Gakushuin University
Gakushūin University is a private university in Mejiro, Toshima Ward, Tokyo. It was re-established after World War II as an affiliate of the Gakushūin School Corporation; the privatized successor to the original Gakushūin University was established during the Meiji period to educate the children of the Japanese nobility. It is still one of the most prestigious universities in Japan, counting most of the members of the present Imperial Family among its former or present students; the average number of students is capped so that each student can receive personal attention from the staff. Faculty of Law Faculty of Economics Faculty of International Social Sciences Faculty of Letters Faculty of Science Professional School of LawThe university provides a range of Japanese-language classes for foreign students. Although designed for Japanese students 60 classes are held in English; each year the University admits 80 foreign students of high academic and social standing to study in each faculty and graduate school.
The university was ranked 72nd in 2010 in the Truly Strong Universities ranking issued by Toyo Keizai. Because Gakushuin focuses on Social Sciences and Humanities education rather than on Natural Sciences, it is ranked lower than its peers. QS World University Rankings ranked Gakushuin University as 161st in Asia in 2010. Japanese national universities have higher standards of research than private universities. However, Gakushuin is one of the few private universities which competes with the top national universities. According to Quacquarelli Symonds, Gakushuin is the 6th-best research university in Japan and the 9th-best in Asia in terms of citations per paper. Gakushuin is the highest-ranked Japanese university in the Nature Index measurement of research output quality. Gakushuin Law School was 24th in 2009 and 25th in 2010 in Japan on the basis of the number of its successful candidates for bar examination. According to Yomiuri Weekly's 2008 rankings, alumni of Gakushuin have the 3rd best graduate prospectives among Japanese universities.
Gakushuin was top in the rankings of the Finance and Tourism industries.École des Mines de Paris ranked Gakushuin University as 92nd in the world in 2010 in terms of the number of alumni listed among CEOs in the 500 largest worldwide companies. Gakushuin had 7.58 applicants per place in the 2011 undergraduate admissions. Its entrance exams are selective. Emperor Akihito - current 125th Emperor of Japan Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan - eldest son and heir of Emperor Akihito Fumihito, Prince Akishino - younger son of Emperor Akihito Kiko, Princess Akishino - wife of the Prince Akishino Sayako, Princess Nori - daughter of Emperor Akihito Masahito, Prince Hitachi - brother of Emperor Akihito Hanako, Princess Hitachi - wife of the Prince Hitachi Atsuko, Princess Yori - sister of Emperor Akihito Takako, Princess Suga - sister of Emperor Akihito Yuriko, Princess Mikasa - aunt of Emperor Akihito, wife of the Prince Mikasa Prince Tomohito of Mikasa - son of the Prince Mikasa Princess Akiko of Mikasa - daughter of Prince Tomohito Princess Yōko of Mikasa - daughter of Prince Tomohito Yoshihito, Prince Katsura - son of the Prince Mikasa Norihito, Prince Takamado - son of the Prince Mikasa Princess Noriko of Takamado - daughter of the Prince Takamado Princess Yasuko of Mikasa - daughter of the Prince Mikasa Princess Masako of Mikasa - daughter of the Prince Mikasa Princess Huisheng of Aisin Gioro Hayao Miyazaki, Director Yoko Ono Yukio Mishima, novelist Tarō Asō, former Prime Minister of Japan Michihiko Kano, politician Shiono Nanami, Author Marina Inoue, voice actress Tetsuya Kakihara, voice actor Yoshinobu Shimamura, politician Hisaoki Kamei, politician Akiko Kamei, politician Keiko Nagaoka, politician Yasuko Ikenobo, politician Yoshiki Kuroda, urban designer Tokugawa Tsunenari, head of Tokugawa house Hiroyuki Namba, musician Akiko Kobayashi, singer Akira Yoshimura, Author Yoshiki Tanaka, Author Yoshihiko Funazaki, Author Yuki Kawauchi, Runner Kuniko Asagi, TV presenter Mona Yamamoto, TV announcer Satomi Ton, author Toshiyuki Hosokawa, actor Masakazu Motoki, businessman Kiyoshi Kodama, TV personality Yūka Sugai, member of Keyakizaka46 Gakushūin University
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
United States dollar
The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its territories per the United States Constitution since 1792. In practice, the dollar is divided into 100 smaller cent units, but is divided into 1000 mills for accounting; the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. Since the suspension in 1971 of convertibility of paper U. S. currency into any precious metal, the U. S. dollar is, de facto, fiat money. As it is the most used in international transactions, the U. S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their official currency, in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean: the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while still minting their own coins, or accept U. S. dollar coins. As of June 27, 2018, there are $1.67 trillion in circulation, of which $1.62 trillion is in Federal Reserve notes.
Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power "To coin money". Laws implementing this power are codified at 31 U. S. C. § 5112. Section 5112 prescribes the forms; these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as "legal tender" in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar; the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 provides for the minting and issuance of other coins, which have values ranging from one cent to 100 dollars; these other coins are more described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time"; that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the "Statements" are being expressed in U. S. dollars. The U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States.
The word "dollar" is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution. There, "dollars" is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act. Section 9 of that act authorized the production of various coins, including "DOLLARS OR UNITS—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver". Section 20 of the act provided, "That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units... and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation". In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States. Unlike the Spanish milled dollar, the U.
S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. In addition to the dollar the coinage act established monetary units of mill or one-thousandth of a dollar, cent or one-hundredth of a dollar, dime or one-tenth of a dollar, eagle or ten dollars, with prescribed weights and composition of gold, silver, or copper for each, it was proposed in the mid-1800s that one hundred dollars be known as a union, but no union coins were struck and only patterns for the $50 half union exist. However, only cents are in everyday use as divisions of the dollar. XX9 per gallon, e.g. $3.599, more written as $3.599⁄10. When issued in circulating form, denominations equal to or less than a dollar are emitted as U. S. coins while denominations equal to or greater than a dollar are emitted as Federal Reserve notes. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the note form is more common. In the past, "paper money" was issued in denominations less than a dollar and gold coins were issued for circulation up to the value of $20.
The term eagle was used in the Coinage Act of 1792 for the denomination of ten dollars, subsequently was used in naming gold coins. Paper currency less than one dollar in denomination, known as "fractional currency", was sometimes pejoratively referred to as "shinplasters". In 1854, James Guthrie Secretary of the Treasury, proposed creating $100, $50 and $25 gold coins, which were referred to as a "Union", "Half Union", "Quarter Union", thus implying a denomination of 1 Union = $100. Today, USD notes are made from cotton fiber paper, unlike most common paper, made of wood fiber. U. S. coins are produced by the United States Mint. U. S. dollar banknotes are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and, since 1914, have been issued by t
Empress Michiko
Michiko is the Empress consort of Japan as the wife of Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan reigning from 7 January 1989. She succeeded her mother-in-law, Empress Nagako, consort of Emperor Hirohito. Michiko married Crown Prince Akihito and became the Crown Princess of Japan in 1959, she was the first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial Family. She has three children with her husband, her elder son, Naruhito, is the current heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. As crown princess and as empress consort, she has become the most visible and travelled imperial consort in Japanese history; when Emperor Akihito abdicates, Michiko will receive the new title of Jōkōgō, or in English she will be referred to as Empress Emerita. Michiko Shōda was born on 20 October 1934 at the University of Tokyo Hospital in Bunkyō, the second of four children born to Hidesaburō Shōda, president and honorary chairman of Nisshin Flour Milling Company, his wife, Fumiko Soejima. Raised in Tokyo and in a cultured family, she grew up receiving a careful education, both traditional and "Western", learning to speak English and to play piano and being initiated into the arts such as painting, cooking and kōdō.
She has a younger brother Osamu and a younger sister Emiko. She is the niece of several academics, including Kenjirō Shōda, a mathematician, the president of the University of Osaka from 1954 until 1960. Shōda attended Futaba Elementary School in Kōjimachi, a neighborhood in Chiyoda, but was required to leave in her fourth grade year because of the American bombings during World War II, she was successively educated in the prefectures of Kanagawa and Nagano. She returned to Tokyo in 1946 and completed her elementary education in Futaba and attended the Sacred Heart School for Junior High School and High School in Minato, Tokyo, she graduated from high school in 1953. In 1957, she graduated summa cum laude from the Faculty of Literature at the University of the Sacred Heart with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, she took courses at Harvard and Oxford. Since she came from a wealthy family, her parents were selective about her suitors. There had been several contenders for her hand in marriage in the 1950s.
