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Pujie (Chinese:溥傑; 16 April 1907 – 28 February 1994) was aQing dynasty imperial prince of theAisin-Gioro. Pujie was the younger brother ofPuyi, the lastEmperor of China. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Pujie went toJapan, where he was educated and married toHiro Saga, a Japanese noblewoman. In 1937, he moved toManchukuo, where his brother ruled as Emperor under varying degrees of Japanese control during theSecond Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). After the war ended, Pujie was captured bySoviet forces, held in Soviet prison camps for five years, and then extradited back to the People's Republic of China, where he was incarcerated for about 10 years in theFushun War Criminals Management Centre. He was later pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government, after which he remained inBeijing where he joined theCommunist Party and served in a number of positions in the party until his death in 1994.^[1]

Names

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Pujie's Manchu name wasᡦᡠ ᡤᡳᠶᡝ;Pu-giye, hiscourtesy nameJunzhi, and hisart nameBingfan.Zeng Guofan was a source of inspiration for Pujie's art name, Bingfan.Bingfan means "live up to (the legacy of Zeng Guo)fan".

Early life

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Pujie, held by his fatherPrince Chun (left), and his older brother, Puyi (right).

Pujie was the second son ofZaifeng (Prince Chun) and his primary consort,Youlan. As a child, he was brought to theForbidden City inBeijing to be a playmate and classmate to his brother,Puyi. A well-known incident recounted how Puyi threw a tantrum when he saw that the inner lining of one of Pujie's coats was yellow, because yellow was traditionally a colour reserved only for the emperor.^[2]

In 1929, Pujie travelled to Japan and was educated in theGakushūin Peers' School. He became fluent in Japanese. Later, he enrolled at theImperial Japanese Army Academy and graduated in July 1935.

Pujie was first married in 1924 to a Manchu noblewoman, Tang Shixia, but they had no children. He left his wife behind when he went to Japan, and the marriage was dissolved some years later. After graduating from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, Pujie agreed to anarranged marriage with a Japanese noblewoman. He selectedHiro Saga, who was a relative of theJapanese imperial family, from a photograph from a number of possible candidates vetted by theKwantung Army.^[3] As Puyi did not have an heir, the wedding had strong political implications, and was aimed at both fortifying relations between the two countries and introducing Japanese blood into the Manchu imperial family.^{[citation needed]}

The engagement ceremony took place at the Manchukuo embassy inTokyo 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 toXinjing, the capital of Manchukuo, where Puyi was then theEmperor.

Life in Manchukuo

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As Puyi had no children, Pujie was regarded as first in line to succeed his brother as the emperor of Manchukuo; the Japanese officially proclaimed him theheir presumptive. However, Pujie was not appointed by his brother as the heir to the throne of the Qing dynasty,^{[citation needed]} as imperial tradition stated that a childless emperor should choose his heir from a subsequent generation instead of from his own generation.^{[citation needed]} While in Manchukuo, Pujie served as honorary head of theManchukuo Imperial Guards. He returned briefly to Japan in 1944 to attend theArmy Staff College.

At the time of thecollapse of Manchukuo during theSoviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, Pujie initially attempted to escape to Japan with his brother. However, as it became apparent that no escape was possible, he opted to return to Xinjing in an unsuccessful attempt to surrender the city to forces of theRepublic of China, rather than have the city fall into foreign hands.

Pujie was arrested by the SovietRed Army and first sent to a prison camp inChita, and then to another inKhabarovsk along with his brother and other relatives. He spent about five years in the Soviet prison camps until 1950, when the Sino-Soviet rapprochement allowed him and his fellow captives to be extradited to the newly foundedPeople's Republic of China.

Life in the People's Republic of China

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On his return to China, Pujie was incarcerated in theWar Criminals Management Centre inFushun,Liaoning. A model prisoner, he was eventually pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government in 1960. He joined theCommunist Party and served in a number of positions. In 1961, with permission from Chinese premierZhou Enlai, he was reunited with his wife and younger daughter Husheng and settled in Beijing, while his daughter would later return to Japan, becoming a citizen there. In 1963, his daughter returned to stay with him and his wife for one year before returning to Japan again.

