An Imperial Concubine's Tale: Scandal, Shipwreck, and Salvation in Seventeenth-Century Japan
G. Rowley
Abstract
Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking saké and watching kabuki dancing in the presence of the emperor’s principal consort. Among these noblewomen was an imperial concubine named Nakanoin Nakako, who in 1609 became embroiled in a sex scandal involving both courtiers and young women in the emperor’s service. As punishment, Nakako was exiled to an island in the Pacific Ocean, but she never reached her destination. Instead, she was shipwrecked and spent ... More
Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking saké and watching kabuki dancing in the presence of the emperor’s principal consort. Among these noblewomen was an imperial concubine named Nakanoin Nakako, who in 1609 became embroiled in a sex scandal involving both courtiers and young women in the emperor’s service. As punishment, Nakako was exiled to an island in the Pacific Ocean, but she never reached her destination. Instead, she was shipwrecked and spent fourteen years in a remote village on the Izu Peninsula before she was finally allowed to return to Kyoto. In 1641, Nakako began a new adventure: she entered a convent and became a Buddhist nun. The book follows the banished concubine as she endures rural exile, receives an unexpected reprieve, and rediscovers herself as the abbess of a nunnery. The book also reveals the little-known lives of Japan’s samurai women who sacrificed themselves on the fringes of the great battles that brought an end to more than a century of civil war.
Keywords:
imperial concubine,
Japan,
Nakanoin Nakako,
sex scandal,
exile,
Buddhist nun,
samurai women
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780231158541 |
| Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231158541.001.0001 |
