Japanese Prince Hisahito to leave for Bhutan Thursday

August 15, 2019

Tokyo--Japanese Prince Hisahito, and his parents, Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, will leave on a private trip to Bhutan on Thursday.

This will be the first overseas trip for 12-year-old Prince Hisahito, a junior high school first-grader. He became second in line to the throne following the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito, his uncle, on May 1.

The three are slated to arrive in Bhutan on Saturday, after spending a night in Thailand. They will return home on Aug. 25.

In Bhutan, Prince Hisahito and his parents will pay a courtesy call on King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

Prince Hisahito will also experience the nature and culture of the country, including by visiting local temples and museums, and watching traditional archery.

Bhutan's royal family has repeatedly invited the family of Crown Prince Akishino to visit the country since he and his wife made a goodwill visit there in 1997, according to the Imperial Household Agency.

The trip this time, which comes during Prince Hisahito's summer vacation, was decided based on the parents' wish to let their son have experience overseas.

Prince Hisahito, the third child and the only son of Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, has been engaged in an increasing number of activities in recent years.

In summer last year, when he was an elementary school sixth-grader, Prince Hisahito climbed Yarigatake, one of the tallest mountains in Japan, and, for the first time, visited the western Japan city of Hiroshima, which was destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II.

In 2016, Prince Hisahito visited the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki, which was also devastated by a U.S. atomic bombing, on Aug. 9, 1945.

He has visited twice the southernmost Japan prefecture of Okinawa, which was a major battlefield during the war, the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, and the Ogasawara Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site located some 1,000 kilometers south of central Tokyo.

At a press conference in 2017, Crown Prince Akishino said, "If there is a chance, it's important for him (Prince Hisahito) to go abroad and look at Japan from there."

Crown Prince Akishino made his first overseas trip in 1980, to New Zealand, while Emperor Naruhito, the elder brother of the Crown Prince, went to Australia in 1974 on his first travel abroad. They both made the trips during summer vacations when they were 14-year-old junior high school third-graders.

For the trips to and from Bhutan, Crown Prince Akishino and Prince Hisahito will board separate planes in case of any accident. Jiji Press