The reason we had to leave Gotemba so suddenly was that the GHQ of the American armed forces' occupation, to be centred on Yokohama, had issued an order that Japanese army personnel, and anyone else connected with the army, must get out of an area that included the northern part of Shizuoka Prefecture. The Higashikuni cabinet, formed on the 17th, had sent us a message saying that since Gotemba was on the edge of the area, we should move to Tokyo if at all possible. Both doctors felt it was risky, but we left Gotemba at 1 p.m., with Dr Endō and I accompanying the Prince in his car, stopping on the way for a brief rest at Marquis Nabeshima's seaside villa in Oiso.

After a hot, tiring ride, it was a great relief when we finally arrived in Tokyo without the Prince having suffered any ill effects from the drive. All that was left of our old Akasaka residence was four tatami-matted rooms of the Japanese section. The Prince had hardly ever set foot in them before, but now they represented a roof over our heads, for which we were thankful. The rooms were not elegant, and quite draughty, but that was a blessing in the humid summer weather. There was no kitchen, but Princess Takamatsu had kindly provided us with a sink and a refrigerator, which we gratefully installed in a corner of the veranda. A few chairs in one of the rooms had to suffice for the Prince to receive the Prime Minister, Prince Higashikuni, Foreign Minister Yoshida, and others who came to pay their respects. Prince Takamatsu came every day, but usually just sat informally on the edge of the veranda without coming in.

The Prince got though the end of the summer heat without incident, and began to feel well enough to walk all around the burnt-out estate. On the afternoon of 15 September, I accompanied him to the Palace. His first meeting with his brother the Emperor since falling ill five years before was a deeply emotional reunion. For the last time, the Prince wore the uniform of a major-general - but without his sword, now that the war was over. The Emperor seemed delighted to see his brother looking so well, and they had so much to say to one another it was half past five before we left.

By October, I began to be worry about the effect our draughty temporary abode night have on the Prince's health as winter approached. The doctors were worried, too, and we were given permission by the Americans to move back to Gotemba on 1 November. Fuji was resplendent in early snow, the plants in the vegetable garden had been well-tended in our absence and had grown apace, and we were happy to be back. Although it was only little over a month since we had left, wondering if we would ever return, so much had happened in that short time that it seemed as if we had been away for ages. We had been an occupied country since 30 August when General MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, landed at the former Naval Air Station at Atsugi. Everything had changed radically and bewilderingly. Only Mount Fuji remained the same, soaring aloof - nobody's captive. Rather than living a gloomy and servile life as people of an occupied country, I hoped we could just obey the Army of Occupation's rules and go forward in friendship, shoulder to shoulder with them.

The Prince was an optimist; a practical man with a positive outlook. While we were living in the remains of our burned-out Tokyo residence, a friend of mine from Hiroshima came to call while I was out. Her husband, the Vice-Governor, had been killed by the atom bomb, while she and her five children were saved by taking refuge in the river. She had come to thank me for the clothes and other things I had sent her. She told me the Prince said to her: `Don't worry. You'll see. Japan will make a fine recovery. So make sure you bring up your children well. The war is over. The Japanese people are going to work hard. We're not the sort of nation and not the sort of people to go to pieces. There is nothing to worry about. Everything is going to be all right. Japan will most certainly rise again.'

My friend took the Prince's words to heart, and today her children are indeed fine members of society.

Food shortages had been severe for some time, so we dug up the gardens and the tennis court to grow more food. We tried hard to prepare nutritious meals for the Prince, but he had always been a simple `soup and two-vegetables' man for preference, and would screw up his face if presented with anything too fancy.

One day, an American journalist came to interview the Prince. 'Your Highness, is there anything you need, or anything you would like?' he asked. To which the Prince replied, purposely looking serious: `Yes, there is something I want badly. I have been taking the Occupation newspaper and reading it every day, and in it I've been reading a comic strip in which there is something called a "Shmoo". Apparently, if one has a shmoo, one can make anything one wants. I would very much like to have a shmoo. If the Japanese had some shmoos, I'm sure they would be able to reconstruct their country and everything would be all right!'

