Early Life
The future Princess was born in Tokyo on 26 December 1911, as Tokugawa Kikuko. She was the second daughter of Tokugawa Yoshihisa (2 September 1884 - 22 January 1922) (peer) and his wife Princess Mieko of Arisugawa (14 February 1891 - 25 April 1933). Her paternal grandfather was Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Japan's last shogun. Her maternal grandfather, Prince Arisugawa Takehito, was the seventh head of the Arisugawa-no-miya, one of the four shinnÅke or collateral branches of the Imperial Family during the Edo period entitled to provide a successor to the throne in default of a direct heir. Lady Tokugawa Kikuko received her primary and secondary education at the then-girls' department of the Gakushuin. At age eighteen, she became engaged to Prince Takamastu, who was then third-in-line to the Chrysanthemum throne.
Read more about this topic: Princess Takamatsu
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captains exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country withoutoh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”
—Herman Melville (18191891)