was a Japanese princess, born a daughter of

Emperor Kōnin was the 49th emperor of Japan, Emperor Kōnin, Tahara no Higashi Imperial Mausoleum, Imperial Household Agency according to the traditional order of succession. Kōnin's reign lasted from 770 to 781. Traditional narrative The personal name of ...

. Her mother was reported to be Princess Inoue—a daughter of

Emperor Shōmu was the 45th emperor of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 聖武天皇 (45)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession. Shōmu's reign spanned the years 724 through 749, during the Nara period. Traditional narrative ...

, but there is another theory that her mother was

Takano no Niigasa was a concubine of Emperor Kōnin of Japan and the mother of Emperor Kanmu. Her full name was Takano no Asomi Niigasa. Life Niigasa was a daughter of Yamato no Ototsugu (和乙継). She became a concubine of Prince Shirakabe (白壁王), grandson ...

. After his father was enthroned as the

emperor of Japan The Emperor of Japan is the monarch and the head of the Imperial Family of Japan. Under the Constitution of Japan, he is defined as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, and his position is derived from "the ...

, Princess Sakahito became the 21st Saiō of the

Ise Grand Shrine The , located in Ise, Mie Prefecture of Japan, is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu. Officially known simply as , Ise Jingū is a shrine complex composed of many Shinto shrines centered on two main shrines, and . The Inner ...

in 772, while Princess Inoue and Prince Osabe—a son of Princess Inoue and a younger brother of Princess Sakahito—were confined in 773. After the deaths of Princess Inoue and Prince Osabe in 775, Princess Sakahito married her elder half-brother Prince Yamabe, whose mother was Takano no Niigasa. Prince Yamabe later became Emperor Kammu. A record claims that Emperor Kōnin attempted to make her the

empress regnant A queen regnant (plural: queens regnant) is a female monarch, equivalent in rank and title to a king, who reigns ''suo jure'' (in her own right) over a realm known as a "kingdom"; as opposed to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigning ...

but failed. Ko, Dorothy; Haboush, JaHyun Kim; Piggott, Joan R. (2003)
''Women and Confucian cultures in premodern China, Korea, and Japan''

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

. p. 66. Emperor Kammu and Princess Sakahito had a daughter, Princess Asahara, but Princess Asahara died in 817 before Princess Sakahito's death in 829.

References

Japanese princesses People of Heian-period Japan People of Nara-period Japan Emperor Kanmu Saigū Daughters of emperors {{Japan-royal-stub