Hiro Saga

Hiro Saga
Prince Aisin-Gioro Pujie and Hiro Saga (right) , 1937 Wedding Photo
Empress consort of Manchukuo
Pretend	17 October 1967 – 20 June 1987
Born	(1914-04-16)16 April 1914 Tokyo, Japan
Died	Beijing, China
Spouse	Pujie (1937-1987)
Issue	Huisheng (1938-1957) Yunsheng (b. 1940)
Full name 嵯峨浩
House	Qing Dynasty
Father	Saneto Saga（ja）

Lady Hiro Saga (嵯峨 浩, Saga Hiro, 16 April 1914 – 20 June 1987), was the daughter of Marquis Saga and distant relative of Japanese Emperor Shōwa. She was married in 1937 to Prince Pujie, brother of the Emperor Puyi (China 1908-1912 and Manchukuo 1934-1945). After her marriage to Prince Pujie, she was known as, and identified herself as, Aisin-Gioro Hiro (愛新覺羅•浩), or Aisin-Gioro Hao in Chinese language.

Biography

The Saga family was of the kuge court nobility and a branch of the Ogimachi Sanjo 9(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.

Descendants

Princess Aisin-Gioro Huisheng 慧生 (1938–1957) - Princess (Chün Chu Kung Chu) Huisheng [Hebon-shiki Rōmaji: Aishinkakura Eisei] was born in Hsingking on 26 February 1938 and educated privately and then studied at Gakushuin University. She was killed in Izu, near Tokyo on 10 December 1957 in what appears to have been a murder-suicide.

Princess Aisin-Gioro Yunsheng（ja） 嫮生 (1940– ) - Princess (Chün Chu Kung Chu) Yunsheng [Hebon-shiki Rōmaji: Aishinkakura Kosei] was educated privately and then studied at Gakushuin Women's University in Tokyo. She later married Kenji Fukunaga, a former Japanese aristocrat employed in the automobile industry in Tokyo. She has five children.

Dramatization

A dramatization of the life of Prince Pujie and Hiro Saga appeared as a television drama on TV Asahi in Japan in the autumn of 2003, under the title Ruten no Ōhi - Saigo no Kōtei（ja）. The role of Hiro Saga was played by actress Takako Tokiwa. Tokiwa and Hiro's grandson (Yunsheng's son) were classmates.

External links

• Information about TV Asahi's (Japan) Autumn 2003 dramatization of Pujie and Lady Hiro Saga's marriage