Shinnōke
Seshū Shinnōke (世襲親王家) was the collective name for the four
History
The Imperial family of Japan considers itself a single dynasty in unbroken succession; however, the succession has often not been directly from father to son, but has been in the male line within a closely related group of people. In the
This proved to be a fortunate decision, as in 1428, the son of the 2nd Prince Fushimi-no-miya ascended the throne as Emperor Go-Hanazono.
In the Edo period, three additional seshū shinnōke households were created by the Tokugawa shogunate, in conscious imitation of the Tokugawa Gosanke.
However, aside from Emperor Go-Hanazono, the only time a member of the seshū shinnōke ascended to the throne was in 1779, when the son of Prince Kan'in-no-miya Sukehito became Emperor Kōkaku.
Within the seshū shinnōke households, younger non-heir sons (who were titled prince (親王, shinnō)), had two career options. They could "descend" to subject status with a surname such as
The four seshū shinnōke lineages
The four seshū shinnōke were, in order of creation:
- Fushimi-no-miya
- Katsura-no-miya (extinct 1881)
- Arisugawa-no-miya (extinct 1913)
- Kan'in-no-miya (extinct 1988)
The sixteenth son of Prince Kuniie, the twentieth head of the Fushimi-no-miya, succeeded to the Kan'in-no-miya house in 1872, but the house died out in 1988 on the death of his son.
The Fushimi-no-miya house was the progenitor of nine other cadet branches of the imperial family, the
Dissolution
The shinnōke and