`Wow! So Your Highness knows about shmoos!'

The journalist was delighted, and sent us the biggest shmoo you ever saw. It was folded flat and when the parcel arrived we wondered what on earth it could be. When we blew it up it was enormous. The Prince was thrilled with his shmoo, and even had his picture taken with it. The photograph appeared in the Occupation newspaper, and people sent us lots and lots of shmoos.

`This is all we need for Japan's recovery', the Prince used to say.

In those days the general public still had ambivalent feelings towards the Occupation and found it hard to get used to. I am quite certain the Prince's sense of humour and delight evidenced in the shmoo episode was the very first step in post World-War II JapanAmerican goodwill and friendship.

The Prince's post-war dream was to live an Englishstyle country life, farming on a large enough scale to be completely self-sufficient as to food. We put some acreage under cultivation and grew not just kitchengarden vegetables, as we had during the war, but crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, pumpkins, sweet corn, and finally even wheat and upland rice. Besides chickens, we kept sheep and goats. At one time we kept pigs, and later even raised milking cows. We even produced a small amount of sweet potatoes and wheat for the market, stressing quality rather than quantity. But when all was said and done, it was an amateur operation, and many were the funny happenings and episodes.

The Prince undertook some of the light work at first, such as weeding, picking off insects, treading wheat, and herding sheep, but as he regained his health, he took on harvesting wheat and making compost, as well as the arduous task in summer under the scorching sun of cutting grass to make winter hay to feed the cows and goats.

At first my ladies-in-waiting and I were quite hopeless at hoeing, so the Prince asked a teacher from the Gotemba agricultural college to come and give us lessons. Oh, how difficult we found it to learn the knack of how to wield a hoe and dig a straight furrow! We tried so hard, dressed in our peasant overalls, with the sweat running down our faces, but we hardly ever got our rows straight the first time and would invariably be made to do them over again. We certainly acquired a great respect for the work of farmers.

In his eagerness for us all to experience fully the life of the English landed gentry, which he had observed first-hand while in England, the Prince got experts to come from the prefectural breeding centre to teach us how to milk our sheep and goats. The Prince loved being able to drink the fresh milk and offer it to our guests, who found our home-grown potatoes and corn a treat as well. There is nothing like freshly-picked corn. If not eaten within four hours of harvesting, corn-on-the-cob begins to dry out and the flavour deteriorates. The Prince always sent any particularly good produce of ours first to the Empress Dowager, whose obvious delight used to encourage him greatly.

The Takamatsus and the Mikasas visited us frequently, and enjoyed the freedom of life in Gotemba and the informal family gatherings impossible in Tokyo. In those desperately food-scarce post-war times, we had plenty of fresh chicken, eggs, and milk, in addition to what was provided by generous American relief agencies.

Keeping full-grown pigs had turned out not to be feasible because of our shortage of feed, so the Prince gave all our pigs away to neighbouring farms with the proviso that they give us back one piglet from each litter, which we would then raise and return when it was grown. The Prince thought up this scheme to help the farms to prosper, but alas, it did not work. In those days few farmers had the time and means to do much more than just exist from day to day. It transpired that after they received their pigs they immediately sold them! Raising pigs should have been a profitable enterpprise. In reality, it was not a success. The Prince's Private Secretary, who was in charge of transferring the pigs, was upset. `You can't very well tell them not to sell the pigs...' he used to mutter. It was quite funny, really, but rather sad at the same time.

The Prince began to be more and more ambitious in his role as English-style gentleman farmer, and put in electrically-heated beds for sprouting seeds and machines for threshing and milling, which he allowed local farmers to use. The Prince tried out tractors, as well as experimenting in various other ways. It was all rather hit or miss, and he had some real failures, learning much about the harshness of nature in the process. But the joy of a good harvest gave all of us tremendous fulfilment.