Biographers of the writer Yukio Mishima including Henry Scott Stokes report that Mishima had considered marrying Michiko Shōda, that he was introduced to her for that purpose some time in the 1950s. In August 1957, she met then-Crown Prince Akihito on a tennis court at Karuizawa near Nagano; the Imperial Household Council formally approved the engagement of the Crown Prince to Michiko Shōda on 27 November 1958. At that time, the media presented their encounter as a real "fairy tale", or the "romance of the tennis court"; the engagement ceremony took place on 14 January 1959. Although the future Crown Princess was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she was still regarded as a commoner. During the 1950s, the media and most persons familiar with the Japanese monarchy had assumed that the powerful Imperial Household Agency would select a bride for the Crown Prince from the daughters of the former court nobility, or from one of the former branches of the Imperial Family; some traditionalists opposed the engagement, as Shōda came from a Roman Catholic family, although she was never baptized, she was educated at Catholic institutions and seemed to share the faith of her parents.
It was widely rumored that Empress Kōjun had opposed the engagement. After the death of Empress Kōjun in 2000, Reuters announced that the former Empress was one of the strongest opponents of the marriage, that in the 1960s, she had driven her daughter-in-law to depression by persistently accusing her of not being suitable for her son. Death threats alerted the authorities to ensure the security of the Shōda family. Yukio Mishima, known for his traditionalist position, said at the time: "The imperial system becomes "tabloïdesque" in its move toward democratization. It's all wrong—the idea losing its dignity by connecting with the people."However, the young couple had by gained wide public support. That support came from the ruling political class. Additionally, everyone showed affection for the young "Mitchi" who had become the symbol of Japan's modernization and democratization; the wedding took place as a traditional Shinto ceremony on 10 April 1959. The wedding procession was followed in the streets of Tokyo by more than 500,000 people spread over an 8.8 km route, while parts of the wedding were televised, thus making it the first imperial wedding to be made available for public viewership in Japan, drawing about 15 million viewers.
In accordance with tradition, Shōda received a personal emblem: the white birch of Japan upon admission to the imperial family. The young couple moved to Tōgū Palace, or "East Palace", the traditional name of the official residence of the crown prince installed since 1952, located within the grounds of the Akasaka Estate in Motoakasaka, Tokyo, they left Tōgū Palace after her husband acceded to the throne in 1989. The couple have three children: Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan (皇太子徳仁親王, Kōtaishi Naruhito Shinnō, born 23 February 1960 at Imperial Household Agency Hospital in T
Kingfisher
Kingfishers or Alcedinidae are a family of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa and Oceania; the family is divided into three subfamilies and 19 genera. All kingfishers have large heads, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage with only small differences between the sexes. Most species are tropical in distribution, a slight majority are found only in forests, they consume a wide range of prey caught by swooping down from a perch. While kingfishers are thought to live near rivers and eat fish, many species live away from water and eat small invertebrates. Like other members of their order, they nest in cavities tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground; some kingfishers nest in arboreal termite nests. A few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. In Britain, the word "kingfisher" refers to the common kingfisher.
The kingfishers family Alcedinidae is in the order Coraciiformes, which includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies and ground-rollers. The name of the family was introduced by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815, it is divided into three subfamilies, the tree kingfishers, the river kingfishers and the water kingfishers. The name Daceloninae is sometimes used for the tree kingfisher subfamily but it was introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1841 while Halcyoninae introduced by Nicholas Aylward Vigors in 1825 is earlier and has priority. A few taxonomists elevate the three subfamilies to family status. In spite of the word "kingfisher" in their English vernacular names, many of these birds are not specialist fish-eaters; the centre of kingfisher diversity is the Australasian region, but the group is not thought to have originated there. Instead, they originated in the Indomalayan region around 27 million years ago and invaded the Australasian region a number of times. Fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming and Middle Eocene rocks in Germany, around 30–40 million years ago.
