Emperor Taishō

Prince Yoshihito was born at the Tōgū Palace in Akasaka, Tokyo to Emperor Meiji and Yanagihara Naruko, a concubine with the official title of gon-no-tenji ("lady of the bedchamber"). As was common practice at the time, Emperor Meiji's consort, Empress Shōken, was officially regarded as his mother. He received the personal name of Yoshihito Shinnō and the title Haru-no-miya from the Emperor on 6 September 1879. His two older siblings had died in infancy, and he too was born sickly.[1]

Prince Yoshihito contracted cerebral meningitis within three weeks of his birth.[2] (It has also been rumoured that he suffered from lead poisoning, supposedly contracted from the lead-based makeup his wet nurse used.)

As was the practice at the time, Prince Yoshihito was entrusted to the care of his great-grandfather, Marquess Nakayama Tadayasu, in whose house he lived from infancy until the age of seven. Prince Nakayama had also raised his grandson, Emperor Meiji, as a child.[3]

From March 1885, Prince Yoshihito moved to the Aoyama Detached Palace, where he was tutored in the mornings on reading, writing, arithmetic, and morals, and in the afternoons on sports, but progress was slow due to his poor health and frequent fevers.[4] From 1886, he was taught together with 15–20 selected classmates from the ōke and higher ranking kazoku peerage at a special school, the Gogakumonsho, within the Aoyama Palace.[4]

Yoshihito was officially declared heir on 31 August 1887, and had his formal investiture as crown prince on 3 November 1888. While crown prince, he was often referred to simply as Tōgu (東宮) (a long-used generic East Asian term meaning crown prince).

Crown Prince Tōgu with his father and mother strolling in Asukayama Park accompanied by ladies of the court. Colour woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu, 1890

Emperor Taishō's four sons in 1921: Hirohito, Takahito, Nobuhito and Yasuhito

On 10 May 1900, Crown Prince Yoshihito married the then 15-year-old Kujō Sadako (the future Empress Teimei), daughter of Prince Kujō Michitaka, the head of the five senior branches of the Fujiwara clan. She had been carefully selected by Emperor Meiji for her intelligence, articulation, and pleasant disposition and dignity – to complement Prince Yoshihito in the areas where he was lacking.[2] The Akasaka Palace was constructed from 1899 to 1909 in a lavish European rococo style, to serve as the Crown Prince's official residence. The Prince and Princess had the following children:

In 1902, Yoshihito continued his tours to observe the customs and geography of Japan, this time of central Honshū, where he visited the noted Buddhist temple of Zenkō-ji in Nagano.[8] With tensions rising between Japan and Russia, Yoshihito was promoted in 1903 to the rank of colonel in the Imperial Japanese Army and captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. His military duties were only ceremonial, but he traveled to inspect military facilities in Wakayama, Ehime, Kagawa and Okayama that year.[9]

In October 1907, the Crown Prince toured Korea, accompanied by Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, General Katsura Tarō, and Prince Arisugawa Taruhito. It was the first time an heir apparent to the throne had ever left Japan.[10] During this period, he began studying the Korean language, although he never became proficient at it.

Emperor Taishō on his way to the opening ceremony of the Imperial Diet in 1917, during World War I

On 30 July 1912, upon the death of his father, Emperor Meiji, Prince Yoshihito ascended the throne. The new emperor was kept out of view of the public as much as possible, having suffered from various neurological problems. At the 1913 opening of the Imperial Diet of Japan, one the rare occasions he was seen in public, he is famously reported to have rolled his prepared speech into a cylinder and stared at the assembly through it, as if through a spyglass.[11] Although rumors attributed this to poor mental condition, others, including those who knew him well, believed that he may have been checking to make sure the speech was rolled up properly, as his manual dexterity was also handicapped.[12]

His articulation and charisma (in contrast to Emperor Meiji), his disabilities and his eccentricities, led to an increase in incidents of lèse majesté. As his condition deteriorated, he had less and less interest in daily political affairs, and the ability of the genrō, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Imperial Household Minister to manipulate his decisions came to be a matter of common knowledge.[13] The two-party political system that had been developing in Japan since the turn of the century came of age after World War I, giving rise to the nickname for the period, "Taishō Democracy", prompting a shift in political power to the Imperial Diet of Japan and the democratic parties.[14]

After 1918, the emperor no longer was able to attend Army or Navy maneuvers, appear at the graduation ceremonies of the military academies, perform the annual Shinto ritual ceremonies, or even attend the official opening of sessions of the Diet of Japan.[15]

After 1919, he undertook no official duties, and Crown Prince Hirohito was named prince regent (sesshō) on 25 November 1921.[16]

The emperor's reclusive life was unaffected by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Fortuitously, he had moved by imperial train to Tamozawa Imperial Villa at Nikko the week before the disaster; but his son, Crown Prince Hirohito, remained at the Imperial Palace where he was at the heart of the event.[17] Carrier pigeons kept the Emperor informed as information about the extent of the devastation became known.[18]

Funeral of Emperor Taisho in Tokyo

In early December 1926, it was announced that the emperor had pneumonia. He died of a heart attack at 1:25 a.m. in the early morning of 25 December 1926, at the Hayama Imperial Villa at Hayama, on Sagami Bay south of Tokyo (in Kanagawa Prefecture).[19] He was 47 years old.

The funeral was held at night (February 7 to February 8, 1927) and consisted of a 4-mile-long procession in which 20,000 mourners followed a herd of sacred bulls and an ox-drawn cart containing the imperial coffin. The funeral route was lit with wood fires in iron lanterns. The emperor's coffin was then transported to his mausoleum in the western suburbs of Tokyo.[20]

Emperor Taishō has been called the first Tokyo Emperor because he was the first to live his entire life in or near Tokyo. His father was born and reared in Kyoto; and although he later lived and died in Tokyo, Emperor Meiji's mausoleum is located on the outskirts of Kyoto, near the tombs of his imperial forebears; but Emperor Taishō's grave is in Tokyo, in the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Hachiōji.[21] His son, the Emperor Shōwa, is buried near him.

• Taishō period

• Newspaper clippings about Emperor Taishō in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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