The Prince and I took lessons in spinning and weaving, and we made homespun from the wool of our sheep. We became known by our neighbours as The Prince's Experimental Farm, and the fact that it brought us into such close and friendly contact with the local people was one of the nicest results of our agricultural project.

Above all, the Prince wanted our household to be one big happy family. He loved to organize competitions. `Fuji Prosperity', the name of the brown draught ox, was chosen this way. He also had everyone compete in making bird feeders of their own design to place wherever they wanted in the grounds, and gave a prize to the person whose feeder attracted the most birds. The Prince loved to invent things, and one of his designs was a vegetable dehydrator he set under the floor of the house.

During this time, I often made trips to Tokyo on the Prince's behalf. Following General MacArthur's Occupation Policy a directive was issued abolishing privilege regarding Imperial Family property, and so we had to fill out a tax return like ordinary citizens, which I then took to the Imperial Household Agency. I also represented the Prince at an Imperial Family conference when the new Constitution came into force on 3 May 1947. Its revised Imperial Family code decreed that besides the Emperor's sons, only three princes would be allowed to retain their Imperial status—his brothers Prince Chichibu, Prince Takamatsu and Prince Mikasa.

We had had to give up our Hayama villa of so many memories in April, 1946, after one last winter there.

On 18 October 1947, both the Prince and I went to a farewell dinner at the Akasaka Detached Palace, attended by their Majesties the Emperor and Empress and the Empress Dowager, for the former members of the Imperial Family whose Imperial status had been abolished.

`Let us always keep in touch', said the Emperor, raising his glass, and when, in reply, the now former Prince Morimasa Nashimoto raised his, saying, 'I pray for the continued prosperity of the imperial Family,' I was choked with emotion, and at the same time, suddenly aware of the weight of responsibility now resting upon those few of us who officially remained Imperial.

'No matter how often you keep pulling them up, weeds just keep on growing', observed my old childhood friend Masako Shirasu Kabayama.

'I envy the weeds', said the Prince, as if to himself. Something about the way he said it alarmed me. It made me realize how frail he was in spite of his seemingly restored health since the end of the war. He was working much too hard, and not eating properly. We would try and make meals more nourishing by doing things like mixing egg into his corn dumplings, in spite of his objection to such surreptitious measures. In 1949 his fever began to rise again, necessitating a kidney operation. He made good progress, and when the Emperor and Empress visited us during his convalescence, he proudly showed them round the farm. The Empress Dowager, visited frequently, whenever she was staying at the nearby Numazu Villa, and mother and son had many happy informal talks together. She promised soon to pay us a longer visit of several days, so she could listen to the birds singing.

We had told her how at dawn around 4 a.m., first there is the canna-canna-canna of the evening cicada, and then the hoot of an owl, followed by the songs of a paradise flycatcher, Siberian meadow bunting, and great tit, before the cock begins to crow in the poultry house. And then you hear the cuckoo, the brown-eared bulbul, and the screech of the azure-winged magpie. During his long illness, the Prince waking early, learned to know the various songs and the time of day that each bird sang. Alas, I managed to learn only a few. How I regret not having got the Prince to teach me how to identify more of them.

In 1950, two chest operations were performed, from which the Prince made a fairly good recovery thanks to the streptomycin sent by the Royal Family of Norway and also that made available by the Americans. It did not cure the tuberculosis, but undoubtedly prolonged the Prince's life and enabled him to take part in a variety of local events. But no more farm work.

Not being able to participate any longer in sports or public duties, the Prince had taken up writing, and contributed a series of essays in1948 entitled `Diary of a Convalescent' to a health magazine, hoping it would help to encourage TB sufferers. The Prince had already published a book entitled `Recollections of life in England and America' (to which I contributed the American section), as well as a book entitled `Gotemba Thoughts'.

