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Go[u]: Himetachi no Sengoku [Depicting the Life of Go(u) and the
Other Ladies of the Warring States Period].1 The Edo-Tokyo Museum,
Tokyo, 2 January–20 February 2011.
Peopled with such distinctive individuals as Oda Nobunaga (織田信長,
1534–82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉, 1536–98) and Tokugawa
Ieyasu (徳川家康, 1542–1616), prominent warrior governors, or Sen
Rikyu (千利休, 1521–91), a renowned tea master, Japan of the late
sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries is one of the most popular
periods in the national historical imagination and repeatedly offers fruitful
subjects for Taiga drama, the annual yearlong historical NHK television
series.2 This exhibition was held in conjunction with the 2011 NHK Taiga
“Gou: Hime-tachi no Sengoku” (The Life of Ladies in the Warring States
Period). Just as the TV drama series focused not only on Gou (江) but also
other noblewomen from that time, the exhibition displayed items belonging to and representing her along with those from others in her circle. One
of the main aims of the exhibition was to meet the needs of the newly
created public interest in Gou, the heroine of the TV drama series, who
was relatively unknown at the beginning of 2011. This exhibition review
will first provide an account of Gou’s life and the general interest in this
princess, then review the exhibition itself, and finally discuss the television
drama series.
Princess Gou (Sûgen-in [崇源院] as she is posthumously called) was
born in 1573 between Azai Nagamasa (浅井長政), the Daimyô of northern
Ômi province, and his wife Ichi (市), the younger sister of Oda Nobunaga,
who, in his attempt to unify and pacify the realm, eventually destroyed
Nagamasa in 1573. Gou was the youngest of what came to be known as
“the three Azai sisters.” The other two are Chacha (茶々, Yododono [淀殿]),
the second wife to Hideyoshi, who succeeded Nobunaga to pacify the
realm in 1582, and Hatsu (初, Jyôkou-in [常高院]), wife to the Daimyô
of Ômi Province Kyôgoku Takatsugu (京極高次). Their mother Ichi and
The English title was found on the official website of this exhibition, which is no
longer available.
2
Japanese names from the early modern period will take the form of family name
followed by given name.
1
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stepfather Shibata Katsui’e (柴田勝家), the Daimyô of Echizen Province,
both died after being defeated in battle with Hideyoshi in 1583. The final
moments of Ichi and Katsui’e are described in detail by the Jesuit Luis
Frois in a collection of letters written in Portuguese.3 After having survived
defeat in two castles, Gou and her sisters lived under the guardianship of
Hideyoshi.
Hideyoshi compelled Gou to marry three times. In 1584, the then
twelve-year old Gou married her cousin Saji Kazunari (佐治一成) of
Owari Province, but they were separated by Hideyoshi within the year
because Kazunari declined to take the side of Hideyoshi in a battle.4 In
February 1592 Gou married Toyotomi Hidekatsu (豊臣秀勝), a nephew of
Hideyoshi, though their married life lasted for only one month. Hidekatsu
was ordered by Hideyoshi to go to the battlefield in Korea, dying there
from illness in September of the same year. In the meantime, Gou gave
birth to her first child, Sadako (完子), in Osaka. (In 1604 Sadako became
the wife of Kujyô Yukii’e (九条幸家), who became the chancellor to the
emperor four years later.) In 1595, finally, she married Ieyasu’s son and
heir, Tokugawa Hidetada (徳川秀忠), who later became the second Shogun
(将軍) of the Tokugawa Shogunate that stabilized early modern Japan.
