Queer Echoes: Koike Chikyoku, Unlikely Warrior Artist

You’ve probably heard these sarcastic remarks before, over an image of two amorous same-sex people: “Oh yes, what could be better than this, gals being pals” and “oh my god, they were roommates!”

These words are, generally, a reaction to queer-erasing historians. The type who are sure President Buchanan was just a lifelong bachelor with a good buddy named William R. King. Or that famed pirate Anne Bonny and companion Mary Read were just the best of platonic friends.

Yet the reality is that there is plenty of queerness in history, and Japanese history is no exception. There are also plenty of people who study queerness in history; some of us historians who do so, myself included, are queer ourselves. Though some would seek to erase us, and although terminology always changes, what we now call “queer” in English has always existed, in many forms and by many names, as long as there have been humans. We just need to know what to look for. It is because of this that my search for Koike Chikyoku, an artist and unlikely warrior, has been particularly haunting. I feel as though I’m seeing something familiar, across all the years since she lived.

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Wandering Artist

Chikyoku was born in 1824, in Fukudome, in what’s now Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture. Her father was a warrior in service to the house of Maeda, who ruled that region, then called Kanazawa domain (also known as Kaga domain). At over 1 million koku in size, Kanazawa was the wealthiest domain in the Edo period, and the Maeda family was second in income only to the Tokugawa shogun himself.

As a young woman, Chikyoku– also known as Shisetsu– traveled Japan in pursuit of art education. In Edo, her first stop, she became an adoptive sister to the poet Ōnuma Chinzan (1818-1891), who was known to many in the artistic and poetic “scene” of the time. While as an artist she isn’t a household name by any means, Chikyoku’s name appears in a 1913 appraisal guide listing the values of the work of historic and contemporary artists and calligraphers, which also suggests that she was an artist of at least some renown.

Stylistically, her work is classed in the Chinese-influenced black-ink nanga style. Nanga is not the same as manga– nanga is also known as bunjinga, “literati painting.” The artists who worked in the style considered themselves literati, after the reputation of their Chinese counterparts. Click here for a sample of Chikyoku’s art: the brush portrait of flowers at center is hers.

Who Was the Real Koike Chikyoku?

It is in trying to piece together something of her personal life that I found a recurring theme in all the biographical sketches I could access. Ishikawa ken-shi (A History of Ishikawa Prefecture) Vol. 3 says “Chikyoku detested men. It was her custom, even in lodgings on the road, to put up a sign cordoning off her quarters and forbidding their entry.” Other biographical dictionaries take a very similar tack. But Teisei zōho Nihon bijutsu gaka jinmei shōden, an early Taisho era biographical dictionary of Japanese artists, goes into a bit more detail:

“It was in her nature to loathe marriage; she remained single for the rest of her life. Her usual distaste for men was an intense habit, and even on the road, she would rope off her bedroom and did not allow men to enter. Even the male owners of these establishments were inconvenienced by this inclination.”

The “confirmed bachelor” trope is a well-established euphemism in English for a gay man, and spinsters were often lesbians. The “man-hating lesbian” trope is itself a well-known, well-worn negative trope. Even so, some non-male queer folks I know today do feel strongly about wanting to avoid sharing close quarters with men.

What’s more, whatever the truth about how she might have identified, the fact of the matter remains that Japanese society in Chikyoku’s time, and to some extent today, expects people to marry and carry on family lines and names. She did not become a nun, where celibacy would’ve been unremarkable, nor did she just happen to not marry. She vocally detested marriage and went to great lengths to keep men away from what would’ve been her most intimate settings. Standing out like this also goes against the grain in Japanese culture. After all, a familiar adage has it that deru kugi wa utareru (出る釘は打たれる) — the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

In short, because Chikyoku’s actions stand out like this, they merit closer consideration for anyone wanting to account for queerness in history rather than erasing it.

But read on; this isn’t the only thing that gets my attention about her.

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Serving at the Pleasure of Aizu

After traveling Japan in pursuit of polishing her artistic skill, Chikyoku was in Kyoto in the 1860s, when public security for the city was in the hands of the northern Aizu domain, whose castle town is the modern city of Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture. She was invited to the Aizu clan’s estates in Kyoto to paint for the daimyo Matsudaira Katamori (1836-1893), then serving as Kyoto Military Commissioner (Kyoto Shugoshoku). Matsudaira was also one of the Shogunate’s senior officials in the city alongside his brother Sadaaki (1847-1908), who served as Kyoto Shoshidai, the traditional administrative post that represented the Shogunate in western Japan in general and at the imperial court in particular.

While Aizu domain had very practical concerns in its Kyoto duties, including episodes of street fighting in 1863 and 1864 around the imperial palace, Kyoto was also the imperial capital. As such, a daimyo like Matusdaira Katamori was also obliged to keep up appearances of culture along with military capability, including the patronage of artists like Chikyoku. So, during Aizu’s tenure in Kyoto, she would’ve resided at the domain’s headquarters, the expansive Jōdo sect temple complex of Konkai-kōmyōji in the Kurodani district of Kyoto’s Sakyō ward.

An Artist, A Woman Warrior

It was following the Boshin War’s outbreak, and Aizu’s withdrawal under fire from Kyoto, that Chikyoku made what seems a surprising choice for a freewheeling artist who aspired to the example of the ancient Chinese literati. Rather than continue on her way, keeping up her art elsewhere in Japan out of the way of fighting, she followed the Aizu troops north — and went to war. In the Aizu domain itself, when the nascent imperial army encircled the castle town, she fell in with a group of primarily naginata-wielding women made famous by their ad-hoc commander Nakano Takeko (1847-1868), a martial artist of some renown among Aizu retainers posted to Edo before the war.

