The Warlord, His Wife and His Concubines - by Lesley Downer

'That bald rat.' Official court portrait of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi by Kano Mitsunobu (1561-1608)

‘Your beauty grows day by day. Tokichiro complains about you constantly and it is outrageous. While that bald rat flusters around trying to find another good woman, you remain lofty and elegant. Do not be jealous. Show Hideyoshi this letter.’

So speaks the unexpectedly kindly voice of Oda Nobunaga in a letter addressed to Nene, Hideyoshi’s wife, around 1575. The imperious Nobunaga was, at the time, lord of half Japan and determined to conquer the rest of it in short order. 

Hideyoshi, ‘that bald rat’, also known as Tokichiro, was Nobunaga’s right hand man. As the adage went, if a nightingale refused to sing, Nobunaga’s response would be to kill it. Hideyoshi’s would be to persuade it to sing - and to sing the song he wanted.

I love the way the letter takes us all the way back to 1575 and gives us a sense of Nobunaga’s, Hideyoshi’s and Nene’s personalities. At the time Hideyoshi was 37 and famously had an eye for the ladies. Nene was 25 and they’d been married for 12 years.

Hideyoshi on his horse with his splendid headdress
(unknown artist)

Meanwhile in England, some 6000 miles away, Elizabeth I - born in 1533 and a near contemporary of both Nobunaga (b 1534) and Hideyoshi (b 1537) - was on the throne. That same year, 1575, Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester organised a magnificent three week party at his lavish palace, Kenilworth, as an extended marriage proposal to his queen. He failed, of course.

Wives of the Warlords, Part II

Monkey
Twelve years earlier, in 1563, Nene was thirteen, strikingly beautiful and vibrant with a wisdom and calm beyond her years. She was the daughter of a mid-ranking samurai and lived in the castle town of Kiyosu where Nobunaga was daimyo. She had plenty of suitors, handsome eligible samurai of high rank. But there was also Tokichiro, a short, scrawny 25-year-old with a face like a monkey. People called him ‘Monkey’, which didn’t seem to bother him.

Hideyoshi with some of his ladies by Sasaki 
Toyokichi - Nihon Hanazue, 1896 (Walters Art 
Museum; gift of Mr and Mrs C.R.Snell Jr.)

Tokichiro was low class, of farming stock, but had miraculously risen through the ranks to enter Nobunaga’s service. He’d been Nobunaga’s sandal bearer, stable boy, gardener and other menial jobs. He certainly didn’t seem to have many prospects. But Nene decided to marry him. One can only assume it was a love match - extraordinary in those days.

By the time Nobunaga sent his letter, Tokichiro had risen in rank to daimyo and was building his first castle. He was now a general with the name Hideyoshi. He was a superb strategist and a brilliant man. But his key quality was his golden tongue. He could talk himself out of the most hopeless of situations and charm people into doing practically anything he wanted. In fact he turned around battles just by his ability to use surprise tactics and his powers of persuasion. 

He was also genuinely likeable. Nobunaga became fiercer with age and was prone to terrifying rages. But whenever he heard Hideyoshi’s voice in the distance, a smile would twitch the corner of his lips. He’d be unable to carry on being angry no matter how hard he tried. Hideyoshi had the unfailing ability to make him relax and laugh.

The Power Behind The Throne

Lady Kodai-in - Nene in old age
(after Hideyoshi's death she took the tonsure)

As Hideyoshi was building his castle, a town sprang up around it. Being a kind-hearted man, Hideyoshi didn’t demand a huge amount of tribute from the townsfolk. But the people in neighbouring towns started to complain because they had to pay so much more tribute than the folk in Hideyoshi’s new town so he decided he’d better increase it. 

At this point Nene stepped in. Throughout their marriage he discussed everything with her and when they were apart they regularly exchanged letters. Very few of hers remain but his have been collected and translated. On the matter of tribute, he writes to her that he has followed her advice and decided not to raise it. ‘Because you refused I froze it. Although I issued a new order, because you refused it I decided to exempt their tributes.’

After Nobunaga’s shocking murder in 1582 Hideyoshi set to work to finish off his project of bringing Japan together under his banner, transforming it from 260 warring princedoms into a single unified peaceful country. While he was away campaigning it was Nene’s job to run the castle. She was in charge of the money and of taking care of his mother and their adopted children and of policing and punishing miscreants.

Hideyoshi cherryblossom viewing
with Lady Chacha

Nene advised him on everything - from how to run his military campaigns to how to run the empire. He in his turn wrote to her describing every political decision and every military action - hostages taken, heads taken, how he overcame this clan and that clan. He also wrote on projects he was just beginning to think about, like subjugating Korea and China. Nene always had wise advice to give.

