Ichijo Haruko (1849-1914)
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senzenwomenIchijo Haruko was born in 1849 among the high nobility, on the avenue of Kyoto that her family took its name from. Her birth name was Masako. Well educated according to her father’s precepts (taught in part by the scholar Wakae Nioko), as a child she enjoyed climbing up to the firewatch tower and observing the city below her. Naturally she also studied the traditional arts of her class, including calligraphy, waka poetry, the koto , ikebana, tea, and so on, excelling in all her pursuits.
The disorder of the Meiji Restoration reduced the Ichijo family to splinters; orphaned by the time she was fourteen, Haruko had to flee her family’s home in haste, trailed by serving maids. Her fortunes made another quick change as the peace of the new era settled in, when she was chosen to marry Mutsuhito, the newly acceded Meiji Emperor. She became empress in 1868 at age twenty; her husband was three years younger than she. (The gap was reduced by announcing that her official birth year was actually 1850.)
As they settled into their life in the newly rechristened Tokyo, the Imperial Family adopted Western styles of dress and coiffure, posed for photographs, and visited their subjects as part of the visibility of the modern age. Haruko was particularly interested in silkworm cultivation, which she understood had once been practiced by the ancient empresses. She adopted the practice herself, as a nod both to the habits of antiquity and to the vital importance of silk as an export of modern Japan.
Physically she was very pretty and very tiny even for her time, standing only 140 centimeters (about four foot seven). As the “mother of the country,” she took up the required patriotic stances during the Russo-Japanese and First Sino-Japanese Wars. She also took up the slack in terms of politics, international relations, and military support for her laggard and retiring husband.
When the Meiji Emperor died in 1912, Haruko became the Empress Dowager Shoken, the name generally used for her in Japanese parlance. She died two years later at the Imperial Villa in Shizuoka. The Meiji Shrine in Tokyo is dedicated to Haruko and Mutsuhito.
As empress she had only two so-called flaws, one minor and one major: she was given to pipe-smoking, and she was unable to bear children. All five of the Meiji Emperor’s surviving children are thought to have been born to concubines. One of Haruko’s ladies-in-waiting wrote that if Haruko herself, with all her talents, had been able to bear a Crown Prince, the history of Japan might have been different thereafter.
Sources
Ishii
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13843528 (English) Interesting article about a gown designed for the Empress
https://www.museum.or.jp/report/448 (Japanese) Pictures and videos
The disorder of the Meiji Restoration reduced the Ichijo family to splinters; orphaned by the time she was fourteen, Haruko had to flee her family’s home in haste, trailed by serving maids. Her fortunes made another quick change as the peace of the new era settled in, when she was chosen to marry Mutsuhito, the newly acceded Meiji Emperor. She became empress in 1868 at age twenty; her husband was three years younger than she. (The gap was reduced by announcing that her official birth year was actually 1850.)
As they settled into their life in the newly rechristened Tokyo, the Imperial Family adopted Western styles of dress and coiffure, posed for photographs, and visited their subjects as part of the visibility of the modern age. Haruko was particularly interested in silkworm cultivation, which she understood had once been practiced by the ancient empresses. She adopted the practice herself, as a nod both to the habits of antiquity and to the vital importance of silk as an export of modern Japan.
Physically she was very pretty and very tiny even for her time, standing only 140 centimeters (about four foot seven). As the “mother of the country,” she took up the required patriotic stances during the Russo-Japanese and First Sino-Japanese Wars. She also took up the slack in terms of politics, international relations, and military support for her laggard and retiring husband.
When the Meiji Emperor died in 1912, Haruko became the Empress Dowager Shoken, the name generally used for her in Japanese parlance. She died two years later at the Imperial Villa in Shizuoka. The Meiji Shrine in Tokyo is dedicated to Haruko and Mutsuhito.
As empress she had only two so-called flaws, one minor and one major: she was given to pipe-smoking, and she was unable to bear children. All five of the Meiji Emperor’s surviving children are thought to have been born to concubines. One of Haruko’s ladies-in-waiting wrote that if Haruko herself, with all her talents, had been able to bear a Crown Prince, the history of Japan might have been different thereafter.
Sources
Ishii
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13843528 (English) Interesting article about a gown designed for the Empress
https://www.museum.or.jp/report/448 (Japanese) Pictures and videos
