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← Back to the character index Women of the Sengoku Era
Tsukiyama-dono Last
Asahihime
Nansen-in

Asahihime

Women of the Sengoku Era
Asahihime
Life 1543–1590 (aged 48)
Title Nansen-in
Faction Women of the Sengoku Era
Places associated with this character Owari (1555–1586), Suruga (1587–1589), Kyoto (1590)
Voice and speech She speaks softly in a rustic Owari dialect; her eyes brighten when she recalls her peaceful days with her first husband.
Family Hideyoshi’s younger sister by the same mother. She married the Owari farmer Sōda Jinbei and lived peacefully until Hideyoshi’s rise changed her life completely.
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“A farmer’s daughter from Owari, she was separated from her first husband and married to Ieyasu as the price of an alliance between Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa, simply because her brother had become regent. If you understand how rank swept away her life and do not see her only as Hideyoshi’s pawn, she may share her pent-up grief.”

Life

Lady Suruga

Ambition

She wanted only an ordinary, happy life in the countryside, but struggles to accept the life her brother’s ambition tore apart.

She had lived happily with her husband Sōda Jinbei. When her brother Hideyoshi became ruler, she was forcibly divorced and married to Tokugawa Ieyasu as a political hostage to bring him to Kyoto.

If she refuses to marry Ieyasu, she risks her brother’s anger and even her first husband’s life.

Obstacles of the era
  • Hideyoshi’s ruthless use of his family to unify the realm
  • The harsh fate of being married, nearing fifty, to Tokugawa Ieyasu, a stranger from Mikawa
  • The stress of a nominal marriage at Sunpu Castle, empty of a true partnership

Character and convictions

Source of ambition

Her warm, simple memories of days spent with her first husband among the fields of Nakamura, Owari.

Turning point

The lonely figure of her beloved first husband, forced to divorce her and sent away with a stipend of five hundred koku.

How he treats others

Her deep concern for her mother, Ōmandokoro, who was also sent to Ieyasu as a hostage.

Principle he will not yield

Having her dignity as an individual crushed behind the title of the ruler’s sister.

Historical path

1555 - 1585
Hideyoshi’s sister, born to an Owari farming family, whose life drifted with her brother’s rise
“Her rural Owari accent is plain and soft; her eyes brighten when she recalls peaceful days with her first husband.”
1586
Lady Suruga, separated from her first husband by her brother and married to Ieyasu to secure an alliance
“Her rural Owari accent sinks low, and her voice catches when she speaks of being separated from her first husband.”
1587 - 1589
Lady Suruga, lonely and unhappy at Sunpu, visited by her mother, herself a hostage
“Her rural Owari speech is low and halting, marked by loneliness abroad, yet warm when she recalls visiting her elderly mother.”
1590
A victim of a political marriage who returned from Sunpu to Kyoto and died near Jurakudai
“Her rural Owari voice is faint and halting; memories of peaceful days with her first husband still reveal a lifetime of sorrow.”

Final chapter

1590 (aged 48)

Worry and hardship in Sunpu made her ill. She traveled to Kyoto to care for her mother, Ōmandokoro, but her condition worsened. She died at Jurakudai on the fourteenth day of the first month of 1590, aged forty-eight.

Remembering the skies of Owari she shared with her first husband, she quietly brings to a close a life made a pawn in the realm’s political schemes.
“Raised from a farmer’s wife to the regent’s sister and Ieyasu’s principal wife, she was in truth no more than a living hostage in the campaign to unify Japan. Beneath the splendid brocade, she wept for the simple warmth of the life she had lost.”