Aisin-Gioro Huisheng (26 February 1938 – 4 December 1957), better known simply as Huisheng or Eisei, was a Manchu-Japanese noblewoman. She was born in the

Aisin Gioro The House of Aisin-Gioro is a Manchu clan that ruled the Later Jin dynasty (1616–1636), the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), and Manchukuo (1932–1945) in the history of China. Under the Ming dynasty, members of the Aisin Gioro clan served as chie ...

clan, the imperial clan of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. She was the elder daughter of

Pujie Pujie (; 16 April 1907 – 28 February 1994) was a Qing dynasty imperial prince of the Aisin-Gioro. Pujie was the younger brother of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Pujie went to Japan, where he was educated ...

, the younger brother of

Puyi Puyi (7 February 190617 October 1967) was the final emperor of China, reigning as the eleventh monarch of the Qing dynasty from 1908 to 1912. When the Guangxu Emperor died without an heir, Empress Dowager Cixi picked his nephew Puyi, aged tw ...

, the last emperor of China. Her mother was Hiro Saga, a Japanese noblewoman who married Pujie in 1937.

Life

Huisheng was born on 26 February 1938 at Xinjing Special Municipal First Hospital in Xinjing (present-day

Changchun Changchun is the capital and largest city of Jilin, Jilin Province, China, on the Songliao Plain. Changchun is administered as a , comprising seven districts, one county and three county-level cities. At the 2020 census of China, Changchun ha ...

Jilin ) , image_skyline = Changbaishan Tianchi from western rim.jpg , image_alt = , image_caption = View of Heaven Lake , image_map = Jilin in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_al ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

), the capital of

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially known as the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Great Manchuria thereafter, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China that existed from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945. It was ostens ...

to Pujie and Hiro Saga. Her uncle,

, ruled as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo under Japanese control during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...

(1937–1945). Her younger sister was Husheng (嫮生; b. 1940). She lived in Manchukuo until 1943, when she was sent to Japan to live with her maternal grandparents. She was educated in various prestigious private schools, including the

Gakushūin The , or , historically known as the Peers' School, is a Japanese educational institution in Tokyo, originally established as Gakushūjo to educate the children of Japan's nobility. The original school expanded from its original mandate of educ ...

. She was very interested in Japanese and Chinese literature. After the end of the war, Huisheng's father was captured by Soviet forces and held in a prison camp for five years before he was extradited to the People's Republic of China in 1950. He was then incarcerated in the

Fushun War Criminals Management Centre Fushun War Criminals Management Centre ( zh, s= , t=撫順戰犯管理所 , p=Fǔshùn Zhànfàn Guǎnlǐ Suǒ , first=t), also known as Liaodong No. 3 Prison or Liaoning No. 3 Prison, was the site of the re-education of Manchukuo, Kuomintang a ...

. Huisheng's mother and younger sister were also captured and imprisoned in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

before they were repatriated to Japan in 1947. However, even though Huisheng had been reunited with her mother and sister, her father was still imprisoned and out of contact with them. During this time, Huisheng wrote in Chinese to Chinese premier

Zhou Enlai Zhou Enlai ( zh, s=周恩来, p=Zhōu Ēnlái, w=Chou1 Ên1-lai2; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China from September 1954 unti ...

, requesting that he put her in touch with her father. Zhou was moved by her letter and granted her permission. In April 1956, Huisheng was enrolled at the

Gakushuin University is a private university in Mejiro, Toshima, Tokyo. The Gakushūin (or "Peers School") was established during the Meiji period to educate the children of the Japanese nobility, but back then the institution had only the primary and secondary ...

, in June, she began a relationship with her classmate , the son of a railway executive. Later, in February 1957, Huisheng's mother strongly opposed her daughter's decision to marry Ōkubo, either because Ōkubo was a commoner, or because Huisheng had been considered as a potential candidate to marry the then- Crown Prince Akihito.

Death

Huisheng (age 19) and Ōkubo (age 20) disappeared on 4 December 1957 and were later found dead on

Mount Amagi is a range of volcano, volcanic mountains in central Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, forming the border between Izu, Shizuoka, Izu City and Higashiizu, Shizuoka, Higashi-Izu Town. It is also referred to as the . The Amagi mountain ...

in the

Izu Peninsula The is a mountainous peninsula with a deeply indented coastline to the west of Tokyo on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of the island of Honshu, Japan, the largest of the four main islands of Japan. Formerly known as Izu Province, Izu peninsu ...

. Huisheng, wearing a golden ring on her finger, lay with her head cradled in Ōkubo's left arm. Ōkubo held a pistol in his right hand. Above their heads was a twisted piece of tissue paper containing snips of their hair and fingernails – an element in the ritual of a Japanese love suicide. This murder-suicide incident was known as the '. At the request of Ōkubo's father, Huisheng and Ōkubo's ashes were interred together first at the Saga family plot in

Nison-in is a Tendai Buddhist temple complex in Ukyō-ku, Kyoto, Ukyō-ku, a western Ward (country subdivision), ward in the city of Kyoto, Japan. The temple's official name is . The temple is a popular destination during the Japanese maple viewing seas ...

, and then at the Aisin-Gioro family plot in

Shimonoseki file:141122 Shimonoseki City Hall Yamaguchi pref Japan01s3.jpg, 260px, Shimonoseki city hall is a Cities of Japan, city located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 248,193 in 128,762 households and a pop ...

, Yamaguchi.

Ancestry

Edward Robb Ellis and George N. Allen; Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-3474 (1961) Doubleday & Company, Inc.; Traitor Within: Our Suicide Problem https://archive.org/details/traitorwithinour033019mbp

References

{{Reflist 1938 births 1957 suicides 1957 deaths Manchu people Manchukuo royalty People from Changchun Chinese expatriates in Japan Chinese people of Japanese descent Gakushuin University alumni Qing dynasty princesses College students who died by suicide Suicides by firearm in Japan Joint suicides