, usually referred to as
, (1563 - August 25 (17th day of the 7th month by the
Japanese calendarOn January 1, 1873, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, with local names for the months and mostly fixed holidays, but before 1873, a lunisolar calendar was in use, which was adapted from the Chinese calendar...
), 1600) was a
JapaneseThe are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as...
noblewoman, daughter of
Akechi Mitsuhide, nicknamed Jūbei or , was a samurai who lived during the Sengoku period of Feudal Japan.Mitsuhide was a samurai and a general under daimyo Oda Nobunaga, although he later betrayed Nobunaga and caused him to commit seppuku.-Early life and rise:...
. She was named Tama at birth; Garasha, the name she is known by in history, is taken from her
baptismIn Christianity, baptism is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which one is admitted to membership of the Christian Church and, in the view of some, as a member of the particular Church in which the baptism is administered.The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the...
al name, Gracia. She married
Hosokawa Tadaoki' was the eldest son of Hosokawa Fujitaka. He fought in his first battle at the age of 15. In that battle, he was in the service of Oda Nobunaga. He was given the Province of Tango in 1580. Soon after that, he married Hosokawa Gracia, the daughter of Akechi Mitsuhide. In 1582, Akechi...
at the age of fifteen; the couple had five or six children.
In the Sixth Month of 1582, her father
Akechi Mitsuhide, nicknamed Jūbei or , was a samurai who lived during the Sengoku period of Feudal Japan.Mitsuhide was a samurai and a general under daimyo Oda Nobunaga, although he later betrayed Nobunaga and caused him to commit seppuku.-Early life and rise:...
betrayed and killed his lord,
Oda Nobunaga was a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a deputy shugo with land holdings in Owari province. Nobunaga lived a life of continuous military conquest, eventually conquering a third of Japanese daimyo before his death in 1582...
.
, usually referred to as
, (1563 - August 25 (17th day of the 7th month by the
Japanese calendarOn January 1, 1873, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, with local names for the months and mostly fixed holidays, but before 1873, a lunisolar calendar was in use, which was adapted from the Chinese calendar...
), 1600) was a
JapaneseThe are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as...
noblewoman, daughter of
Akechi Mitsuhide, nicknamed Jūbei or , was a samurai who lived during the Sengoku period of Feudal Japan.Mitsuhide was a samurai and a general under daimyo Oda Nobunaga, although he later betrayed Nobunaga and caused him to commit seppuku.-Early life and rise:...
. She was named Tama at birth; Garasha, the name she is known by in history, is taken from her
baptismIn Christianity, baptism is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which one is admitted to membership of the Christian Church and, in the view of some, as a member of the particular Church in which the baptism is administered.The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the...
al name, Gracia. She married
Hosokawa Tadaoki' was the eldest son of Hosokawa Fujitaka. He fought in his first battle at the age of 15. In that battle, he was in the service of Oda Nobunaga. He was given the Province of Tango in 1580. Soon after that, he married Hosokawa Gracia, the daughter of Akechi Mitsuhide. In 1582, Akechi...
at the age of fifteen; the couple had five or six children.
In the Sixth Month of 1582, her father
Akechi Mitsuhide, nicknamed Jūbei or , was a samurai who lived during the Sengoku period of Feudal Japan.Mitsuhide was a samurai and a general under daimyo Oda Nobunaga, although he later betrayed Nobunaga and caused him to commit seppuku.-Early life and rise:...
betrayed and killed his lord,
Oda Nobunaga was a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a deputy shugo with land holdings in Owari province. Nobunaga lived a life of continuous military conquest, eventually conquering a third of Japanese daimyo before his death in 1582...
. Afterwards, Tama became known as a "traitor's daughter." Not wishing to divorce her, Tadaoki sent her to the hamlet of Midono in the mountains of the Tango Peninsula (now in
Kyoto Prefectureis a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of the island of Honshū. The capital is the city of Kyoto.- History :
this whole explanation is about the city of Kyoto, not the prefecture...
), where she remained hidden until 1584. Tadaoki then took Tama to the Hosokawa mansion in Osaka, where she remained in confinement.
Tama's maid was from a
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
family, and her husband repeated to her conversations with his Christian friend Takayama Ukon. In the spring of 1587 Tama managed to secretly visit the Osaka church, and a few months later when she heard that
Toyotomi Hideyoshiwas a daimyo in the Sengoku period who unified Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle. He is noted for a number of cultural legacies, including the...
had issued a proclamation against Christianity, she was determined to be baptized immediately. As she could not leave the house, she was baptized by her maid and received the Christian name "Gracia".
