(Kazunomiya) was the wife of 14th shōgun Tokugawa Iemochi. She was renamed Lady Seikan'in-no-miya after she took the tonsure as a widow. Chikako was the youngest child of Emperor Ninkō.

Biography

Her birth name was Chikako. She was the eighth and youngest daughter of Emperor Ninkō, and was renamed Kangyō'in (観行院) by his concubine, Hashimoto Tsuneko , after she took the tonsure. She was the younger half-sister of Emperor Kōmei.

A few months before her birth, her father, Emperor Ninkō, died unexpectedly. Born on 1 August 1846, her official birth date was changed to 10 May because the actual birth date was a bad omen date, and a double bad omen with the death of her father a few months before.

She was known as an excellent calligrapher and she was also highly regarded as a waka poet.

The body of Iemochi was found. An old tradition was if the husband died, his wife would cut a piece of her hair, and the hair would be buried with her husband, but the hair that was buried with Iemochi was not Kazunomiya's.

There is a legend that Princess Kazu gave one of her ladies-in-waiting to Iemochi as a concubine, named Sachi. Sachi followed the shōgun to Kyoto and Osaka, but one year after Iemochi's death, Sachi was murdered by a samurai from Satsuma who believed her to be Princess Kazu.

The exhumation of Princess Kazunomiya's remains, together with the story of the mysterious fading photograph that was found with her, was referenced in Yasunari Kawabata's 1961 novel Beauty and Sadness.

Princess Kazunomiya was portrayed by Yumi Adachi in the 2003 Fuji TV miniseries Ōoku.

She appeared in the manga Jin and its TV series, where she was one of the patients saved by Jin Minakata and his medical knowledge.

Notes

References

  • Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ; OCLC 48943301
  • Satow, Ernest Mason and Baba Bunyei. (1905). Japan 1853–1864, or, Genji Yume Monogatari, Tokyo: Naigai shuppan kyokai.
  • The Royal Diaries Kazunomiya, Prisoner of Heaven, Japan, 1858 by Kathryn Lasky