As Japan continued to stumble through decades-long cycles of war in the 16th century, one clan in the northern province of Mutsu gradually consolidated and expanded its military and political power. Marching under the now-iconic sparrows-in-bamboo crest, it produced many courageous warriors and leaders whose names endure to the present. If you’re thinking of the Date clan, famed as founders of the modern city of Sendai, you’re on the right track. But if you’re thinking this is another article about Date Masamune, the one-eyed warlord renowned in his time for flamboyance and skilled politicking (and among modern anime fans for rocking an eyepatch and an occasional motorcycle horse), you’re close but not quite there.
Meet Date Onami, Masamune’s aunt, and one of the women missing from most popular depictions of the Date family’s Warring States era history.
Fearsome Ladies of House Date
Many Date clan women appear in live-action dramas like the NHK Taiga series Dokuganryu Masamune or Tenchijin that focus on or feature the family. Sadly, anime, manga, and game depictions aren’t as good at representing Date women in general, and Onami in particular.
Tamura Mego, Masamune’s wife, appears in the Youtube-exclusive Masamune Datenikuru series by GAINAX, and in Capcom’s Onimusha: Soul. Then there’s Katakura Kita makes a cameo in the Voltage, Inc. game Samurai Love Ballad Party. She was many things; Masamune’s wet nurse, and a tutor in literary and martial arts to both her half-brother Kojūrō and Masamune himself. Later, she was even instrumental to the clan’s politics in Kyoto at Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s court. Her influence on the clan’s politics and future, both directly and through these two men she taught, cannot be overstated. Iroha, Masamune’s eldest daughter, was a vital presence in the clan’s political deliberations in the early 17th century. Likewise, she has appeared in some of the same titles above.
The women in these depictions regularly take a back seat to the men; they’re either extensions of the men, love interests, or little more than eye candy. Their agency in these depictions is all too often missing. This is part of a broader trend in popular depictions featuring women in the historical fiction genre. It is likewise an extension of a broader, systemic tendency to write women out of history, so the state of popular depictions is not too surprising. But any history that does not take account of women and their agency in the past is incomplete, and we must do better.
Japanese Women at War
While the list of women to rule their clans and castles may be short, there is a long and fascinating history of women at war in Japanese history. The 12th-century Tomoe-gozen has a brief but visible role in the forces of Kiso no Yoshinaka, in Heike Monogatari, where she rode to war alongside her partner in battle after battle. Much later, in the Aizu domain during the Boshin War, the exploits of sharpshooter-turned-educator Yamamoto Yae in 1868 and beyond are well known. These women existed; they were active participants in the history, and to leave them out, or relegate them to bit parts or to window dressing, is to do a disservice to historical fact.
Meet Lady Onami
With that being said, who was Lady Onami of Sukagawa?
Lady Onami was born at Kōri-Nishiyama Castle in 1541, in modern-day Kōri, Fukushima Prefecture. At the time, Kōri lay in Date county of Mutsu Province. Date county had been the home of the Date clan since their 12th century status as Kamakura Shogunate retainers; the family took its name from the county.
Onami was one of three siblings born to Date Harumune and his wife Iwaki Kubo. Her older brother Chikataka was adopted into their mother’s Iwaki family, and her younger brother Terumune eventually received headship of the Date family. For context against more famous historical figures: Onami was seven years younger than Oda Nobunaga, four younger than Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and two older than Tokugawa Ieyasu. Thus, she was old enough to live through– and remember– the entirety of Japan’s gradual unification. Her more famous Date nephew, on the other hand, was born 26 years later, once the reunification was already underway.
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In 1560, Onami experienced what many women of noble birth have throughout world history. She was married off to seal an alliance between her birth family and one of its neighboring clans. Her new husband, Nikaidō Moriyoshi, ruled nearby Sukagawa Castle in Iwase county (located in modern-day Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture). The Nikaidō’s history in the region is almost as long as the Date’s, though the family never attained the level of prestige or extent of territorial control possessed by the Date.
Onami bore two children over the ensuing decade, but this is where the typical story of a Warring States-era “stay-at-castle” mother ended for Onami. Her first son Heishirō, initially sent as a hostage to the nearby Ashina clan, was adopted by that clan, becoming Ashina Moritaka. Thus, upon Moriyoshi’s death, their second son Yukichika inherited the Nikaidō headship. As women of her status usually did upon the death of a husband, Onami took the Buddhist tonsure the same year, taking the priestly name Daijō-in, by which she’s often remembered.
Taking Charge
But religious orders were not to be the limit of Onami’s career. Yukichika died suddenly in 1582; With no other heirs left, and the fate of her late husband’s family hanging in the balance, Onami did the incredible: she took command, and sources that chronicle the history of that part of Mutsu Province regularly mention her, though not always by name.
