Takahito, Prince Mikasa

Takahito, Prince Mikasa (三笠宮崇仁親王) was a Japanese prince, the youngest of the four sons of Emperor Taishō (Yoshihito) and Empress Teimei (Sadako).

He was their last surviving child.

His eldest brother was Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito).

After serving as a junior cavalry officer in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, Prince Mikasa embarked upon a post-war career as a scholar and part-time lecturer in Middle Eastern studies and Semitic languages; he was especially interested in Jewish studies.

Prince Takahito was born at the Tokyo Imperial Palace on 2 December 1915 to Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei.

He was fourteen years younger than his eldest brother, Crown Prince Hirohito (the future Emperor Shōwa).

His childhood appellation was Sumi-no-miya.

Prince Takahito attended the boys' elementary and secondary departments of the Gakushūin (Peers' School) from 1922 to 1932.

By the time he began his secondary schooling, his eldest brother had already ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne and his next two brothers, Prince Chichibu and Prince Takamatsu, had already embarked upon careers in the Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese Imperial Navy respectively.

Takahito enrolled in the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1932 and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant and assigned to the Fifth Cavalry Regiment in June 1936.

He subsequently graduated from the Army Staff College.

Upon attaining the age of majority in December 1935, Emperor Shōwa granted him the title Mikasa-no-miya (Prince Mikasa) and the authorization to form a new branch of the Imperial Family.

Prince Mikasa was promoted to lieutenant in 1937 and to captain in 1939, serving in China under the name of "Wakasugi".

During his army career, he was harshly critical of the Japanese military's conduct in China.

According to Daniel Barenblatt, Prince Mikasa and his cousin Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda received a special screening by Shirō Ishii of a film showing airplanes loading germ bombs for bubonic plague dissemination over the Chinese city of Ningbo in 1940.

He also was given a film of Japanese atrocities, possibly linked to the footage used in the American propaganda film, The Battle of China, and was so moved that he made his brother Emperor Hirohito watch the film.

In one of Prince Mikasa's memoirs, he wrote that he toured Unit 731's headquarters in China and was shown films showing Chinese prisoners "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans."

Prince Mikasa married Yuriko Takagi in 1941, and they had three sons and two daughters.

Prince and Princess Mikasa outlived all three of their sons.

Promoted to major in 1941, Prince Mikasa served as a staff officer in the Headquarters of the China Expeditionary Army at Nanjing, China from January 1943 to January 1944.

His role was intended to bolster the legitimacy of the Wang Jingwei regime and to coordinate with Japanese Army staff towards a peace initiative, but his efforts were totally undermined by the Operation Ichi-Go campaign launched by the Imperial General Headquarters.

On 22 October 1941, Prince Mikasa married Yuriko Takagi (born 4 June 1923), the second daughter of Viscount (kazoku, pre-war Japan's upper classes) Masanari Takagi.

Prince and Princess Mikasa had five children.

Prince Mikasa served as a staff officer in the Army Section of the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo until Japan's surrender in August 1945.

After the end of the war, the Prince spoke before the Privy Council, urging that Hirohito abdicate to take responsibility for the war.

In a 1994 interview, he criticized the Imperial Army's invasion of and atrocities in China, and recalled having been "strongly shocked" when an officer informed him that the best way to train new recruits was to use living Chinese POWs for bayonet practice.

In 1994, a newspaper revealed that after Prince Mikasa's return to Tokyo, he had written a stinging indictment of the conduct of the Imperial Japanese Army in China, where the Prince had witnessed Japanese atrocities against Chinese civilians.

The Imperial Army General Staff suppressed the document, but one copy survived and surfaced in 1994.

After the war, it was reported that while an officer, Prince Mikasa had taken a strict stance against lax discipline and the cruel actions of Japanese soldiers serving in China.

In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun, Mikasa detailed the extent of Japanese military atrocities against the Chinese.

He said, “I was really shocked when an officer told me that the best way to train new soldiers was to use living prisoners of war for bayonet practice because it gave them Will Power.” “It was truly a horrible scene that can only be termed a massacre,” he said.

Out of a desperate desire to end the war, he wrote and delivered a speech that condemned Japanese troop aggression against the Chinese, elaborating that repeated rape, plunder and killing of civilians created strong anti-Japanese feelings in China, and that the puppet government in Nanjing was an attempt to cover up Japan's policy of aggression in China.

He also disclosed that the Japanese served fruit contaminated with cholera germs to a team from the League of Nations that came to investigate Japan's invasion of China.

They did not develop the disease.

The army tried to destroy all copies of his speech, but one was discovered.

He also said he watched an army film that showed Japanese troops yelling and gassing Chinese prisoners who were tied to stakes.

He stated that he did not talk about his written speech with his brother, Emperor Hirohito, but he said he once showed the emperor a Chinese-made film of Japanese atrocities.

With the death of his sister-in-law Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu, on 17 December 2004, Prince Mikasa became the oldest living member of the Imperial House of Japan.

He remained active until a few months before his death at the age of 100.

At the time of his death, Prince Mikasa was the oldest living royal.