Gou had two sons and five daughters with Hidetada.5 Of these, the first
son Iemitsu (家光) became the third Shogun, while the eldest daughter
Sen (千) married Toyotomi Hideyori (豊臣秀頼), Hideyoshi’s son. The
fifth daughter Masako (和子) married Emperor Gomizunoo (後水尾天皇),
giving birth to her first daughter Okiko (興子, Empress Meisyo [明正天皇])
Iesvs: Cartas Qve Os Padres E Irmãos Da Companh ia Iesus Escreuerão Dos Reynos
Iapão & China Aos Do Mesma Companhia Da India, & Europa, Des Do Anno de 1549 Atè
O De 1580. 1598 (Tenri: Tenri Central Library, 1972), 97.
4
See Tetsuo Owada, Ogou: Sengoku no Hime kara Tokugawa no Tsuma e [Gou:
From Princess to Wife of the Warring States Period] (Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei
Shuppan, 2010), 41–44. On the other hand, Chizuru Fukuda thinks that Gou was
only engaged to Kazunari. See Fukuda, Gou no Shougai [The Life of Gou] (Tokyo:
Chuôkouron-shinsha, 2010), 72.
5
Fukuda insists that Gou bore only a son and two daughters and that the other
four were children fathered by Hidetada with other women. See Fukuda, 234. Many
historians such as Tetsuo Owada, however, consider Gou to have given birth to all seven
children. See Owada, Ogou.
3
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three years after their marriage. Gou’s children thus played major historical
roles as a Shogun, the wife of a Daimyô, and the mother of an Emperor.
Gou supported her husband until her death in Edo Castle in 1626, at the
age of fifty-four.
Although her shrine built just after her death in Zôjô-ji Temple was
magnificent6 and several female authors have written novels about her
since the 1960s, Gou had not been as widely known as her older sister
Chacha before the exhibition and the television drama series (Figure 1).
As Yoshimi Miyamoto points out, Gou’s low public profile was partly due
to the famous Chacha, who bore the only surviving son of Hideyoshi and
tried to sustain the Toyotomi regime after her husband’s death. Closely
related to influential historical male figures by blood in the aforementioned
family networks, Gou was one of the most important women in early
modern Japan. By approaching the Warring States period and the ensuing
establishment of the Tokugawa regime, that is, the early modern period in
Japan, through Gou’s female perspective, “Gou: Hime-tachi no Sengoku”
was able to offer a fresh approach to a celebrated period of national history.
The result was a vivid picture of the active participation of women in the
making of early modern Japanese society.
The items concerning Gou displayed in the exhibition include: two
letters from her to Hatsu, her portrait, a statue thought to be a representation of Gou, the statue of the Buddhist deity of mercy owned either
by Gou or her husband, the motifs portrayed in her large shrine, and
the magnificent drawings which show the engravings therein (Figure 2).
Her only portrait is now kept at Yougen-in Temple, Kyoto, which holds
the Buddhist memorial tablets of the three families, i.e., the Azai, the
Toyotomi and the Tokugawa. In the portrait Gou is depicted as a nun
with a Buddhist rosary in her hands and wears simple light-brown clothes.
Since she died six years before her husband, however, it cannot be assumed
that she actually became a nun. According to Chizuru Fukuda, her portrayal in this manner represents her devotion to a memorial service for the
Before Gou’s shrine built during the Edo period was destroyed by bombs during
World War II, a part of the shrine was relocated to Kentyou-ji Temple, Kamakura.
6
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Azai and the Toyotomi.7 The exhibition items from her shrine indicate the
importance she was accorded by her contemporaries.
Gou, the first Midaidokoro (御台所, the wife of Shogun and the official first lady), is said to be, at least in the NHK drama series, one of the
people who contributed to the establishment of the inner palace, Ôoku
(大奥), where only the Shogun’s wife, his concubines, their children, and
the servants lived.8 In 1618, the inner palace was regulated by Ôokuhatto
(大奥法度, the Act for the Inner Palace), one of the protocols instituted
by her husband Hidetada to help secure the Tokugawa establishments.
