Takako Shimazu, formerly the Princess Suga, youngest daughter of Emperor Hirohito of Japan, boarding a Japan Airlines aircraft in Tokyo with her husband, financial analyst Hisanaga Shimazu, 1960. They are bound for Osaka on the first leg of their honeymoon. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Takako Shimazu is a member of the Imperial House of Japan.
Background
Takako Suganomiya was born on March 2, 1939 in Tokyo, Japan. She is the fifth and youngest daughter of Emperor Shōwa and Empress Kōjun, and the youngest sister of the current Emperor of Japan, Akihito. Her childhood appellation was Suga-no-miya (清宮).
Education
As with her elder sisters, she was not raised by her biological parents, but by a succession of court ladies at a separate palace built for her and her sisters in the Marunouchi district of Tokyo.
Takako Shimazu graduated from the Gakushuin Peers School, and was also tutored along with her siblings in English language by an American tutor, Elizabeth Grey Vining during the American occupation of Japan following World War II. Princess Takako graduated from Gakushuin University Women's College with a degree in English literature in March 1957.
Career
The former Princess has made numerous appearances on Japanese television as a commentator on world events, and is also on the Board of Directors of the Prince Hotels chain.
Personality
In 1963, three years after her marriage, she narrowly escaped from an attempted kidnapping. Due to extensive media coverage, the location of the couple’s home was common knowledge, as was her $500,000 marriage dowry (in Japan, the bride is given a sum of money for her marriage). A member of the criminal group tipped off the police before the kidnapping could occur.
Interests
music of Perez Prado
Connections
On 10 March 1960, Princess Takako wed Hisanaga Shimazu (born 29 March 1934, Tokyo), the son of the late Count Hisanori Shimazu and (at the time) an analyst at the Japan Export-Import Bank (JEXIM). The couple were introduced by common acquaintances at the Gakushuin. They shared a common interest in the music of Perez Prado.
Upon her marriage, the Princess relinquished her membership in the Imperial Family and adopted her husband's surname, in accordance with the 1947 Imperial Household Law. Described by Western media sources at the time as a "commoner bank clerk," the groom was actually a grandson of the last daimyō of Satsuma Domain, Shimazu Tadayoshi, and thus a maternal first cousin to Empress Kōjun, making the bride and groom first cousins once removed.
Takako and her husband had one son, Yoshihisa Shimazu, who was born in 5 April 1962.