Sometime during that summer, the Prince began to complain of pains in his left chest. Diagnosed as caries of the rib cartilege, immediate surgery was indicated. A two-hour operation was carried out on August 12th, from which his recovery was, thankfully, swift.

One of the Prince's hobbies at this time was pottery making. He had a kiln installed, and after taking lessons, and when his state of health allowed, greatly enjoyed turning pots and tea bowls, which he dubbed `Mitsumine ware' after his beloved Three Peaks in the Chichibu Mountains.

Now that there were only three princely houses left, I had often to represent the Prince in Tokyo on some official duty or other, as well as taking his place at Japan-British Society functions and sports events. And then there was the Tuberculosis Prevention Association of which I was the honorary President. All this kept me away frequently.

When the Prince was with me, naturally we went by car, but when I went alone, I always took the train. Together with my senior lady-in-waiting, Kawazu Kuni, we rode on the local Gotemba line, changing to the main T?kaid? line, and always travelled second class, both during the war and after. I saw a lot, learned a lot, and experienced much kindness. I became so used to riding on the Gotemba line I called it `my train', and almost everyone who rode it knew me by sight. I was reminded the other day of the time I kept the flies away from a nursing mother. It was during the war, and the train, as usual, was full of foragers, travelling into the country hoping to find food. It was different on the T?kaid? line, especially during the rush hour, so we made a point of wearing our monpe farm overalls, so as not to be conspicuous. We changed into other clothes when we reached our destination. So many things amazed me as I rode on trains, making me realise how out of touch with reality we Imperials were.

It was raining on 17 May 1951, when news reached us for which we were totally unprepared. The Empress Dowager had died of a sudden heart attack. The Prince was not well enough to travel, but I hurried to Tokyo. It was hard to believe that her promise to spend several days with us would now never materialize. We had looked forward to it so eagerly, and had only that day ordered the tatami renewed for her visit. I felt as if my main prop and stay had been pulled out from under me. As for the Prince, who had had such a specially close relationship with his mother, he was overwhelmed with grief that he of all people, was unable to be at her wake. To support him in his grief, I resolved to allow myself no tears.

He insisted on attending the the ceremony on the 19th of the placing of the body in the coffin. I went back to Gotemba to accompany him up to Tokyo in the car, together with two doctors, for the long drive. Although he rested for several hours, he looked very tired when the 7 p.m. ceremony was over.

We stayed in Tokyo until after the Ceremony of the Fortieth Day so the Prince could attend many of the rites, including the Proclamation of the Posthumous Name: Empress Teimei. While in town the Prince underwent a great many medical examinations. It was 28 June before we returned to Gotemba. I went back to Tokyo alone for the final 50th Day Rite, and that night I let myself go and had my first really good cry at the loss of my beloved mentor, guide and friend.

At the beginning of September, a whiteness would appear each morning on the summit of Fuji. The Prince would have the whole household assembled and ask us each to guess whether it was frost or snow. After everyone had given the mountain a good stare with naked eyes, the Prince would take a look with his binoculars and determine which it was. Those who guessed correctly were rewarded with a sweet or a piece of cake.

It was fun, but we dreaded the cold winter our game presaged. Gotemba was a summer resort, and winters there were severe. When electricity restrictions were in force, the Prince would not let us apply for special permission to use electric heaters. The only alternative was a potbellied stove, which would not be good for his lungs. Eventually, a suitable house for the winter was found on a quiet south-facing hill in Kugenuma, a seaside resort near Fujisawa. The upstairs rooms were sunny, the garden large enough to put in a few of the Prince's favourite plants, and it was also within easy reach of Tokyo.

