Yanagiwara Naruko (1855-1943)
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senzenwomenYanagiwara Naruko was born in 1855 in Kyoto to a noble family with a long history of service as chamberlains to the Emperor; when her family moved to the newly renamed Tokyo to attend upon the Meiji Emperor, so did she. In 1870 she became a lady-in-waiting to the Emperor’s (official) mother, the Dowager Empress Eisho (Asako). In 1873, the Imperial Palace of the time burned and the Meiji Emperor and Empress (Mutsuhito and Haruko) moved in with the Dowager Empress for the time being, at which point the Emperor is said to have noticed Naruko and liked what he saw, appointing her one of several imperial concubines.
Of the Emperor’s one wife and at least five concubines, Naruko was the first to give birth to a child who survived babyhood; two of her predecessors, although attended by the doctor Kusumoto Ine, had died in childbirth. After losing her first two children young, Naruko gave birth in 1879 to Prince Yoshihito, who survived early childhood by the skin of his teeth to succeed his father as the Taisho Emperor. (Although given a string of younger half-siblings by the fecund Sono Sachiko, he apparently did not learn until his teens that the childless Empress Haruko was not his biological mother.)
For all she had succeeded in giving the Emperor an heir, Naruko’s position in the Imperial Household may have been affected by the string of scandals her birth family specialized in. Her brother Sakimitsu, a general and Foreign Minister when he was barely twenty, buckled under the strain of his position and consoled himself with women. He was the father of the poet Yanagiwara Byakuren (Akiko), famous for eloping with a penniless socialist; her mother in turn was the geisha O-Ryo (a daughter of the disgraced diplomat Shinmi Masaoki), for whose favor Sakimitsu competed with Ito Hirobumi, who certainly got around. Sakimitsu’s son, Akiko’s half-brother Yoshimitsu, was also notoriously involved with a male actor, while his daughter Tokuko was one of the main players in the Affair of the Delinquent Nobility [in which Kojima Kokichi, a dancehall instructor and self-proclaimed “sexiest man in Japan,” was arrested for numerous adulterous relationships, some arranged by his lover Tokuko] of 1933.
When the Taisho Emperor proved to suffer from a number of physical and mental illnesses (now thought to be the result of chronic meningitis, the cause of death of almost all his siblings who died young), there were some voices ascribing this to Naruko’s “tainted” family background. Still, she spent her life in the Imperial Household as a lady-in-waiting, surviving her sickly son by almost twenty years. She was noted for her poetry and calligraphy, and served as one of the ladies-in-waiting assigned to educate Crown Princess Sadako, her daughter-in-law, in the ways of the Imperial Household. Sadako, not generally known for warmth and approachability, adored her and thought of her as a second mother. Naruko died in 1943 at the age of 88.
Sources
Ishii
https://ukiyo-e.org/image/jaodb/Yoshitoshi_Tsukioka-Bijin_7_Shining_Flowers-Yanagiwara_Naruko-00038525-051027-F06 (painting of Naruko by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9F%B3%E5%8E%9F%E6%84%9B%E5%AD%90#/media/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Naruko_Yanagiwara.png (photo of the young Naruko)
Of the Emperor’s one wife and at least five concubines, Naruko was the first to give birth to a child who survived babyhood; two of her predecessors, although attended by the doctor Kusumoto Ine, had died in childbirth. After losing her first two children young, Naruko gave birth in 1879 to Prince Yoshihito, who survived early childhood by the skin of his teeth to succeed his father as the Taisho Emperor. (Although given a string of younger half-siblings by the fecund Sono Sachiko, he apparently did not learn until his teens that the childless Empress Haruko was not his biological mother.)
For all she had succeeded in giving the Emperor an heir, Naruko’s position in the Imperial Household may have been affected by the string of scandals her birth family specialized in. Her brother Sakimitsu, a general and Foreign Minister when he was barely twenty, buckled under the strain of his position and consoled himself with women. He was the father of the poet Yanagiwara Byakuren (Akiko), famous for eloping with a penniless socialist; her mother in turn was the geisha O-Ryo (a daughter of the disgraced diplomat Shinmi Masaoki), for whose favor Sakimitsu competed with Ito Hirobumi, who certainly got around. Sakimitsu’s son, Akiko’s half-brother Yoshimitsu, was also notoriously involved with a male actor, while his daughter Tokuko was one of the main players in the Affair of the Delinquent Nobility [in which Kojima Kokichi, a dancehall instructor and self-proclaimed “sexiest man in Japan,” was arrested for numerous adulterous relationships, some arranged by his lover Tokuko] of 1933.
When the Taisho Emperor proved to suffer from a number of physical and mental illnesses (now thought to be the result of chronic meningitis, the cause of death of almost all his siblings who died young), there were some voices ascribing this to Naruko’s “tainted” family background. Still, she spent her life in the Imperial Household as a lady-in-waiting, surviving her sickly son by almost twenty years. She was noted for her poetry and calligraphy, and served as one of the ladies-in-waiting assigned to educate Crown Princess Sadako, her daughter-in-law, in the ways of the Imperial Household. Sadako, not generally known for warmth and approachability, adored her and thought of her as a second mother. Naruko died in 1943 at the age of 88.
Sources
Ishii
https://ukiyo-e.org/image/jaodb/Yoshitoshi_Tsukioka-Bijin_7_Shining_Flowers-Yanagiwara_Naruko-00038525-051027-F06 (painting of Naruko by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9F%B3%E5%8E%9F%E6%84%9B%E5%AD%90#/media/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Naruko_Yanagiwara.png (photo of the young Naruko)
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Date: 2024-03-22 04:28 pm (UTC)The string of deaths related to meningitis is curious -- is it known if that was a genetic predisposition to meningococcal infection, something about the environs, something else…?
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Date: 2024-03-23 03:33 pm (UTC)You know, I looked it up, and there is a theory now that it was actually something to do with lead poisoning from the face powder used by mothers and wet-nurses...I'm not sure how viable this is, but it seems to be one fairly widely spread theory. Alarming :(
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Date: 2024-03-23 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-25 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-22 06:22 pm (UTC)Of course I had to do an internet search on the self-proclaimed sexiest man in Japan, but I don't think the hits I got were the right ones...there were a lot of manga images.
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Date: 2024-03-23 03:37 pm (UTC)My understanding is that, at least up to that point, the Really Important Thing was maintaining the male lineage (all the way back 2000 years to divine ancestry in unbroken descent, if you choose to believe their mythology), and thus legitimacy in the usual sense was less important. (You'll notice that I called Empress Eisho the Meiji Emperor's official mother, he was likewise the son of a concubine). I think the son of the empress would have taken precedence over the son of a concubine, but when the former didn't exist they settled for the latter.
Of course I had to do an internet search on the self-proclaimed sexiest man in Japan, but I don't think the hits I got were the right ones...
I can't find anything about the Affair of the Delinquent Nobility in English, but if you go here http://easthall.blog.jp/archives/16126951.html and scroll all the way down, you'll find some images of newspaper articles from the time; I think the man in the photos is the self-confident Kojima (eyes not cooperating for the small print, I need glasses lol).
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Date: 2024-03-23 08:32 pm (UTC)Well, I suppose they don't do him justice...
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Date: 2024-03-25 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-22 07:20 pm (UTC)Honestly, I would totally watch a soap opera based on this family! WOW.
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Date: 2024-03-23 03:38 pm (UTC)(Also, I keep meaning to mention how much I like the Lan Xinjie icon for your comments here <3)
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Date: 2024-03-24 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-25 02:03 pm (UTC)