Biography
The Saga family was of the kuge court nobility and a branch of the Ogimachi Sanjo（ja:正親町三条家） branch of the northern Fujiwara （ja:藤原北家） lineage. Hiro was born in Tokyo as the eldest daughter of Marquis Saneto Saga（ja） in 1914. She was educated at the Women's branch of the Gakushuin Peers’ School.
In 1936, she was introduced to Prince Pujie, younger brother of the Manchukuo Emperor Puyi, who was attending the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, in an arranged marriage interview. Pujie had selected her photograph from a number of possible candidates vetted by the Kwantung Army. As his brother Emperor Puyi was without a direct heir, the wedding had strong political implications, and was aimed at both fortifying relations between the two nations and introducing Japanese blood into the Manchurian Imperial family.
The engagement ceremony took place at the Embassy of Manchukuo in Tokyo on 2 February 1937 with the official wedding held in the Imperial Army Hall at Kudanzaka, Tokyo on 3 April. In October, the couple moved to Hsinking, the capital of Manchukuo. They had two daughters and what appeared to be a happy marriage.
During the Evacuation of Manchukuo during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Hiro was separated from her husband. While Prince Pujie accompanied Emperor Puyi in an attempt to escape by air, Princess Hiro and her younger daughter were sent by train towards Korea together with the Empress Wan Rong. The train was captured by Chinese communist troops at the town of Dalizi, now in Linjiang, Jilin（ja）, in January 1946. In April, they were moved to a police station in Changchun, eventually released only to be rounded up again and locked up at a police station in Kirin in the north. When Kuomingtang forces bombed Kirin, the royal prisoners were moved to Yanji Prison., and Princess Hiro and her daughter were then taken to prison in Shanghai, and eventually repatriated to Japan. In 1961, after the release of her husband from prison, the couple was reunited with permission by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, and lived in Beijing from 1961, until her death in 1987.
She and her husband are buried in an Aisin-Gioro family plot in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, with their eldest daughter, Huisheng.
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