We moved there in January, 1952. The Prince liked the house, which was a great relief to me, but I worried for fear the constant stream of visitors, engendered by its accessibility, would tire him. But surprisingly, he thrived so well that his team of four doctors only needed to attend about once a month. The mild climate of Kugenuma seemed to agree with the Prince. In April, we had shrubs such as red and white blossoming plum, hawthorn, kerria, laurel, and juniper brought from the ruins of our Tokyo property, and the Prince supervized their replanting. He also received a mimosa and two coconut palms from his old school friend the former Viscount Hachisuka.

Having attended his coronation, the news of King George VI's death on 6 February saddened us greatly, and our hearts went out in special sympathy to the widowed Queen, of whom we had such fond memories.

The Peace Treaty, signed on 28 April, made Japan an independent country once more, which meant that someone from Japan would be invited to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II the following year. The Prince felt strongly that it would be in the best interest of both Japan and the Crown Prince for the latter to represent the Emperor. The Anglo Japanese political climate not being what it had been before, he felt it absolutely essential that the Crown Prince should go, and pressed the matter fervently with Imperial Household Agency Chief Tajima and Dr. Koizumi Shinz?.

In a letter to the Household Agency Chief, the Prince set down his reasons as follows. 1) The Crown Prince was of the same generation as the Queen and for him to make her acquaintance now would be of benefit to the future of both nations. 2) Although the Crown Prince had only recently come of age and many people feared he lacked sufficient experience, he would only be one of many guests, and therefore could be fairly relaxed. 3) From his own experience of attending the coronation of George VI, he knew that most monarchies would be represented by a crown prince, and other countries by top-ranking people, and so he believed that it would be of great significance for him to take advantage of this matchless opportunity to meet all those people at one time. And 4), while the British had mixed feelings towards Japan, the Crown Prince was still a boy and clearly had no connection with the war, so it was very important for the future that friendly relations with other countries be forged anew, and he was the ideal one to represent the Emperor compared with the other members of the Imperial Family, who all served in the armed forces.

I am quite sure this advice from the Prince was crucial to the decision made by Imperial Household Agency Chief Tajima.

The Oxford University Rugby Team came to Japan in September, and we spent a fortnight in Tokyo so that the Prince could attend the team's matches against Japanese universities. He hosted a party for the Oxford team to which he also invited Crown Prince Akihito, and was delighted to see the latter chatting with the Oxford men. The Prince was anxious for the Crown Prince's sake that there should be at least a few people with feelings of goodwill towards Japan while he was a guest at Queen Elizabeth's coronation in Britain, where anti Japanese sentiments still remained.

We returned to Gotemba once, but soon came back to Tokyo to attend the Investiture of the Crown Prince. After the Ceremony on November 10th, we remained in Tokyo, and the Prince managed to maintain a full schedule in Tokyo for several days at a time, receiving ambassadors in audience, and attending embassy parties, all to make sure that the Crown Prince met and conversed with the ambassadors and dignitaries of as many countries as possible.

When the Crown Prince left for England the following year, in June, 1953, the British Government issued a statement that he would receive an official welcome, and a reception was held in his honour. But by then, alas, Prince Chichibu had already departed this life.

Neither did he live to see the completion that same year of the Prince Chichibu Rugby Stadium, which commemorates for posterity his love for the game and his services to it in Japan. How it delights me to see it steadily gaining in popularity here. I have been told it is the only sports arena in this country named after a specific person. In the post-war years, while baseball stadiums proliferated and fans of the game increased rapidly, rugby lagged behind because although there were people who wanted to play it and promote it, there was no suitable ground. So a group of enthusiasts got together and made a rugby field themselves, with their own bare hands, in part of the outer gardens of the Meiji Shrine. When he heard about it, the Prince, in spite of his illness, made a point of visiting the worksite every time he was in Tokyo.