Plenty of women stayed off the battlefield or took part in the castle’s defense alongside the men. Why would Chikyoku go all the way to Aizu and enter battle herself, alongside other women? Here, again, I find myself wondering. There were women who fought in Aizu who had accompanied the men of their families to Kyoto; might Chikyoku have fallen for one, and then followed her north during the retreat?

Avoiding Execution

This all-female unit, sometimes called the Joshitai (women’s troop), fought imperial soldiers of the Ōgaki domain at the Battle of Ruibashi. There, after briefly holding their ground, they were overrun and forced to withdraw.
After the battle, Chikyoku was separated from the rest of the unit. Imperial troops captured her and told her she was to be executed. The 1936 Meiji-shi sōran has her replying as follows:

“I am not an Aizu retainer in the first place. I am an artist who was a visitor in the imperial capital. I followed the lord here to Mutsu Province, and the force of events took me to where I had to take part in battle. I had no intention of standing against the sovereign to begin with.”

Meiji-shi Sōran says that they still did not believe her, and so ordered her to paint, to prove her story. When she painted for them in their encampment on the battlefield, they finally released her.

Whether or not the exchange happened that way, the fact of the matter is that it would’ve been in her interest to talk her way out of capture and save her head. Chikyoku was indeed released once it became clear that she was an outsider, and an artist, and not under any feudal allegiance or obligation to Aizu. She continued traveling around Japan and honing her art. Still single, she died in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture at the age of 54 in 1878.

Through a Queer Lens

Inasmuch as she appears in biographical dictionaries, especially some printed in the Taisho era, today Chikyoku is not an especially well-known figure. Still, she sometimes appears in discussions of the Aizu siege. Author Sawada Fujiko wrote about Chikyoku in the 1985 book Hanakagari, a collection of biographies of women painters. I previously wrote about her for the online magazine Gutsy Broads, though only recently did I notice the recurring queer theme in biographical sketches that has me wondering about her.

So, is there enough to conclusively prove that Chikyoku was queer? While I don’t know that there is, given what I’ve found, I also don’t think there’s enough to rule it out. As I noted at the beginning, we don’t want to put modern words in the mouths of historic figures who had different ways to articulate the same spectrum of identities. But there is enough for me, a modern-day queer woman, to feel more than a little haunted, and to look on in wonder as I continue to seek out the sources that will further refine my picture of her.

We have always been here. Yes, even in the Boshin War.

Sources

• “Does Not Like Men.” TVTropes.com, Accessed 30 September 2021. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoesNotLikeMen
• Haga Yaichi, ed. Nihon Jinmei Jiten. (Tōkyō : Ōkura Shoten, Taishō 3 [1914]), p. 646. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3331006&view=1up&seq=5&skin=2021
• “Harold, They’re Lesbians.” Know Your Meme. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/harold-theyre-lesbians
• Hashi. “The Nail that Sticks Up…” Tofugu.com, Accessed 30 September 2021. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/conformity-in-japan/
• Higuchi Bunzan, ed. Teisei zōho Nihon bijutsu gaka jinmei shōden. (Ōsaka: Yūbikan, Meiji 30 [1897]), p. 281-282. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044064253024&view=1up&seq=1&skin=2021
• Ishikawa Kenshi dai 3-hen, pp. 612-613. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://trc-adeac.trc.co.jp/WJ11E0/WJJS06U/1700105100/1700105100100030/ht040016/?Word=%e5%b0%8f%e6%b1%a0%e6%b1%a0%e6%97%ad
• “Japanese Painting: Nanga and Bunjinga School.” Asian Art Museum. Accessed 17 September 2020 Archived at https://education.asianart.org/resources/japanese-painting-nanga-and-bunjinga-school/
• “Nihon Shoga Hyouka Ichiran” (1913) Archived by Independent Administrative Institution National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://www.tobunken.go.jp/materials/banduke/807046.html
• Noguchi Shin’ichi. Aizu-han. (Tokyo: Gendai Shokan, 2005), pp. 156-183.
• Onuma Chinzan (大沼沈山) British Museum, accessed 30 September 2021. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG6173
• Devrupa Rakshit. “The “Man‑Hating” Lesbian Trope Takes Us Further Away From Queer Representation.” The Swaddle, May 14, 2021. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://theswaddle.com/why-the-man-hating-lesbian-trope-in-movies-has-nothing-to-do-with-queer-representation/
• Sawada Akira, ed. Nihon Gaka Daijiten (Tokyo: Keiseisha, Taishō 2 [1913]), p. 304. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=keio.10810287722&view=1up&seq=9&skin=2021
• Shōundō henshūjo, ed. Kokon nihon shoga meika jiten (Osaka : Shōundō, Taishō 3 [1914]), pp. 301-302. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b212776&view=1up&seq=1&skin=2021
• Schierbeck, Sachiko Shibata. Postwar Japanese Women Writers: An Up-to-date Bibliography with Biographical Sketches. (Copenhagen: East Asian Institute, 1989), pp. 106-109.
• Sobu Rokurō. Meiji-shi Sōran. (Tokyo: Meijishi Kankōkai, 1936), pp. 55-56. Accessed 30 September 2021. https://archive.org/details/meijishisoran01sobu
• Sakano-ke no Shoga Shiryō Accessed 30 September 2021. https://trc-adeac.trc.co.jp/WJ11E0/WJJS06U/0821105100/0821105100200030/ht000380

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