“Nikaidō Tōtōmi-no-kami Moriyoshi, too, died on the 23rd of the seventh month. His wife defended the castle at Iwase county. She was the younger sister of Date sakyō-dayū Terumune…”
from Ōyō Sendō Omotekagami 奥陽仙道表鑑, Chapter Five, p. 38.
With Masamune inheriting Date headship from Terumune only two years later, Lady Onami actually led a samurai clan earlier than her more famous nephew. From 1582 to 1589, she ruled Sukagawa Castle as master of the Nikaidō clan. Together with women like Ii Naotora and Tachibana Ginchiyo, she became one of only a handful of women in Japanese history, all of them in the 16th century, to hold that rare distinction of being head of a clan.
But her rule did not last for long.
Lady Onami Rides to Battle
By 1589, her nephew Masamune had rapidly struck down or brought to submission many of the neighboring clans in his bid to expand the territories under his control. After destroying the Ashina clan on July 17, 1589, at the climactic Battle of Suriagehara, he strongly urged her, too, to submit. Lady Onami staunchly refused. With reinforcements from the Iwaki and Satake clans, Onami boldly led the defense of Sukagawa Castle. Defeat came in the form of betrayal; her vassal Hodohara Yukifuji opened the castle to Date forces. Lady Onami’s tenure was at an end, as was de facto the house of Nikaidō, which had lived in and governed its small corner of the Tohoku region since the Kamakura era.
While Masamune spared his defeated aunt’s life and offered her comfortable accommodations at Ōmori Castle, one of the fortifications under his control, she refused to submit to him. Instead, she called upon the aid of other powerful nephews who were at political loggerheads with Masamune. Because of intermarriage in the region over the preceding decades, she had many nephews and cousins from whom to choose.
At last, her nephew Satake Yoshinobu of Hitachi Province offered her protection and residence in his domains, which lay a short distance to the south. Onami remained there in retirement until 1602, when the Satake clan was ordered transferred north to Dewa Province following its defeat against the nascent Tokugawa shogunate during the Battle of Sekigahara, in 1600. Meanwhile, Date Masamune had, instead, allied himself with Tokugawa Ieyasu and held off the Uesugi attack at Hasedō during the Dewa Campaign. This allowed Ieyasu to focus on Ishida’s forces at Sekigahara without worrying about his eastern flank. Masamune thus ensured the security of his family and domains following the climactic Sekigahara.
Yoshinobu is not one-legged but is sitting in a lotus position with his left leg tucked. (source)
Lady Onami Drifts Into Legend
While following her Satake relatives north to Dewa, Onami fell ill as she passed through her old domains around what was left of Sukagawa Castle. There, she died, aged 62 — in that same place where she had done the impossible and had a tenure of the direct political power. Few Japanese women, even of her status, might’ve dreamed of accomplishing the same.
Sukagawa Castle is no longer extant, but Onami’s grave still stands at Chōroku-ji Temple in modern Sukagawa City. Every year, Sukugawa City commemorates the destruction of Sukagawa Castle in a festival centering around a massive controlled fire on the former castle grounds. Taimatsu Akashi, the festival in question, is one of the largest fire festivals in all Japan.
Onami is just one among many women at war in Japanese history. While period sources do talk of women, they talk around them; or in the case of people of her rank, speak of them in titles or by the name of a husband, or parent, or brother.
But they are there regardless.
And our picture of those conflicts and the political and societal issues that surround them is incomplete without taking them into account.
Sources
- Ganban Shiryō Sōsho Vol. 2 (Fukushima: Ganban Shiryō Kankōkai, 1916), p. 38.
- “Aizu Ashina-ki,” pp. 217-240 of Sendai Sōshō Vol. 5, ed. Chikaraishi Yuichirō et. al. (Sendai: Sendai Sōshō Kankōkai, 1922), p. 219.
- “Date Masamune-kyō Nenfu,” pp. 1-30 of Sendai Sōshō Vol. 5, ed. Chikaraishi Yuichirō et. al. (Sendai: Sendai Sōshō Kankōkai, 1922), p. 11.
- “Date Ryakkei,” pp. 31-46 of Sendai Sōshō Vol. 1, ed. Chikaraishi Yuichirō et. al. (Sendai: Sendai Sōshō Kankōkai, 1922) p. 36.
- Haga Noboru, Nihon Josei Jinmeijiten (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentaa, 1993), p. 262.
- “Masamune-ki,” pp. 11-194 of Sendai Sōshō Vol. 12, ed. Chikaraishi Yuichirō et. al. (Sendai: Sendai Sōshō Kankōkai, 1922), pp. 103-105.
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