After seeing his first rugby match during his student days in England, the Prince never missed a match if he could help it, either there or in Japan. I shall never forget the first time I accompanied him to one. It was while we were in Kyoto for Emperor Shdwa's Enthronement, and took place at a prestigious high school so soon after the Ceremony that I did not have time to wash the heavy camellia grease out of my hair. It was all I could do to change out my heavy ceremonial twelve-layered robe of ancient design into Western dress. My hair had to stay as it was, hidden by a scarf!

When the Oxford University Rugby Team played against Keio University in Tokyo, in September, 1952, I was told how the Prince insisted on going all the way down to the field to greet each of the players personally, and how tremendously exhausted he was after climbing the many stairs back up to the royal box. It was evident to me then how deep was his nostalgia for the Oxford of his interrupted studies to which he was never able to return, and his love for the game of rugby.

The Prince died at Kugenuma in the early dawn of 4 January 1953. His last will and testament, written in a notebook, reads as follows:

He goes on to name the parts to be dissected and examined and the doctors that he wished to have witness it, including `others specializing in tuberculosis' and finally adding, `subject to Setsuko's consent'. He further asks that the body be cremated, that there be no tomb, and that the final rite be very simple, `since it only concerns Setsuko and me'. And if possible, I wish there to be no religious ceremony of any denomination.

Having obtained His Majesty's consent, an autopsy was performed on the night of 5 January. Since whatever the Prince wished would be my wish too, I raised no objections. The funeral, which took place on a rainy January 12th in the garden of the Toshimagaoka mausoleum, was basically in the Imperial Shinto tradition, but in accordance with the wishes stated in the Prince's will, was performed by those who had been closest to him. His former private secretary, Maeda Toshio, acted as chief priest, assisted by the Prince's classmate Yamaguchi Sadao, who had been his aide-de-camp. The pallbearers were representatives of various sports from the Japan Athletic Association, and musicians from the the Imperial Household Music Department performed pieces such as Beethoven's Les adieux and Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile. Afterwards, his body was cremated—the first time ever for a member of the Imperial Family—and his ashes were buried in a graveyard in a corner of the mausoleum. It was all very unconventional, but I think it was more or less what the Prince would have wanted, and was made possible by the Emperor's warm understanding and Prince Takamatsu's help.

For the Fortieth Day Observance on 12 February, the Emperor and Empress came over from Hayama to our villa in Kugenuma. Barely a year before, the Prince had supervized the replanting there of some of his favourite plants from our Tokyo property. Among them was a red and white plum in fragrant blossom. The Emperor sighed with deep emotion as he contemplated it, and later sent me this poem:

When the Fiftieth Day Observance was over, visitors paying condolence calls tapered off, and I was alone most of the time, just thinking about the Prince and missing him so. There were times when I wondered if there was not some way to join him without causing too much trouble for those around me. During those times, writing poetry was a consolation.

In spite of the cold winter rain, over fifty thousand people from the general populace thronged the road outside the mausoleum at the time of the Prince's funeral, and I noticed a great many of them wiping tears from their eyes. They included students, young people, old people, farmers, housewives, office-workers, and former soldiers. Most of them were people who had only known the Prince through the newspapers and magazines, but loved and admired him. To them he was the "Sports Prince" and the "Mountaineering Prince."

My mother was a tower of strength and scarcely left my side in the days after my bereavement, when I needed her most. She died in 1969, after a long illness.

Just a year before, the Prince had moved a deep-red plum tree to Kugenuma from the Empress Dowager's Palace as a memento of his late mother. This red plum, blossoming later than the red-and-white variety, burst into bloom at the end of February, making me sad all over again.

As spring progressed, the trees putting forth new shoots, the flowers, the azure-winged magpie that came to our window at breakfast, for whom we used to put out bread-crumbs—everything reminded me of the Prince.

Princess Chichibu. Ch. 10. "The Postwar Years." The Silver Pavilion: A Japanese Imperial Memoir. Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 1996, (1991 in Japanese), 170-189.

"Shmoo." Li'l Abner web site. http://www.lil-abner.com/. Viewed 21 March 2005.