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Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni (December 3, 1887 - January 26, 1990) was the
43rd Prime Minister of Japan from August 17, 1945 to October 9, 1945, a
period of 54 days. He was born in Kyoto, the ninth son of Prince Kuni
Asahiko (1824-1891), a scion of the Fushimi no miya, one the cadet houses of
the imperial dynasty. Emperor Meiji granted him the title Higashikuni no
miya (Prince Higashikuni) and permission to start a new branch of the
imperial family on November 3, 1906. Prince Higashikuni married the ninth
daughter of Emperor Meiji, Princess Yasu (Toshiko), on May 8, 1915. Empress
Kojun, formerly Princess Kuni Nagako, the wife of Emperor Showa, was his
niece. Finally, his eldest son, Morihiro, married Princess Teru (Shigeko),
the eldest daugther of Emperor Showa. Higashikuni was the only member of the
imperial family to head a cabinet. He also had the shortest tenure of any
Japanese prime minister.
Before his brief tenure as prime minister, Higashikuni was a career army
officer. After graduating from the Imperial Military Academy (1908) and the
Army War College (1914), he studied at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre in
Paris from 1920 to 1922. Upon his return to Japan, he eventually rose to the
rank of general, having successively served as commander of the Fifth
Infantry Brigade (1930-34), the Fourth Army Division (1934-37), the Military
Aviation Department (1937-38), and the Second Army in China (1938-39). A
member of the Supreme War Council from 1939, the prince served as commander
of the Home Defense Command from 1941 to 1944. He colluded with several
aristocrats and fellow imperial family members to oust General Tojo Hideki
as prime minister following the fall of Saipan in 1944. Higashikuni lost his
princely title and membership in the imperial family as a result of the
American occupation reform of the Japanese imperial household in October
1947. As a private citizen, he operated several unsuccessful retail
enterprises and briefly served as the chief priest of a new religious order
(that was subsequently banned by American occupation authorities). He died
at the age of 102. Higashikuni is mainly remembered as Japan's first postwar
prime minister.
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