In 1595 Tadaoki's life was in danger because of his friendship with
Toyotomi Hidetsuguwas a nephew and retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi who lived during the Sengoku period of the 16th century of Japan.A practitioner of the shudo tradition, Hidetsugu had a number of wakashu...
, and he told Gracia that if he should die she must kill herself, but when she wrote asking the priests about it, they answered she must not as a Christian kill herself. However, the danger passed.
The death of Hideyoshi in 1598 left a power vacuum with two rival factions forming:
Tokugawa Ieyasu
in the east and
Ishida MitsunariIshida Mitsunari was a samurai who led the Western army in the Battle of Sekigahara following the Azuchi-Momoyama period of the 17th century. Also known by his court title, Jibu Shōho...
in the west. When Ieyasu went to the east in 1600 leading a large army, including Tadaoki, Ishida took over the impregnable
castle in Osakais a Japanese castle in Chūō-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.Originally called Ozakajō, it is one of Japan's most famous castles, and played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Osaka Castle is situated on a plot of land roughly one...
, the city where the families of many of Hideyoshi's generals resided. Ishida devised a plan to take the family members hostage, thus forcing the rival generals either to ally with him or at least not to attack him.
However, when Ishida attempted to take Gracia hostage, the family retainer Ogasawara Shōsai killed her; he and the rest of the household then committed
seppukuis a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have...
and burned the mansion down. The outrage over her death was so great that Ishida was forced to abandon his plan.
Most Japanese accounts said that it was Gracia's idea to order Ogasawara to kill her. But according to the Jesuit account written right after her death, whenever Tadaoki left the mansion he would tell his retainers that if his wife's honor were ever in danger, they should kill her and then themselves. They decided that this was such a situation; Gracia had anticipated it and accepted it.
A Catholic priest had Gracia's remains gathered from the Hosokawa mansion and buried them in a cemetery in
Sakaiis a city in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It has been one of the largest and most important seaports of Japan since the Medieval era.Following the February 2005 annexation of Mihara Town in Minamikawachi District, the city has grown further and is now the fourteenth most populous city in Japan, with...
. Later, Tadaoki moved the remains to Sōkenji, a temple in Osaka.
The Empress Shōken Haruko Ichijō, was the empress consort of Japan as the wife of
Emperor MeijiThe or Meiji the Great was the 122
nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from 3 February 1867 until his death....
, is a lineal descendant of lady Gracia Hosokawa, she appears to have had a good cooperation with Christians in the Red Cross and otherwise. Empress Shoken was a descendant of the Fujiwara clan and through Gracia Hosokawa also of the
Minamoto clanwas one of the honorary surnames bestowed by the Emperors of Japan of the Heian Period on those of their sons and grandsons who were not considered eligible for the throne. The Taira were another such offshoot of the imperial dynasty...
.
Though
popular culturePopular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture...
states that the Vatican
canonizedCanonization is the act by which a particular Christian church or group declares a deceased person to be a saint and is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints...
her as a saint in 1862, there are no historical documents that prove this.
Gracia in historical fiction
Gracia frequently appears as a character in Japanese historical fiction, both novels and drama. One website lists her as a character in over 40 stage dramas, movies, TV dramas, etc., from 1887 to 2006. She is also frequently referred to in popular writing or talks on the history of the period. A work that has been translated into English is
Ayako Miura' is a Japanese novelist. She has published over eighty works of both fiction and non-fiction. Many of her works are considered best-sellers, and a number have been remade as feature-length films....
's novel,
Hosokawa Garasha Fujin (English title:
Lady Gracia: a Samurai Wife's Love, Strife and Faith), which follows history fairly closely.
James ClavellJames Clavell, born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell was a British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war...
used Gracia as the model for the character of Mariko in his novel
ShōgunShōgun is a 1975 novel by James Clavell. It is the first novel in the author's Asian Saga. It is set in feudal Japan in the year 1600 some months before the critical battle of Sekigahara, and gives an account of the rise of the daimyo "Toranaga" to the Shogunate, seen through the eyes of an...
, which was later adapted for television as a
miniseriesShōgun is an American television miniseries based on the namesake novel by James Clavell. As with the novel, the title is often shown as Shōgun in order to conform to Hepburn romanization. The miniseries was broadcast over five nights, between September 15 and September 19, 1980 on NBC in the...
. Elements of Mariko's story follows Gracia's quite closely, although the manner of her death is different and the two characters do not fundamentally have anything in common.
Gracia is also a playable character in Samurai Warriors 2 Xtreme Legends.