Some of his letters to her are rather sweet. After describing his latest military campaign he writes that his skin is getting dark and his hair is turning grey and he’s afraid she might not like him any more.

Concubines

Then there were the concubines. Any sensible warlord’s wife knew perfectly well that her husband would have concubines - it went with the job. Hideyoshi did however take it rather to extremes. The Jesuit priest Luis Frois who was around at the time wrote that he had a hundred concubines - though as a Jesuit Frois probably wasn’t clear on exactly who was a concubine and who was a lady attendant. Nevertheless it was pretty good going for a short scrawny bloke with a face like a monkey.

Lady Chacha (Yodo Dono)

Nene put up with it all with good humour - until Lady Chacha came along. It’s impossible to imagine how people felt over four centuries ago. Nevertheless we can guess that Nene wasn’t happy. 

Nene never had any children and neither did all those concubines - until Chacha. When Hideyoshi was 52 Chacha (who was 23) gave him a son and heir, Tsurumatsu. Hideyoshi doted on him and wrote him many letters signed, touchingly, ‘Daddy’. But the ‘little prince’ died when he was two and Hideyoshi was distraught. Then Chacha gave him another son, Hideyori, who survived him and became his heir.

Chacha was a famous beauty and came from the most noble possible lineage. She was the daughter of Nobunaga’s sister, Lady Oichi, another famous beauty who had gone to her death in a blaze of glory, accompanying her husband in death when he fell foul of ... yes, Hideyoshi. While Nene was modest and down to earth, Lady Chacha was a prima donna and when she became the mother of the heir demanded her own castle. Hideyoshi had one built for her - Yodo Castle, half way between Kyoto and Osaka.

Hideyoshi with some of his women
by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806)

Japanese Renaissance

In the end Hideyoshi reigned for twelve years after unifying Japan and ushered in a glorious golden age of the arts. He loved culture, perhaps because he had grown up without anything, in poverty. He studied Noh dancing assiduously and became a great aficionado of the tea ceremony. He once famously invited the entire populace of Kyoto to a ten day tea ceremony (though he got bored and it only lasted a single day) and he filled Kyoto with beautiful buildings and was a great patron of the arts. The Momoyama period has gone down in history as a Golden Age.

He died - not on the battlefield but in his bed - in 1598. Both Nene and Lady Chacha survived him. The question was, who would be his successor? Wisely, Nene backed Tokugawa Ieyasu - who, as the adage went, waited and waited for that stubborn nightingale to sing; and now finally it sang. Lady Chacha and her son Hideyori backed those who opposed him and, like her mother, Chacha ended in a blaze of glory, killing herself as Osaka Castle went up in flames around her.

For, as all students of Japanese history know well, the age that followed did not belong to Hideyoshi’s rather useless heir, Hideyori, but to the stolid, patient Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic tale set in nineteenth century Japan just as it was coming out of the Tokugawa period and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Alas, there are no pictures of the young Nene. 

'Monkey.' Portrait of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Trouble at t'Palace - by Lesley Downer

There’s a fable that every Japanese schoolchild knows. Three men are watching a nightingale, waiting to hear its beautiful song. But the nightingale stubbornly refuses to sing. What are they going to do about it? 

‘Kill it,’ says Nobunaga.

‘Make it want to sing,’ says Hideyoshi.

‘Wait,’ says Ieyasu. ‘Wait till it sings of its own accord.’

Lady No - portrait in Gifu Castle

Nobunaga, lord of the Oda clan, Hideyoshi of the Toyotomi and Ieyasu of the Tokugawa were three rival warlords who sought to unify Japan in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the country was torn apart with endless civil wars. They all lived at the same time and all knew each other.

They were all brilliant generals. Nobunaga was dashing, fearless and brutal; Hideyoshi wily, brilliant and able to argue himself out of any situation, no matter how desperate; and Ieyasu stolid, calculating and very very patient. You can guess which one won in the end.

Each of them had a formidable woman behind him - whether on his side or against him.

In those days young people of high rank were invariably married off in political marriages, either to an ally to cement an alliance or to an enemy warlord to make peace. If it was the latter, there might be a lethal shifting of alliances and you’d have to choose between your father or your husband.

