Pu Yi

Pu Yi or Henry Pu-yi, Manchu Aisin Gioro, 1906-67, last emperor (1908-12) of China, under the reign name Hsuan T'ung. After his abdication, the new republican government granted him a large government pension and permitted him to live in the Forbidden City of Beijing until 1924. After 1925, he lived in the Japanese concession in Tianjin. In 1934, reigning under the name K'ang Te, he became the emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , or Manchuria. He was captured by the Russians in 1945 and kept as their prisoner. In 1946, Pu Yi testified at the Tokyo war crimes trial that he had been the unwilling tool of the Japanese militarists and not, as they claimed, the instrument of Manchurian self-determination. In 1950 he was handed over to the Chinese Communists, and he was imprisoned at Shenyang until 1959, when Mao Zedong granted him amnesty.

Bibliography: See his autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen (tr. by W. J. F. Jenner, 1964-65); study by H. McAleary (1963).

Pu Yi ( P'u-I) (b. 1906, d. 17 Oct. 1967). Emperor of China 1908–12 Proclaimed Emperor Hsuan T'ung at the age of 2 by his great-aunt the Dowager Empress Cixi, he was the last Emperor of China, and the last ruler of the Qing dynasty. He was forced to abdicate in 1912, though he was allowed to remain resident in the Forbidden City by the new Chinese Republic. Briefly restored by a warlord in 1917, he was forced to leave Beijing in 1924. In 1934, he accepted the Japanese offer to become Emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. He was himself little more than a Japanese pawn, but served to give the state some legitimacy. He was captured by the Soviet Red Army and handed over to the People's Republic of China, where he was re-educated until 1959. He spent the remaining years of his life as a common citizen, publishing his memoirs, From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi (2 vols., 1964–5).

Pu-Yi (1906–67),puppet ruler of the Japanese-dominated state of Manchukuo from 1932 to 1945. Widely known as Henry, a nickname given to him by his English tutor, he had been enthroned, aged three, as Hsüan T'ung, the last emperor of China, but was deposed by the 1911 Chinese revolution. After the Japanese annexed Manchuria, and renamed it Manchukuo, he eagerly accepted an invitation to become the new state's chief executive, and then its puppet emperor. When the USSR invaded Manchukuo in August 1945 (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns) he was captured and imprisoned in Siberia. As a witness, he gave perjured evidence at the Far East war crimes trials before being returned to China in 1950 where he was again imprisoned. Satisfactorily converted to communism, he was released in 1959 and worked as a gardener in Peking's botanical gardens, and then in the department of historical archives.

Bibliography

Pu-Yi, H. , From Emperor to Citizen, The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu-Yi (Oxford, 1987).