Early Life
Prince Kuni Taka was born in Kyoto, the fifth son of Prince Kuni Asahiko, a scion of the sesshu shinōke line of Fushimi-no-miya. His mother was Izumitei Shizue, the second daughter of Isumitise Shun'eki, a priest at Kamo Shrine, Kyoto.
He was a half-brother of Prince Kaya Kuninori, Prince Kuni Kuniyoshi (the father of Empress Kōjun), Prince Nashimoto Morimasa, Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, and Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko.
Prince Taka came of age at a time when the Meiji oligarchs deemed to politically expedient to sever the historical links between Buddhism and the imperial house; use the emperor and imperial family as symbols of national unity by having them serve in the military; and increase the size of the imperial family by allowing new princely houses to branch out from the Fushimi-no-miya. Prince Taka's career path was somewhat unusual for the late Meiji period in several respects. First, unlike his half-brothers and other princes of that generation, he never held a commission in the military. Second, Emperor Meiji did not direct him to form a new princely family or to descend to peerage status with a kazoku title. Instead, he remained within the imperial family, although his half-brother, Prince Kuni Kunyoshi, succeeded to the Kuni-no-miya title in 1891. Third, while his father and half-brothers moved to the new capital, Tokyo, in 1892, Prince Taka continued to reside in Kyoto, except for a brief period in 1895, when he served a term in the House of Peers.
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