{
  "id": 5895034,
  "title": "Prince Hisahito, second in line to throne, turns 20",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/06/prince-hisahito-second-in-line-to-throne-turns-20",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-09-06T01:19:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Japan Times",
    "slug": "japan-times",
    "url": "https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/06/japan/japanese-prince-hisahito-turns-20/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Prince Hisahito, the second in line to the Japanese imperial throne, celebrated his 20th birthday on Sunday. The Crown Prince Akishino's son is a second-year student at the University of Tsukuba, studying biological sciences in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences. Despite his academic pursuits, Prince Hisahito is also actively involved in official duties as a young member of the imperial family.\n\nFollowing his coming-of-age ceremony in September, Hisahito made his public debut at several events at the Imperial Palace. These included the New Year's greetings in early January and a banquet for Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his wife during their state visit to Japan in May. For the Imperial New Year's poetry-reading ceremony, Utakai Hajime, the prince submitted his first poem, which centered on a memory of dragonflies, a subject of his research.\n\nIn the past year, Hisahito visited six prefectures across Japan, including Hokkaido, Mie, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and Hiroshima. He recently attended a Boy Scout event in Hiroshima, where he prepared tonjiru pork miso soup for breakfast alongside other participants around his age. In November, Hisahito visited Izu Oshima, a remote island in the Pacific, with his mother to watch an orienteering event at the Tokyo Deaflympics.\n\nAt the University of Tsukuba, Hisahito is taking compulsory English courses to aid in reading biology papers and physical education classes. His advanced biology-related courses and lab work have led him to participate in an outdoor field study this summer. Currently, most of his time is spent in Tsukuba, where he often grows vegetables and rice and observes dragonflies on his family's estate at the Akasaka Palace in Tokyo.\n\nHisahito has a long-standing interest in maps, which he explored further last month when he visited the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan's Science Museum of Map and Survey near his university. Additionally, the prince expressed his condolences for recent natural disasters, including the major earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture in July and torrential rains throughout the country, while wishing those affected well.",
  "summary": "The prince is a second-year student of the College of Biological Sciences in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Tsukuba.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}