Prince Takechi

Who They Were

Prince Takechi (高市皇子, たけちのみこ, Takechi no miko) was a member of the Japanese imperial family during the Asuka period, the stretch of history running from 538 to 710 when Japan's court was still mobile and its written record was only beginning to take shape. He was born in 654 and died on 13 August 696. He was the eldest son of Emperor Tenmu, which placed him at the centre of the most dangerous family in Japan.

His mother was Amako no iratsume, a woman of the Wani clan rather than of the senior imperial line. That detail mattered enormously in a court where a mother's rank helped decide who could inherit. Takechi was a prince of the first rank by his father, but not the son of a great consort.

He held the office of Daijō-daijin (太政大臣, だいじょうだいじん), the Chancellor, the highest post in the ritsuryō (律令, りつりょう) administrative system that Japanese rulers were then importing and adapting from Tang China. He married three princesses — Princess Tajima, Princess Tōchi and Princess Minabe — and fathered six recorded children: Prince Nagaya, Kadobe-ō, Suzuka-ō, Kawachi-joō, Mutobe-Ō and Yamakata-joō. He died at Fujiwara-kyō, the palace city his father had built.

Life and Career

Takechi was born in 654, the fifth year of the Hakuchi (白雉, はくち) era. His father was not yet emperor. Tenmu took the throne only in 673, after the Jinshin War, a violent succession struggle against the son of the previous emperor. Takechi, still in his teens, fought on his father's side and is remembered as a commander in that campaign — an unusual distinction for a prince so young, and one that made his name inside the new regime.

Once Tenmu was emperor, Takechi stood near the top of the court. He was the eldest son, and he was trusted with military and ceremonial weight. Yet he never became emperor. Tenmu's principal consort was Empress Jitō, and it was her line, not Amako's, that produced the next sovereigns.

In 696 Takechi died at Fujiwara-kyō, the capital laid out south of modern Nara. He was about forty-two. His death came only months before his father's widow, Empress Jitō, would face her own succession problems, and the removal of the regime's most senior prince reshaped who was left standing.

Why They Matter

Takechi matters for three reasons. First, he is a rare case of an eldest imperial son who reached the highest civil office and still did not take the throne — a reminder that in the Asuka court, birth order alone decided nothing. Descent through the mother's family could override it.

Second, his career shows the ritsuryō state in operation. The post of Daijō-daijin was new in Japanese practice, modelled on Chinese precedent, and the men who held it were the emperor's chief deputies in a government of written law codes, censuses and provincial administration. Takechi's tenure belongs to the moment Japan stopped being a loose confederation of clans and started being a bureaucratic state.

Third, his children carried his line forward. Prince Nagaya, his son, became a leading minister of the following generation and a major figure at court in his own right. Through Nagaya, Takechi's descent remained politically consequential long after 696.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 高市皇子. It is read たけちのみこ in kana, and rendered in romaji as Takechi no miko. The older form Takechi no ōji also appears.

Breaking it down character by character:

• 高 — read take here. The kanji means "high" or "tall." On its own the character is normally read taka or kō, but in this name it takes the reading take.
• 市 — read chi here. The kanji means "market" or "town." Its usual readings are ichi or shi; in this name it is chi.
• 皇子 — read miko. This is a compound of 皇 (kō, ō, "imperial," "sovereign") and 子 (ko, "child"). Together 皇子 means "imperial prince," a son of an emperor or of an heir apparent.

So the whole name means, roughly, "the imperial prince of Takechi." The first two characters, 高市, are a place name — Takechi — and the last two are a title of rank, not part of a personal given name. This is standard for Asuka-period princes: they were identified by the district or estate associated with them, plus 皇子 to mark their imperial blood. A reader meeting 高市皇子 in a Japanese text should parse it as "Prince Takechi," not as a four-part personal name.

Note also the reading miko. The same two characters 皇子 can be read ōji in other contexts, and both readings appear in modern histories of this period. The kana たけちのみこ reflects the older court pronunciation; the no between Takechi and miko is the possessive particle の, linking the place name to the title.

Legacy

Takechi's legacy is bound up with the Jinshin War and with the administrative machinery of the late seventh century. He is one of the princes who made Tenmu's victory possible and then helped run the state that followed.

His descendants kept the family name alive in court politics. Prince Nagaya, his son, is the best documented of them and is often studied precisely because his father's standing gave him his opening.

Takechi died at Fujiwara-kyō in 696, before the capital moved again to Heijō-kyō and before the great chronicles, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, were completed. What survives of him is a name, a title, a father, a set of marriages and a date of death — the bare outline of a man who stood close to the centre of the Asuka state at the moment it was being built.