More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene rocks of Australia. Several fossil birds have been erroneously ascribed to the kingfishers, including Halcyornis, from the Lower Eocene rocks in Kent, considered a gull, but is now thought to have been a member of an extinct family. Amongst the three subfamilies, the Alcedininae are basal to the other two subfamilies; the few species found in the Americas, all from the subfamily Cerylinae, suggest that the sparse representation in the Western Hemisphere resulted from just two original colonising events. The subfamily is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyoninae, diversifying in the Old World as as the Miocene or Pliocene; the smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher, which averages 10 cm in length and between 9 and 12 g in weight. The largest kingfisher in Africa is the giant kingfisher, 42 to 46 cm in length and 255–426 g in weight; the familiar Australian kingfisher known as the laughing kookaburra is the heaviest species with females reaching nearly 500 grams in weight.
The plumage of most kingfishers is blue being the most common colours. The brightness of the colours is neither the product of iridescence or pigments, but is instead caused by the structure of the feathers, which causes scattering of blue light. In most species, no overt differences between the sexes exist; the kingfishers have dagger-like bills. The bill is longer and more compressed in species that hunt fish, shorter and more broad in species that hunt prey off the ground; the largest and most atypical bill is that of the shovel-billed kookaburra, used to dig through the forest floor in search of prey. They have short legs, although species that feed on the ground have longer tarsi. Most species have four toes; the irises of most species are dark brown. The kingfishers have excellent vision, they have restricted movement of their eyes within the eye sockets, instead using head movements to track prey. In addition, they are capable of compensating for the refraction of water and reflection when hunting prey underwater, are able to judge depth under water accurately.
They have nictitating membranes that cover the eyes to protect them when they hit the water. The kingfishers have a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring throughout the world's tropical and temperate regions, they are absent from some of the world's driest deserts. A number of species have reached islands groups those in the south and east Pacific Ocean; the Old World tropics and Australasia are the core areas for this group. Europe and North America north of Mexico are poorly represented, with only one common kingfisher, a couple of uncommon or local species each:; the six species occurring in the
Yamashina Institute for Ornithology
The Yamashina Institute for Ornithology is a non-profit scientific research organization in Japan, specializing in ornithology studies. The Yamashina Institute for Ornithology was founded by Dr. Yoshimaro Yamashina at his home in Shibuya, Tokyo as a private museum to store his collection of bird specimens and books. Marquis Yamashina was the second son of Prince Yamashina Kikumaro, he opened his museum to the public in 1942. At the Institute, Yamashina conducted research into bird taxonomy based on chromosomes, wrote numerous technical journal articles and books on ornithology; the Institute relocated to its present location 30 kilometer east of Tokyo at Abiko, Chiba in 1984. The Institute has maintained close ties to the Imperial Family of Japan, it is chaired by HIH Prince Akishino, younger brother to the Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan, their younger sister Princess Sayako worked as a researcher at the Institute from 1992-2005, where she specialized in the study of kingfishers. The Institute is organized into three research sections: The Ornithology Research Laboratory specializes in the ecology and systematics of birds, including foraging patterns of marine birds and genetic variations of bird populations using DNA sequencing.
The Bird Migration Research Center conducts bird banding campaigns, tagging more than 200,000 birds each year. It experiments with radio telemetry and satellite tracking to investigate migratory patterns; the Library and Collection Center maintains a collection of 69,000 different avian specimens from all over the world from eastern Asia and the north-western Pacific regions and a library of 39,000 ornithological books and periodicals. The Yamashina Institute publishes several journals and reports, including the Journal of the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, the annual Report of the Bird Migration Research Center and a monthly newspaper for support group members; the Institute sponsors a biannual Yamashina Yoshimaro Memorial Ornithological Award to an individual or group who has made remarkable contributions to the development ornithology or the protection of birds. Journal of the Yamashina Institute Yamashina Institute official website
Philippe of Belgium
Philippe or Filip is the King of the Belgians, having ascended the throne on 21 July 2013, following his father's abdication. He is the eldest child of King Albert II, whom he succeeded upon Albert's abdication for health reasons, Queen Paola, he married Countess Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz. King Philippe's elder daughter, Princess Elisabeth, is first in the line of succession. Philippe was born on 15 April 1960 during the reign of King Baudouin of Belgium, his father, Prince Albert, Prince of Liège was the second son of King Leopold III of Belgium and a younger brother of Baudouin. His mother, Princess of Liège, is a daughter of Italian aristocrat Fulco VIII, Prince Ruffo di Calabria, 6th Duke of Guardia Lombarda, his mother descends from the French House of La Fayette, the king is a descendant of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette and Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles. He was born at the Belvédère Castle in Laeken north of Brussels, he was baptised one month at the church of Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg in Brussels on 17 May, named Philippe after his great-great-grandfather Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders.
