Mori Hiroko (1864-1943)
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senzenwomenMori Hiroko was born in 1864 in Kyoto, the fifth daughter of Iwakura Tomomi, the leader of the Iwakura Mission, Japan’s post-Restoration attempt to learn more about the West. Her birth name was Tsuneko. She spent ages six and seven fostered out to a farming family, a custom of the nobility intended to offer young children better health than the enclosed atmospheres of the old court could confer. It was just at this time that her father moved the family to Tokyo and left on his Mission (escorting Tsuda Ume and company to the United States, among other tasks). He returned two years later.
In 1881 she married Count Arima Yoritsumu (both were not yet out of their teens), giving birth to a daughter, Teiko, in 1883 and a son, Yoriyasu, in 1884. In 1885 she was divorced and returned to her birth family.
In 1886, she married Mori Arinori, then the Minister of Education. “I was twenty-three and he had just turned forty. … He visited me many times before the marriage was decided, surprising me with his attitude; I had not known there could be such a man. He told me about himself in great detail and persisted in knowing how I felt about what I heard, so that when we were alone together I felt for the first time that his heart was open to me. My father was gone by that time, and my mother’s warning to me [based on her own experience] was that marrying a government minister would not be all wine and roses, that I must prepare myself for any number of troubles to come.”
Mori told her he would leave the family finances to her, which awed Hiroko, who had been given no responsibility in her previous marriage. “I didn’t know a thing at first, I relied on the butler for everything, I resolved at least to begin by learning how to handle figures. When I had worked out the household accounts at the end of the month, I asked [Mori] to look over my calculations, and he said he needn’t bother, he was leaving it all to me. He handed over his salary envelope to me unopened. That was how I learned how much a government minister earned every month: five hundred yen.” They dined on Western food (Kyoto-born Hiroko secretly longed for o-chazuke, but her husband instructed the cook not to permit her to eat it, as he felt Western food was healthier) and played bezique in the evenings.
Because Mori’s first wife’s name had also been Tsuneko, she changed her name to Hiroko. Having left her own children with the Arima family, she found herself stepmother to Mori’s sons Kiyoshi and Suguru, children of another divorced wife, then eleven and nine. “They were good children, clever, they never gave me a hard time. Suguru could be quite naughty, but he was adorable.”
In 1888 she gave birth to a son, Akira. The following year Mori was assassinated, on the day set aside to celebrate the new Meiji Constitution: a young ultranationalist, protesting Mori’s supposed failures of protocol on a visit to Ise Shrine, stabbed him on his own doorstop more or less in front of his wife’s eyes.
In 1904, Hiroko and her stepson Suguru and son Akira became Christians. She died in 1943, briefly reunited before her death with her Arima children and grandchildren as well.
Sources
Shimamoto
http://easthall.blog.jp/archives/16127257.html (Japanese) Photographs of Mori Arinori, both his wives (in order), and their descendants
In 1881 she married Count Arima Yoritsumu (both were not yet out of their teens), giving birth to a daughter, Teiko, in 1883 and a son, Yoriyasu, in 1884. In 1885 she was divorced and returned to her birth family.
In 1886, she married Mori Arinori, then the Minister of Education. “I was twenty-three and he had just turned forty. … He visited me many times before the marriage was decided, surprising me with his attitude; I had not known there could be such a man. He told me about himself in great detail and persisted in knowing how I felt about what I heard, so that when we were alone together I felt for the first time that his heart was open to me. My father was gone by that time, and my mother’s warning to me [based on her own experience] was that marrying a government minister would not be all wine and roses, that I must prepare myself for any number of troubles to come.”
Mori told her he would leave the family finances to her, which awed Hiroko, who had been given no responsibility in her previous marriage. “I didn’t know a thing at first, I relied on the butler for everything, I resolved at least to begin by learning how to handle figures. When I had worked out the household accounts at the end of the month, I asked [Mori] to look over my calculations, and he said he needn’t bother, he was leaving it all to me. He handed over his salary envelope to me unopened. That was how I learned how much a government minister earned every month: five hundred yen.” They dined on Western food (Kyoto-born Hiroko secretly longed for o-chazuke, but her husband instructed the cook not to permit her to eat it, as he felt Western food was healthier) and played bezique in the evenings.
Because Mori’s first wife’s name had also been Tsuneko, she changed her name to Hiroko. Having left her own children with the Arima family, she found herself stepmother to Mori’s sons Kiyoshi and Suguru, children of another divorced wife, then eleven and nine. “They were good children, clever, they never gave me a hard time. Suguru could be quite naughty, but he was adorable.”
In 1888 she gave birth to a son, Akira. The following year Mori was assassinated, on the day set aside to celebrate the new Meiji Constitution: a young ultranationalist, protesting Mori’s supposed failures of protocol on a visit to Ise Shrine, stabbed him on his own doorstop more or less in front of his wife’s eyes.
In 1904, Hiroko and her stepson Suguru and son Akira became Christians. She died in 1943, briefly reunited before her death with her Arima children and grandchildren as well.
Sources
Shimamoto
http://easthall.blog.jp/archives/16127257.html (Japanese) Photographs of Mori Arinori, both his wives (in order), and their descendants
no subject
Date: 2024-06-21 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-22 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-22 07:11 am (UTC)I was rooting for Hiroko in her second marriage, getting along with her stepchildren, and then...
stabbed him on his own doorstop more or less in front of his wife’s eyes
!!! How awful.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-22 10:33 am (UTC)I know, poor Hiroko, her marriage to Mori ended up so short. :( Political assassinations were a prewar scourge. The one I always literally cry over is Yamamoto Senji, but Mori's death was plenty horrible... .