, also known as , was an empress consort of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. She was the consort of

Emperor Reigen was the 112th emperor of Japan,Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 霊元天皇 (112)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession.Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1959). ''The Imperial House of Japan'', pp. 117. Reigen's reign spanned t ...

Life

Her father was

Takatsukasa Norihira , son of Nobuhisa, was a '' kugyo'' or Japanese court noble of the early Edo period (1603–1868). He did not hold regent positions kampaku and sessho. The regent Takatsukasa Fusasuke was his son. His other son Kujō Kaneharu was adopted by t ...

, who had the post of ''

sadaijin The ''Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary'', Kenkyusha Limited, was a government position in Japan in the late Nara and Heian periods. The position was consolidated in the Taihō Code of 702. The Asuka Kiyomihara Code of 689 marks the ini ...

'' and the . Her half-siblings by other mothers included the '' kampaku''

Takatsukasa Fusasuke , son of Norihira, was a '' Kugyō'' or Japanese court noble of the early Edo period (1603–1868). He held regent positions sesshō (from 1664 to 1668) and kampaku (from 1668 to 1682). Kanehiro and Sanesuke were his sons who he had with a daug ...

, the ''

Kujō Kaneharu , son of Takatsukasa Norihira and adopted son of regent Michifusa, was a ''kugyō'' or Japanese court noble of the Edo period (1603–1868). Unlike other members of the family, he did not hold regent positions kampaku and sesshō. He married a ...

, and

Takatsukasa Nobuko is a Japanese aristocratic kin group. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Nijō," ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p. 58 retrieved 2013-8-13. The Takatsukasa was a branch of t ...

, the wife of

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was the fifth ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa dynasty of Japan. He was the younger brother of Tokugawa Ietsuna, as well as the son of Tokugawa Iemitsu, the grandson of Tokugawa Hidetada, and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu.Nussbaum, Louis-Fr ...

. Another theory holds that Fusako was actually Norihira's younger sister, whom he adopted as his daughter.

Marriage

On December 1, 1670, Fusako entered the court of Emperor Reigen, one year her junior, as a court lady. On June 23, 1673, the palace went up in flames, and the estate of ''

udaijin was a government position in Japan in the late Nara and Heian periods. The position was consolidated in the Taihō Code of 702. The Asuka Kiyomihara Code of 689 marks the initial appearance of the ''udaijin'' in the context of a central administr ...

Konoe Motohiro , Tajimaru (多治丸) in his childhood, was a '' kugyō'' or Japanese court noble of the Edo period (1603–1868). He held a regent position kampaku from 1690 to 1703. Early life He was a son of regent Konoe Hisatsugu and a concubine. Motohiro ...

was used as a temporary palace. This was not a new occurrence: in 1661, during the reign of the previous emperor

Emperor Go-Sai , also known as , was the 111th emperor of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 後西天皇 (111)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession.Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1959). ''The Imperial House of Japan'', pp. 116. Go-Sai ...

, another conflagration had led to the use of Motohiro's estate. On October 3, 1673, Fusako gave birth to her daughter . In light of the great fire in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

that had destroyed the palace, the

era name A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin ''regnum'' meaning kingdom, rule. Regnal years considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year o ...

was changed to

Enpō (contemporarily written as 延寳) is the after '' Kanbun'' and before ''Tenna.'' This period spanned the years from September 1673 to September 1681. The reigning emperor was . Change of era * 1673 : The new era of ''Enpō'' (meaning "Prolong ...

. But on January 10, 1676, immediately after a new palace had been completed, the temporary one at Motohiro's estate caught flame in turn. Fusako and the emperor found refuge at the home of before entering the new palace two days later.

Empress

On January 1, 1683, Fusako was proclaimed , and on December 3 she was invested as '' chūgū''. She thereby became the emperor's legitimate wife—during the entire

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, this only happened four times. Reigen abdicated the throne on May 2, 1687, in favor of Crown Prince Asahito, who then became

Emperor Higashiyama was the 113th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 東山天皇 (113)/ref> Higashiyama's reign spanned the years from 1687 through to his abdication in 1709 corresponding to ...

. Accompanying this, Fusako was bestowed the honorary name Shinjōsaimon-in. In early 1695, the

shogunate , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakur ...

presented her with 1,000 ''koku'' of land. Takatsukasa Fusako died on May 19, 1712. Her grave is located at

Tsuki no wa no misasagi is the name of a mausoleum in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto used by successive generations of the Japanese Imperial Family. The tomb is situated in Sennyū-ji, a Buddhist temple founded in the early Heian period, which was the hereditary temple or of th ...

in Higashiyama-ku,

Notes

All Western dates calculated using Tsuchihashi's database via th
Nengocalc
tool.

References

Japanese empresses 1653 births 1712 deaths Fujiwara clan People of Edo-period Japan 1680s in Japan 17th-century Japanese people {{Japan-royal-stub