His godparents were his paternal grandfather, King Leopold III, his maternal grandmother, Donna Luisa, Princess Ruffo di Calabria. From 1978 to 1981, Philippe was educated at the Belgian Royal Military Academy in the 118th "Promotion Toutes Armes". On 26 September 1980, he took the officer's oath, he continued his education at Trinity College, Oxford and he attended graduate school at Stanford University, where he graduated in 1985 with an MA degree in political science. He obtained his certificates as a parachutist and a commando. In 1989, he attended a series of special sessions at the Royal Higher Defence Institute; the same year, he was promoted to colonel. In 1993 King Baudouin died in Spain, Albert became the new king, Philippe became the new heir apparent, titled Duke of Brabant. On 25 March 2001, the prince was appointed to the rank of major-general in the Land Component and the Air Component and to the rank of rear-admiral in the Naval Component. Philippe married Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz, daughter of a Walloon Count of Belgian noble family and female line descendant of Polish noble families such as the Princes Sapieha and Counts Komorowski, on 4 December 1999 in Brussels, in a civil ceremony at the Brussels Town Hall and a religious ceremony at the Cathedral of Saint Michel and Saint Gudule in Brussels.
They have four children: Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, born 25 October 2001 at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels Prince Gabriel, born 20 August 2003 at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels Prince Emmanuel, born 4 October 2005 at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels Princess Eléonore, born 16 April 2008 at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels On 6 August 1993, the government named Philippe as honorary chairman of the Belgian Foreign Trade Board. He succeeded his father, honorary chairman of the BFTB since 1962. On 3 May 2003, Philippe was appointed honorary chairman of the board of the Foreign Trade Agency, replacing the BFTB. In this capacity, Philippe has headed more than 60 economic missions. Upon his accession as seventh King of the Belgians, this role was taken over by his sister Princess Astrid. King Albert II announced on 3 July 2013 that he would abdicate in favour of Philippe on 21 July 2013. One hour after King Albert II's abdication, Prince Philippe was sworn in as King of the Belgians, his eldest child, Princess Elisabeth became his heir apparent and is expected to become Belgium's first queen regnant.
26 September 1980 – 21 March 1983: Belgian Air Force, Second Lieutenant Belgian Army, Second Lieutenant Belgian Navy, no rank 21 March 1983 – 1 December 1989: Belgian Air Force, Captain Belgian Army, Captain Belgian Navy, no rank 1 December 1989 – 5 April 2001: Belgian Air Force, Colonel Belgian Army, Colonel Belgian Navy, no rank 5 April 2001 – 25 March 2010: Belgian Air Component, Major General Belgian Land Component, Major General Belgian Marine Component, Divisional Admiral 15 March 2010 – 21 July 2013: Belgian Air Component, Lieutenant General Belgian Land Component, Lieutenant General Belgian Marine Component, Vice Admiral Since 21 July 2013: Belgian Air Component, General Belgian Land Component, General Belgian Marine Component, Admiral 15 April 1960 – 9 August 1993: His Royal Highness Prince Philippe of Belgium 9 August 1993 – 21 July 2013: His Royal Highness The Duke of Brabant 21 July 2013 – present: His Majesty The King of the Belgians Line of succession to the Belgian throne Prince Philippe Fund Official biography from the Belgian Royal Family website DHnet Article about Prince Philippe's education and military career
Japan: Grand Cordon of the Order of the Precious Crown.
