The Bearded Prince: The Outspoken Life of Prince Tomohito of Mikasa
There was a member of the Japanese Imperial Family whom people called, with real affection, the "bearded prince." Prince Tomohito of Mikasa. With his magnificent whiskers and a frankness unusual for his station, he made a figure who should have felt distant feel, somehow, close at hand.
He was born on January 5, 1946, in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, and died on June 6, 2012. A Capricorn, born in the Year of the Dog. An internationalist educated at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, he nonetheless never put on airs, choosing instead to step into the circle of ordinary people.
He received the Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum and the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Yet for all those heavy honors, by all accounts he was a warm, approachable man, the kind you could chat with over a fence.
An Internationalist Schooled at Oxford
Prince Tomohito studied at Magdalen College, one of the storied colleges of the University of Oxford. It was surely there that he developed the international outlook that would let him serve, in his way, as a bridge to the wider world.
Yet he is remembered for never flaunting his learning. To receive the finest education and still meet people without condescension: perhaps that, more than any pedigree, was the essence of his nobility.
The Prince Who Spoke His Mind
Members of the Imperial Family are often expected to say little. Prince Tomohito was different. He stated his views plainly, and at times even took up the pen to put his thoughts before the public.
That candor earned him the name of an outspoken prince. Behind the formal title was a thoroughly human lack of pretense. He refused to be wholly bound by his station and kept words of his own, and that is how many people remember him.
A Passion for Welfare and Sport
For many years Prince Tomohito devoted himself to welfare and to the promotion of sport, working in earnest, above all, for people with disabilities.
This is not work a title alone can perform. It is patient, unglamorous, and slow to bear fruit. Still he kept at it. His path makes clear that he was not someone decorating a name, but someone who genuinely tried to act for others.
Facing Illness Openly to the End
In his later years the prince made no secret of his illness. Even from within the Imperial Family, he spoke of it openly and faced it head-on to the very last.
That honesty and resolve moved many. Rather than concealing weakness, he had the strength to show himself as he was. Until his life closed in 2012 at the age of sixty-six, he remained, to the end, entirely himself.
The fine beard, the frank words, the passion for welfare, the courage to face his illness: trace the life of Prince Tomohito of Mikasa and the word "nobility" starts to seem like a description of how a person lives rather than the blood they are born with.
A man who went all the way to Oxford and still refused to look down on anyone, who stepped willingly into the circle of others. The bearded prince was loved not for his title but for his substance, a true noble in the fullest sense.