Machiko Ōgimachi, "In the Shelter of the Pine: A Memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tokugawa Japan" (Columbia UP, 2021)

New Books in Japanese Studies · Nov 4, 2021 · 32m

In the early eighteenth century, the noblewoman Ōgimachi Machiko composed a memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, the powerful samurai for whom she had served as a concubine for twenty years. Machiko assisted Yoshiyasu in his ascent to the rank of chief adjutant to the Tokugawa shogun. She kept him in good graces with the imperial court, enabled him to study poetry with aristocratic teachers and have his compositions read by the retired emperor, and gave birth to two of his sons. Writing after Yoshiyasu’s retirement, she recalled it all—from the glittering formal visits of the shogun and his…