Although this place in effect segregated women from the male political
world, it was also an epoch-making event in the period. The exhibition
includes a sketch of the inner palace, as well as items from her residence: a
folding screen on which is depicted the liveliness of Edo city, a part of the
tile of Edo Castle in which Gou resided, and the eighteenth-century drafts
of the paintings on the walls or sliding doors in the castle, drawn by Kanou
Seisen, a leading painter at the time.
One of the special features in this exhibition is a cabinet with a doubleleaf door from Gou’s shrine, built by her second son Tadanaga (忠長), who
constructed both shrine and cabinet in Shizuoka, his dominion. (Another
shrine for her was to be erected next to Hidetada’s in Zôjô-ji Temple,
Tokyo, a building which was unfortunately destroyed by an air raid during World War II.) Delicate golden decorations adorn both the inside and
outside of the cabinet. According to the exhibition catalogue, this piece
was preserved in Yûten-ji Temple, Tokyo, after the shrine was dismantled
later in the Edo period, and it remained unidentified for a long time as
having been made for Gou until recent restoration work revealed the fact.9
Tadanaga was raised by Gou, while his elder brother Iemitsu was cared
for by his wet nurse Fuku (福, Kasuga no Tsubone [春日局]). Although
Iemitsu was finally chosen as the third Shogun, it is widely assumed that
Fukuda, 198.
“Gou towa?” [Who was Gou], Gou: Hime-tachi no Sengoku, NHK, n.d., Web. 12
Nov. 2011.
9
Katsumasa Iwaya, “Sûgen-in sama no Kuuden” [The Palace of Sûgen-in],
The Catalogue of Gou: Himetachi no Sengoku (N.p.: NHK/NHK Promotion, 2011),
167–78.
7
8
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Gou promoted Tadanaga for the post. Shin-ichi Saito, curator of the Fukui
Fine Art Museum, noted in the catalogue that “this special relationship”
between Tadanaga and his mother led him to build Gou’s shrine with his
own hands.10 The curators of the exhibition emphasize the motherliness of
Gou rather than her politically assertive personality, for they chose not to
include a letter, mentioned in the catalogue, from Ieyasu to Gou protesting the partiality of Gou for Tadanaga, which also proclaims that Iemitsu,
not Tadanaga, would become the Shogun.11 The reason behind the omission may be partly because the original is lost, so scholars are not certain
whether it was truly written by Ieyasu.
The exhibition also presented items related to people associated with
Gou, both male and female: Gou’s parents and uncle, Chacha and the
Toyotomi, Hatsu and the Kyogoku, and the Tokugawa. These materials
help to clarify the historical circumstances in which Gou lived at the centre
of the political world of early modern Japan.
The women featured in the exhibition, in addition to the Azai
sisters, are: Ichi (Gou’s mother), Inu (犬, Ichi’s sister), Oné (おね,
Hideyoshi’s wife), Kyôgoku Tatsuko (京極龍子, Hideyoshi’s concubine),
Naka (なか, Hideyoshi’s mother), Asahi (旭, Hideyoshi’s sister), Fuku
(wet nurse of Gou’s first son), Princess Sen (the first daughter between
Gou and Hidetada), Tenshuni (天秀尼, Sen’s daughter-in-law), Acha no
Tsubone (阿茶局, Ieyasu’s concubine) and Princess Toku (督姫, Ieyasu’s
second daughter). They are all relatives or associates of Gou. Among them,
Fuku and Acha no Tsubone are of particular significance. The exhibition
included a large number of items belonging to Fuku, who was promoted
to the position of wet nurse to the third Shogun, indicating her great influence on the Tokugawa. According to the curator’s notes on the portrait of
Shin-ichi Saito, “Sugen-in Kuuden,” The Catalogue of Gou: Hime-tachi no
Sengoku (N.p.: NHK/NHK Promotion, 2011), 224. The exhibition of “Gou” traveled
also to Fukui and Shiga.
