ministerial history. It also remains the only time a member of the imperial family has ever led a Japanese government.

• 6. After the Throne

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  On the 27th of February 1946, Higashikuni gave an interview to the Yomiuri-Hochi newspaper in which he claimed that many members of the imperial family had endorsed Emperor Showa's abdication, with Prince Nobuhito Takamatsu serving as regent until Crown Prince Akihito came of age. He named only Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara and Imperial Household Minister Yoshitami Matsudaira as opposing the plan. On the 4th of March 1946, he gave a similar interview to the Associated Press, reported in The New York Times, stating that he had proposed specific dates for the emperor's abdication.

  Higashikuni asked the emperor directly for permission to renounce his membership in the imperial family and become a commoner. The emperor said no. The question became moot on the 17th of October 1947, when the Allied occupation abolished the princely houses entirely. Higashikuni and other members of the branch families lost their titles and most of their wealth at a stroke.

  As a private citizen, he tried and failed at several retail enterprises: a provisions store, a second-hand goods shop, and a dressmaker's shop. He founded a new Zen Buddhism-based religious sect he called the Higashikuni-kyo. The occupation authorities banned it. He published his wartime journals in 1958 under the title Ichi Kozoku no Senso Nikki, followed by his autobiographical memoirs, Higashikuni Nikki, in 1968. From the 14th of May 1988, when former Dutch prime minister Willem Drees died, until his own death, Higashikuni held the distinction of being the world's oldest living former head of government.