Histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945

Oh, fascinating! I'm thirding the comment that there should be some lightly fictionalised media about her. I'm interested in the circumstances of her adoption - do you know if there was any existing relationship to Sano, or was there some other reason?

... That's also made me curious about adoption in this period in Japan in general, and how formal it was; I know in the UK, adoption wasn't a formal, standardised process until the 1920s, and informal adoption continued until the 1980s, but I feel like it was probably different there?