Tokugawa Yoshichika

• Born: 1886
• Died: 1976
• Japanese: 徳川義親 (Tokugawa Yoshichika)

Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichika was the founder of the Tokugawa Art Museum. He was the biological son of Matsudaira Shungaku, last daimyô of Echizen han, and the adopted son of Tokugawa Yoshikatsu, the last daimyô of Owari han; Yoshichika succeeded Yoshikatsu to become head of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa clan.

Educated at the Gakushûin (Peers' School), he attended Tokyo Imperial University as an undergraduate, where he researched forestry history, and then went on to pursue graduate studies in botany beginning in 1911. He became a member of the House of Peers that same year.

He established the Tokugawa Institute for Biological Research (Tokugawa Seibutsu Kenkyûjo) in 1918, the Tokugawa Institute for the History of Forestry (Tokugawa Rinseishi Kenkyûjo) in 1923, and the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation in 1931. In 1935, along with the Foundation, he worked to establish the Tokugawa Art Museum, on the grounds of the former site of the Owari Tokugawa mansion in Nagoya, donating to the new museum the Owari Tokugawa clan's collection of artworks and artifacts. An early exhibit, shown the year after the founding of the museum, included works of calligraphy by Emperor Go-Mizunoo, Emperor Kômei, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, and Yoshichika's birth father & adopted father. The Shôwa Emperor visited the museum on August 3, 1937, and is said to have "congratulated Yoshichika on his accomplishment."

References

• Morgan Pitelka. "Art, Agency, and Networks in the Career of Tokugawa Ieyasu." in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 463-465.