Pujie

Pujie (16 April 1907 – 28 February 1994) was a Qing Dynasty imperial prince of the Aisin-Gioro.

Pujie was the younger brother of Puyi, The Last Emperor of China.

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Pujie went to Japan, where he was educated and married to Hiro Saga, a Japanese noblewoman.

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 an arranged marriage with a Japanese noblewoman.

He selected Hiro Saga, who was a relative of the Japanese imperial family, from a photograph from a number of possible candidates vetted by the Kwantung Army.

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.

In 1929, Pujie travelled to Japan and was educated in the Gakushūin Peers' School.

He became fluent in Japanese.

Later, he enrolled at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and graduated in July 1935.

In 1937, he moved to Manchukuo, where his brother ruled as Emperor under varying degrees of Japanese control during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

After the war ended, Pujie was captured by Soviet 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 the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre.

The engagement ceremony took place at the Manchukuo embassy in Tokyo 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 to Xinjing, the capital of Manchukuo, where Puyi was then the Emperor.

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 the heir presumptive.

However, Pujie was not appointed by his brother as the heir to the throne of the Qing Dynasty, as imperial tradition stated that a childless emperor should choose his heir from a subsequent generation instead of from his own generation.

While in Manchukuo, Pujie served as honorary head of the Manchukuo Imperial Guards.

He returned briefly to Japan in 1944 to attend the Army Staff College.

At the time of the collapse of Manchukuo during the Soviet 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 the Republic of China, rather than have the city fall into foreign hands.

Pujie was arrested by the Soviet Red Army and first sent to a prison camp in Chita, and then to another in Khabarovsk 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 founded People's Republic of China.

On his return to China, Pujie was incarcerated in the War Criminals Management Centre in Fushun, Liaoning.

A model prisoner, he was eventually pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government in 1960.

He joined the Communist Party and served in a number of positions.

In 1961 with permission from Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, he was reunited with his wife and younger daughter Husheng and settled in Beijing, while his daughter would later return to Japan and became 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 from Shanghai at the 5th National People's Congress.

He subsequently served as Vice Chairman of the Nationalities Committee of the 6th National People's Congress in 1983.

He was appointed Deputy Head of the China–Japan Friendship Group from 1985.

From 1986, Pujie was also Honorary Director of the Welfare Fund for Handicapped.

He rose to a seat on the Presidium of the 7th National People's Congress in 1988.

He was later pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government, after which he remained in Beijing where he joined the Communist Party and served in a number of positions in the party until his death in 1994.

Pujie's Manchu name was ; Pu-giye, his courtesy name Junzhi, and his art name Bingfan.

Zeng Guofan was a source of inspiration for Pujie's art name, Bingfan.

Bingfan means "live up to (the legacy of Zeng Guo)fan".

Pujie was the second son of Zaifeng (Prince Chun) and his primary consort, Youlan.

As a child, he was brought to the Forbidden City in Beijing 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.