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The Tragedy of Lady Gracia
by Wayne Muromoto
She was a paragon of beauty, learning and grace. She stood out even among the rest of the samurai women of her age for her strength of character. And she endured a heroic, albeit tragic, life and death. She was the Lady Hosokawa Gracia, born a samurai, trained in Buddhist scriptures, and a devout Christian convert.
"She is blessed with great intelligence and wisdom," the Jesuit Father Frois wrote of his Japanese convert, the Lady Hosokawa Gracia. Frois and his fellow Christians considered Gracia and the other samurai women they converted as the crown jewels of their mission in medieval Japan. In a few years after Frois penned these notes, however, foreign missionaries were expelled from the land and Gracia herself had died, a victim of the shifting tides of war in a strife-torn land.
The Age of Tragedy
The Sengoku Jidai ("Warring States Period") was the age of ransei, or a world in turmoil. For decades, from 1482 to 1558, Japan was torn apart by internal fighting pitting daimyo warlord against warlord. The Ashikaga bakufu government had lost its military power and the daimyo were jockeying for position, absorbing their neighbors and developing greater appetites for conquest. The constant warring would not abate until 1600, in the epic Battle of Sekigahara.Before the 1100s, the Kyoto imperial court held sway over the cultural landscape, and women were the equal of men, if not in official rank, then in everything else. Women of the court were among the most revered literary figures of their day. They could hold property apart from their spouses, and they played at the game of romance as actively as any fickle nobleman. The samurai, and the growing influence of male-centered Confucianism, changed all that. The military bakufu government system coincided with the institution of patrilineal inheritance and the lessening of the social and economic status of women.
Thus, in the Sengoku Jidai, samurai women were most often tragic heroines, cast by their lot to suffer under the tides of war. Some of them picked up weapons, to defend castle and home, as they were trained to do. Others, like Lady Gracia, fell victim to the fighting that engulfed the land.
The Daughter of a Traitor
Lady Gracia was born into into the noblest of samurai families, and her pedigree gave her the wherewithal to marry into another clan of very high status. Gracia was the wife of Hosokawa Etchu No Kami Tadaoki, originally the daimyo lord of Miyazu castle at Tango (he ruled there from 1580). Her original given name was Tamako (Jewel-child), Gracia being the Christian name given to her when she was baptized. As part of the Hosokawa family's emphasis on culture and learning, Gracia studied Zen Buddhism seriously for many years, becoming a devout follower and keen student of Buddhist doctrine.Tadaoki was a member of a very prestigious family, which was a distant branch of the Seiwa Genji imperial line through Minamoto Yoshisue. The Hosokawa clan was one of only three families from which the Kyoto kanro (deputy of the imperial capital of Kyoto) could be selected. Thus, it was in any aspiring daimyo's interests to enlist the Hosokawa on their side, in terms of power and prestige. Tadaoki originally allied himself with Oda Nobunaga. To solidify his position, he subsequently married Gracia, the daughter of Akechi Mitsuhide, another general in Nobunaga's growing army.
Mitsuhide, however, decided to revolt against his lord. He attacked the unsuspecting Nobunaga at Honnoji Temple in Kyoto. The turncoat asked Tadaoki to participate in the revolt, but he refused. Mitsuhide was successful in killing his former lord, but the rest of his plans went awry. Led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Hosokawa, Tokugawa and other daimyo clans formerly under Nobunaga formed an alliance that defeated Mitsuhide's forces.
However, because she was the daughter of a traitor, Gracia was confined for a while in a separate dwelling in Osaka. During this period, Tadaoki became engaged in a battle in Owari province. On that campaign, he met the Christian convert, a samurai lord called Takayama Justo Ukon. Impressed by Ukon's sincere devotion to this new faith, Tadaoki himself became converted to Christianity. When she found out about her husband's conversion, Gracia decided to learn more about this "barbarian" religion.
Christianity was making inroads at a time when many the Buddhist sects had forgotten their original spiritual doctrines and were participating in the accumulation of political and military power, alienating many Japanese. Many sects had become militant, raising sizable armies and participating in the struggles for power that marred the land.
The Jesuits took advantage of this situation and built up a national congregation of disaffected Buddhists to some 300,000.
