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 shinnōke 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 and/or life:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No country is so peaceful as the one that leads into death. Life arches above one’s head like a bridgespan, and below it flows the water, carries the boat, takes it further.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)