11
Kouji Ota, “Gou to Azai Sanshimai no Shogai” [The Lives of Gou and the Azai
Sisters], The Catalogue of Gou: Hime-tachi no Sengoku (N.p.: NHK/NHK Promotion,
2011), 18. The letter was included in another exhibition about the ladies in the Tokugawa
including Gou: “Tokugawa no Himegimi” [The Princesses of Tokugawa], Tokugawa
Museum, Nagoya, July 30-September 19, 2011.
10
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Acha no Tsubone, she and Hatsu entered the political sphere when they
became the negotiators for peace after the battle between the Tokugawa
and the Toyotomi,12 an incident that was depicted in the NHK drama
series (Figure 3). In this instance, this exhibition called attention to the role
women played in the political process during this turbulent period.
The television series “Gou: Himetachi no Sengoku” focused on the
energetic activities of Gou, dramatizing her life to the age of fifty, as well
as on those of other women. The protagonist is represented as a female
version of her uncle Nobunaga, who aimed to stop civil wars by unifying
the whole realm. The drama offers a scene where Nobunaga says to Gou,
“Believe in yourself and live as you wish.” It was apparently difficult for
women in the Warring States period to live in such a way, but the fictionalized Gou tries to follow the dictum of her uncle thereafter. Taking advantage of the lack of historical materials, the screenwriter Kumiko Tabuchi
created scenes in which Gou talks directly with not only Nobunaga but
also Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Through her conversations with these men as
well as her experiences of losing her relatives in wars, she comes to wish
for peace in her country. In the final battle against the Toyotomi, her husband Hidetada decides, or so the drama suggests, to destroy Chacha and
her son in order to secure permanent peace. At first, it is difficult for Gou
to accept this decision by her husband, but their shared hope for national
peace gradually enables them to reconcile. Her husband, together with
her father-in-law, successfully brings an end to the civil wars, establishing
a political system that makes possible three hundred years of peace and
social order. Her mother Ichi, who acts as the narrator and is also a character in the series, voices the credo of her generation: “For women, to live
means to fight.” In the last scene of the series, Gou muses that, for her, to
live means to appreciate joy.
In the exhibition, visitors could gain a sense of Gou as a real person
who lived four centuries ago. The number of the items belonging to her,
however, was fewer than one might expect. Yet these items nevertheless
Hiroyuki Toda, “Acha no Tsubone Zou” [Portrait of Acha no Tsubone], The
Catalogue of Gou: Hime-tachi no Sengoku (N.p.: NHK/NHK Promotion, 2011),
223–24.
12
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enable the viewers to supply the missing parts of her life with their own
imagination. Such a way of experiencing the exhibition must be similar to
the way researchers responsible for ensuring historical verisimilitude utilize historical documents and materials. Youhei Oomori, the chief-director
of historical research for the NHK series, called a series like “Gou” “a fiction as well as a fantasy,” stating that “what a historical researcher should
do is but to judge whether it can be safely placed there and then.”13 The
exhibition of Gou’s belongings and those of people close to her, as well as
her dramatized life stimulated the public imagination, allowing a glimpse
of the tumultuous world of a princess in early modern Japan.
Hanako Nadehara
Tokyo Woman’s Christian University
Hajime Kamisaka, “Taiga Drama no Jidaikoushô wa ‘Rekishi no Alibi Kousaku’”
[The Historical Reconstruction of “Taiga drama”: Constructing Historical Alibis], MSN:
Sankei News, MSN, 20 Nov. 2011, Web. 29 Nov. 2011.
13
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Figure 1. Portrait of a Woman Said to be Yododono [Chacha]. Courtesy of Nara
Prefectural Museum of Art, Nara.
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Figure 2. Portrait of Sûgen-in [Gou]. Courtesy of Yougen-in Temple, Kyoto.
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Figure 3. Portrait of Jyôkou-in [Hatsu]. Courtesy of Jyôkou-ji Temple and Fukui
Prefectural Wakasa History Museum, Obama, Fukui.
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