In 1978, Pujie became a deputy fromShanghai at the5th National People's Congress. He subsequently served as Vice Chairman of the Nationalities Committee of the6th National People's Congress in 1983. He was appointed Deputy Head of the China–Japan Friendship Group from 1985. He rose to a seat on thePresidium of the7th National People's Congress in 1988. From 1986, Pujie was also Honorary Director of the Welfare Fund for Handicapped.^[4]

Pujie was also a technical adviser for the 1987 filmThe Last Emperor, directed byBernardo Bertolucci. On 28 November 1991, he was awarded an honoraryDoctor of Law byRitsumeikan University. He died of illness at 07:55 on 28 February 1994 in Beijing at the age of 87. His body was cremated and half of his ashes were buried at Nakayama Shrine inShimonoseki,Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, while the other half were buried in Beijing.

Family

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First wife, of theTatara clan (唐氏; 1904–1993), personal name Shixia (石霞)
Second wife, of the Saga clan (嵯峨氏; 16 March 1914 – 20 June 1987), personal name Hiro (浩)
- Huisheng (26 February 1938 – 4 December 1957), (慧生)
- Husheng (b. 13 March 1940), (嫮生)
  - Married Kenji (健治) of the Japanese Fukunaga (福永) clan in 1968, and had issue (three sons, two daughters)

Immediate family

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A young Pujie, centre left, with his brother Puyi and sisters

Pujie's first wife was Tang Yiying (唐怡瑩; 1904–1993), who was better known as Tang Shixia (唐石霞). She was from theManchu Tatara (他他拉) clan, and was the daughter of Zhiqi, a brother of theGuangxu Emperor's concubinesConsort Zhen andConsort Jin. Pujie married Tang when he was 17, but did not get along well with her. In 1926, Tang becameZhang Xueliang's mistress and broke ties with Pujie and his family. When Pujie went to Japan for his studies, Tang had another affair – this time with Lu Xiaojia (盧筱嘉), the son of the warlordLu Yongxiang. She looted Pujie's ancestral house, thePrince Chun Mansion in Beijing. Since then, Pujie and Tang had lived separately until their divorce. In 1949, Tang moved toHong Kong and became a lecturer at the School of Eastern Languages in theUniversity of Hong Kong.

In 1935, when Pujie returned to China from his studies in Japan, Puyi tried to help his brother find a Manchu wife. Pujie met one,Wang Mintong (王敏彤), but they never married.

Pujie eventually married Hiro Saga, a Japanese noblewoman related to theJapanese imperial family, under anarranged marriage. They had two daughters:Huisheng (1938–1957) and Husheng (嫮生; born 1940). Huisheng died on 4 December 1957 atMount Amagi in Japan in what appeared to be amurder–suicide case, while Husheng married Fukunaga Kenji (福永健治) and became known as "Fukunaga Kosei" after her marriage. The couple had five children.

Styles of Aisin Gioro Pujie

Reference style	His Imperial Highness
Spoken style	Your Imperial Highness

Ancestry

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Jiaqing Emperor (1760–1820)

Daoguang Emperor (1782–1850)

Empress Xiaoshurui (1760–1797)

Yixuan (1840–1891)

Lingshou (1788–1824)

Imperial Noble Consort Zhuangshun (1822–1866)

Lady Weng

Zaifeng (1883–1951)

Deqing

Cuiyan (1866–1925)

Pujie (1907–1994)

Tasiha

Changshou (d. 1852)

Ronglu (1836–1903)

Lady Uja

Youlan (1884–1921)

Linggui (1815–1885)

Lady Aisin Gioro

Lady Sun

References

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^"Pu Jie, 87, Dies, Ending Dynasty Of the Manchus".The New York Times.Associated Press. 2 March 1994. Retrieved9 January 2023.
^Cotter 2007, p. 76.
^Lebra 1995, p. 213.
^Mackerras, Colin; Yorke, Amanda (1991)."Aisin Giorro Pujie".The Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China. Cambridge University Press. p. 73.ISBN 0-521-38755-8.

Bibliography

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Behr, Edward (1987).The Last Emperor. Bantam.ISBN 0-553-34474-9.
Cotter, Edward (2007).Kids Who Rule: The Remarkable Lives of Five Child Monarchs. Annick Press.ISBN 978-1-55451-062-7.
Lebra, Takie Sugiyama (1995).Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility. University of California Press.ISBN 0-520-07602-8.