Oda Nobunaga, depicted by the
Jesuit missionary Giovanni
Nicolao. Portrait commissioned 
and approved by Nobunaga

Wives of the Warlords, Part I

Lady No, the Princess of Mino

It’s probably never a good idea to marry your enemy’s daughter, especially if that enemy is the Viper of Mino. But that’s what happened to Nobunaga. In 1549 his father married him off to Kicho, Lady No’s name as a girl, when he was 14 and she was 13. The idea was to broker a shaky peace with Dosan of the Saito clan. Dosan had started life as an oil merchant, then murdered the daimyo of his province, Mino, and taken over his lands, mountaintop fortress and wife, which was why he was known as the Viper.

On their wedding day 14 year old Nobunaga declared that his bride had ‘the mind of a genius and the appearance of a goddess’. She was reputedly a prodigy in swordsmanship and the martial arts. You had to be able to take care of yourself in those days. She was basically a ‘hostage wife’ in that she lived in the Odas’ castle and could be disposed of if there was trouble.

Nobunaga dancing

The Oda clan were the lords of Owari, directly north of Mino, so naturally the two clans were deadly enemies and spent a lot of their time setting each others’ villages afire, seizing land from each other and having pitched battles. There were suspicions that Kicho, the Princess of Mino, had been planted not just in the family but in Nobunaga’s bed so that she could plot against him, spy on him or murder him, depending.

The Idiot Lord
The following year Nobunaga’s father died and he became lord. Nobunaga was known as the Idiot Lord because of his propensity to play the fool.

Lady No’s father, Saito Dosan, famously arranged a meeting with Nobunaga to size him up. He then hid in a peasant’s hut and spied on him as he was approaching the meeting place in the middle of a huge entourage. Nobunaga looked like a slovenly fool, lolling on his horse with a messy topknot, with amulets dangling from his belt and leopard and tiger skins tossed over his saddle. Dosan must have smirked to himself. There’d be no problems with this one. He was clearly an idiot.

But before the formal meeting Nobunaga said he needed time to change. When he reappeared he was transformed from a carefree youth into a stern-faced daimyo, with a perfectly oiled topknot and crisp hakama skirts.

Official portrait of Oda Nobunaga

Dosan realised that Nobunaga had decided it was to his advantage to play the fool. Given that his daughter was a hostage in Nobunaga’s castle, it’s said that from this point on he gave up all thought of invading Owari.

Daughter of the Viper

Lady No being the ‘daughter of the viper’, there were ongoing suspicions that she was at the very least passing information to her father. Once he became lord Nobunaga took to creeping out of their bedchamber in the middle of night and staying away till dawn. Eventually Lady No asked him what he was doing. Was he seeing another woman?

After much persuasion he confessed that he was in touch with two of her father’s closest retainers. They had said they would kill her father, then light a signal for him so that he could invade with a huge army and take over Mino province. He was up every night till dawn watching out for the signal.

Having confessed he swore her to secrecy but naturally she found a way to get a message to her father - proof that she was indeed in communication with him. Her father, hearing the news, had his faithful elders executed. Nobunaga’s story was of course all lies. Having lost his faithful retainers her father was much weakened.

The Saito family castle in Mino that Oda Nobunaga 
took over and renamed Gifu Castle

The Leper Lord 

The other kink in Kicho’s family was that her father and brother hated each other. Her father, possibly suffering from a guilty conscience, suspected that her brother was not his but the son of the murdered late daimyo, whose wife Dosan had married.

In the end there was a huge battle between them and Lady No’s father, Dosan, was killed. The son, Yoshitatsu, was struck down by leprosy shortly afterwards, obviously in judgement for the unnatural act of killing his own father, and was thenceforth known as the Leper Lord.

The Concubine

All of which gave Nobunaga an excellent excuse to invade, avenge his father-in-law and ‘liberate’ the land of Mino, which he did in 1567.

As for progeny, Lady No never had a child. Eight years after their marriage, Nobunaga met and fell in love with a lady called Kitsuno of the Ikoma family. He took her as his concubine and they had two sons and a daughter but then she died at the age of 29. It’s said that Nobunaga mourned her through the night and had her status upgraded to a second wife so that her children could be his heirs. His son Nobutada was given to Lady No to be raised. 

Nobunaga trying to fend off his attackers at Honnoji Temple, Kyoto

The Traitor

In 1582, when Nobunaga was 48, he was attacked by one of his own generals turned traitor. He and his son were killed and the temple where they were staying in Kyoto burnt to the ground. 

Shortly afterwards a veiled lady slipped away from Nobunaga’s castle, Azuchi Castle, in the middle of the night. Lady No was never seen again. It was said that she stayed in hiding as wars raged and died in 1612.

All this presaged a new period in Japan’s epic history - which revolves around central Japan and the very city where I used to live, Gifu! Stay tuned for more.

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun's Queen, is an epic tale set in nineteenth century Japan and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.