Prince Shotoku(or Shotoku-Taishi) is one of famous persons in Japan's history. According to studies of historians, he was born in 574 A.D. as second son of the Emperor Yohmei and died at the age of 48 in 622 A.D..
It is said that he was very clever as he was able to hear and recognize opinions of eight persons simultaneously.
In the era of the Empress Suiko, his aunt and the first empress(Her Majesty) in the history, he played very important roles as her regency. He established, for the first time of the history, the Constitution of 17 articles, 12 classes of bureaucracy, system of dispatching students to China for learning leading culture including Buddhism and so on.
Because of his good politics, he has been, century after century, respected by Japanese people until now.
Moreover, he is very popular even today. Until recently, his image(left) was printed on bill notes of ¥ 10,000. Now, the notes are changed to newly designed ones on which other person's image is printed. But, people in Japan still call often "Shotoku-Taishi" for valuable notes as the US people call often "Greenbacks" for bill notes of US dollars. For example, "I have no Shotoku-Taishi"--translation: "Now, I have no money, but only coins".