In 1587, when Tadaoki was participating in a campaign in Kyushu, Gracia was baptized and received her Christian name. Together with other samurai women, Gracia listened fervently to the sermons of Takai Cosume. She asked questions frequently, particularly about the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and Eternal Life, and couched her ruminations in esoteric Zen terminology. Cosume, in his accounts, praised Gracia, noting, "In all my 18 years (of teaching Christianity), I have never had a conversation with a Japanese woman as learned as she. . ." (1)
Although many Japanese converts were peasants and farmers who were drawn to the Jesuit's teachings of simplicity, honesty and frugality, Lady Gracia was the center of a cultured group of samurai who entered the faith. Other bushi (samurai) of note included Maria, the sister of Hideyoshi's consort Yodogimi; Magdalen, a lady-in-waiting to Hideyoshi's wife Kita No Mandokoro Onene; the sons of Maeda Gen'i; the Mori clan of Chikugo province; and Aizu province's Gamo Ujisato.
Gracia was no fair-weather convert. She had studied Zen for many years. To plumb the depths of Christianity, she decided to learn Latin and Portuguese in order to understand Christian thought in its original languages. She gathered other Christian samurai women and together they deciphered the lessons of this foreign religion from within the context of Japanese culture and philosophy.
The Jesuit ministry grew in influence, until Hideyoshi issued orders to evict foreign missionaries and banned the faith. Many of the foreign missionaries were forced from Kyoto to harbors in Western Japan. The leader of the Japanese mission, Father Organtino, ended up in Kyushu, although he managed to sneak back twice to Kyoto to preach. He went back at least once expressly for the purpose of seeing Lady Gracia because she remained such a devout believer.
Organtino wrote of Gracia, ". . . She is of the greatest nobility, and we brethren pray to our Lord for her. . ."To keep the other daimyo docile, Hideyoshi ordered their wives to be held in quarters in Osaka, where he constructed his headquarters. Although officially termed "guests," the wives were hostages.
At one time during her confinement, Organtino received a message from Lady Gracia, asking if there was any way that she and other samurai women could leave their gilded cages and journey to the west with him. Organtino, although he empathized with their plight, wrote back to Gracia and told her to remember that another person, facing a cross, wanted to turn back. ". . . More than anything else, contemplate that greater cross. . ." Organtino wrote.
The legends go that Gracia, upon receiving this note, steeled herself for her ordeal. (2)
When Hideyoshi died, new alliances were quickly drawn up among the reigning daimyo. Tadaoki sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu, a rising star among the daimyo. Ieyasu quickly became a favorite among many samurai, but he was opposed by Ishida Mitsunari, who was backed by the western daimyo.
In 1600, Tadaoki joined forces with Ieyasu to participate in a campaign against Uesugi Kagekatsu, in the far north. With Ieyasu absent from the power centers of Kyoto and Osaka, Mitsunari tried to wrest control from the shaky council of five elders, who were supposed to rule in Hideyoshi's stead. He ordered that the wives of his enemies be seized and placed in Osaka Castle as hostages.
Mitsunari's warriors attacked the residence of Lady Gracia without warning. Under siege, with the walls burning from fire arrows, her few retainers fought off the enemy courageously. Gracia prayed to the very end, when one of her samurai assisted her suicide. Gracia chose death rather than capture and humiliation, as befitted a samurai's daughter. She was 38 years old.
If the life of Hosokawa Gracia sounds hauntingly familiar, it is because she was probably the model upon which James Clavell loosely based his character Lady Mariko upon in his novel Shogun. Like Gracia, Mariko served the daimyo who eventually became the shogun of Japan after the Battle of Sekigahara. (In the novel, Tokugawa Ieyasu is called Lord Toranaga.)
Gracia's death turned the Hosokawa clan completely against Mitsunari. Under the banner of the Tokugawa, the Hosokawa and other daimyo fought the forces of Mitsunari and defeated them at the Battle of Sekigahara later that year. For his services, Tadaoki was transferred to Kokura, in the large fief of Buzen. Tadaoki served the Tokugawa long and well, and became renowned as a warrior, a man of culture and learning, and a tea master. In the tea world, he is known by his Buddhist name Hosokawa Sansai. But whatever laurels Tadaoki and his descendants accumulated, it was all due to the sacrifice of his wife, the tragic Lady Gracia, who did not shirk from her own cross when the time came.
References:
1 P. 137, "Gaikokujin No Mita Sengoku No Onnatachi," by Nishimura Keiko, Rekishi To Tabi, Volume 19, Number 9, June issue. Dai Nihon Insatsu Kabushikigaisha, 2-10-8, Iidabashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102. 1993.
2 Ibid.Other References:
Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, by E. Papinot. 1972.A History of Japan, by George Samson. Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan. 1974.
Copyright ©Tengu Press Wayne Muromoto. All rights reserved.
