Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative Award Medals/秩父宮殿下御成婚記念大阪府体育振興会賞牌

Medals of Asia

About Prince Chichibu https://asiamedals.info/threads/prince-chichibu.24536
Another Prince Chichibu marriage commemorative table medal with different design https://asiamedals.info/threads/pri...ive-medal-from-the-ministry-of-finance.24537/
See also award watch fob with the same design https://asiamedals.info/threads/pri...-tenranjiai-tournament-award-watch-fob.25574/

1928 version.

1928 Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative Award Medal.jpg

Reverse

秩父宮殿下御成婚記念 - Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative

大阪府体育振興会 - Osaka Prefectural Physical Education Promotion Association

昭和三年賞 - 1928 Award

造幣局製 - Made by Mint and signature M.I

1929 version.

Reverse

秩父宮殿下御成婚記念 - Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative

大阪府体育振興会 - Osaka Prefectural Physical Education Promotion Association

昭和四年賞 - 1929 Award

造幣局製 - Made by Mint and signature M.I

Original case.

體育振興牌 - Physical Education Promotion Medal

1930 version.

Bronze.
Size 54.5 mm.

Reverse.

秩父宮殿下御成婚記念 - Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative

大阪府体育振興会 - Osaka Prefectural Physical Education Promotion Association

昭和五年賞 - 1930 Award

Details.

Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative Medal.jpg

造幣局製 - Made by Mint
+
Signature M.I

Original case.

體育振興牌 - Physical Education Promotion Medal

Medals of Asia

Yasuhito, Prince Chichibu /秩父宮雍仁親王, Chichibu-no-miya Yasuhito Shinnō, 25 June 1902 – 4 January 1953/, was the second son of Emperor Taishō (Yoshihito) and Empress Teimei (Sadako), a younger brother of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) and a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. As a member of the Imperial House of Japan, he was the patron of several sporting, medical, and international exchange organizations. Before and after World War II, the English-speaking prince and his wife attempted to foster good relations between Japan and the United Kingdom and enjoyed a good rapport with the British royal family. As with other Japanese imperial princes of his generation, he was an active-duty career officer in the Imperial Japanese Army. Like all members of the imperial family, he was exonerated from criminal prosecutions before the Tokyo tribunal by Douglas MacArthur.

On 28 September 1928, the prince married Matsudaira Setsuko (9 September 1909 – 25 August 1995), the daughter of Matsudaira Tsuneo, Japanese ambassador to the United States and later Great Britain (and later, Imperial Household Minister), and his wife, the former Nabeshima Nobuko. Although technically born a commoner, the new princess was a scion of the Matsudaira of Aizu, a cadet branch of the Tokugawa shogunate. Her paternal grandfather was Matsudaira Katamori, the last daimyō of Aizu, whose heir had been created a viscount in the new kazoku system in 1884.

The Prince and Princess Chichibu on their wedding day.

Medals of Asia

During next decades Osaka Prefectural Physical Education Promotion Association used the same design for its award medals over and over again.
Only the year on reverse was changed (size, weight and materials were differ too).

1931 version.

昭和六年 - 1931

Medals of Asia

1932 version.

1932 Prince Chichibu Marriage Commemorative Award Medal.jpg

昭和七年 - 1932

Details.

Original case.

Medals of Asia

Mountaineering was a passion for Prince Chichibu. After making several forays to the Hida range, including a visit to Tateyama in the snow season, the "climbing prince" set his sights on the Swiss Alps. In this, he had the ideal aide-de-camp, the alpinist Yuko Maki, who had galvanised Japanese mountaineering circles in 1921 with the first ascent of the Eiger’s Mittelegi ridge.

The Prince’s big chance came at the end of his year at Oxford, where he had taken up residence at Magdalen College. In July 1926, Maki arrived in Grindelwald, underneath the Eiger, to sign up five of the region's best alpine guides. These included Samuel Brawand and Heinrich Fuhrer, who had led the way on Maki’s climbs of, respectively, the Eiger Mittelegi and Canada’s Mt Alberta, another famous first ascent.

In August, the Prince arrived and undertook two training tours in the Bernese Oberland. It was agreed that the guides could address their client as “Herr Prinz”, the German equivalent for “Your Imperial Highness” being too cumbersome in tense alpine situations. Then the party moved on to the giants of the Zermatt area, where they tackled Monte Rosa, the Lyskam, the Matterhorn and the Zinalrothorn. Unfortunately, military duties prevented Brawand from accompanying them to the Valais.

Needless to say, it was the Matterhorn ascent that got the most press attention, even though the Prince’s party also climbed the considerably more difficult Schreckhorn in the Bernese Oberland. The Prince’s feat seemed to lash the journalist from Time magazine into a frenzy. This is how he set the scene:

Years pass when no man can conquer and bestride "The Old Hag of the Alps"—the Matterhorn. Humpbacked, she towers, and her hump is a jagged ridge from which many have slithered down to death. About her hungry lightning tongues lick often, winds howl, and evil legends cluster grim and hoar. Sometimes, when a climbing-hatchet slips and sickening pebbles roll, it seems that the Hag chuckles. . . .
As the Hag kept her peace that day, the party felt confident enough to make a full traverse of the mountain: “Daring,” continued the Time correspondent, “the Prince proceeded straight over the hump (the Italo-Swiss frontier) and prepared to descend by the far more dangerous Italian route, necessitating straight drops by means of Alpine ropes of several hundred feet.”

This was the Prince’s first and last expedition to the high mountains. His studies at Oxford had to be cut short when his father’s illness took a turn for the worse later that year. Back in Japan, heavy responsibilities awaited him as the brother of the new Emperor. The year after his return, he entered the Army’s officer training school and married the daughter of Japan’s ambassador to Washington. Their first summer holiday together was a walking tour in mountainous Gunma Prefecture: “I began to wonder if being walked off one’s feet was another of the requirements of a princess,” wrote Princess Chichibu in her memoir, The Silver Drum.