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For your consideration is an exceptionally rare and historically significant 12 April 1958 private cocktail-reception invitation honoring Princess Aisin-Gioro Hiro (19141987), ne Hiro Saga, wife of Prince Pujie and sister-in-law of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. Measuring approximately 6.0 by 4.0 inches, the single ivory card is professionally printed in elegant script and personally completed in blue ink for Mr. and Mrs. Woods. The invitation itself identifies the honoree in contemporary English as Princess Hiroko Aisingioro, a period Western rendering of the Aisin-Gioro dynastic name, and reads: To meet Princess Hiroko Aisingioro / Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Fabian Davis / request the pleasure of the company of / Mr. and Mrs. Woods / at Cocktails / on 12 April 1958 / from four oclock. At lower left are the RSVP numbers Yokosuka 2764 and Kamakura 246, while the lower right gives the address 487 Jyomyoji Street, Kamakura, Japan. The reverse is blank.
Princess Aisin-Gioro Hiro was born Hiro Saga into the Japanese aristocracy and in 1937 married Prince Pujie, younger brother of Puyi and one of the closest surviving male members of the former Qing imperial house. Her marriage placed her at the center of the dynastic and political world surrounding Manchukuo and the final chapter of the Aisin-Gioro family. After the collapse of Manchukuo in 1945, Hiro endured displacement, detention, and eventual repatriation to Japan, while Pujie remained in Chinese custody. The date of this reception is particularly significant because it took place only about four months after the death of their elder daughter Huisheng in December 1957, while Hiro was still living in Japan separated from her husband and before their eventual reunion in Beijing following Pujies release. The reception also predates by little more than a year the publication of Hiros celebrated memoir The Wandering Princess, which became one of the best-known personal accounts connected with the former Manchurian imperial court.
The hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Fabian Davis, belonged to the American expatriate and military-associated social world of postwar Japan. Kenneth Fabian Davis is independently documented in United States Marine Corps officer registers, while the inclusion of a Yokosuka telephone number on the invitation is consistent with the strong American naval and military presence in the region. The wording To meet Princess Hiroko Aisingioro makes clear that Hiro herself was the honored guest of the gathering rather than merely one attendee among many, giving the card particular documentary importance as a record of her social life in Japan during a deeply transitional period between the collapse of Manchukuo and her later reunion with Prince Pujie in China.
Preserved in notably fine original condition, with crisp printed lettering, strong blue manuscript additions, clean ivory card stock, rounded corners, and only light age-related handling, this is an exceptional surviving artifact of Japanese aristocratic history, the Aisin-Gioro dynasty, Manchukuo, Puyi and Pujie, postwar Sino-Japanese relations, and the American social presence in 1950s Japan. More than a conventional invitation, it documents a private reception centered on Princess Aisin-Gioro Hiro, one of the most compelling women connected to the final history of the Qing imperial family.
