Toyotomi Tomo or Nisshu-ni (日秀尼, 1534 - 30 May 1625) was a Japanese noble woman member from the aristocrat samurai family,

Toyotomi clan The was a Japanese clan that ruled over the Japanese before the Edo period. Unity and conflict The most influential figure within the Toyotomi was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the three "unifiers of Japan". Oda Nobunaga was another primary un ...

, from the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

to the early

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 ...

. She was the sister of

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

the second "Great Unifier" 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 daughter of

Ōmandokoro Ōmandokoro (大政所, 1516 – 29 August 1592) or Ōmandokoro Naka was the mother of the Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi. She was also the mother of Asahi no kata, Tomo and Toyotomi Hidenaga. Biography It is said that Ōmandokoro was born ...

, the matriarch of Toyotomi clan, and mother of

Toyotomi Hidekatsu Toyotomi Hidekatsu (豊臣秀勝, 1569 – October 14, 1592)Hall, John Whitney ''et al.'' (1991). ''The Cambridge History of Japan'' was Toyotomi Hideyoshi's nephew (later adopted) and a Japanese samurai of the Sengoku period. He was the lord o ...

Toyotomi Hidetsugu was a daimyō during the Sengoku period of Japan. He was the nephew and retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the unifier and ruler of Japan from 1590 to 1598. Despite being Hideyoshi's closest adult, male relative, Hidetsugu was accused of atrocities ...

and

Toyotomi Hideyasu The was a Japanese clan that ruled over the Japanese people, Japanese before the Edo period. Unity and conflict The most influential figure within the Toyotomi was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the three "unifiers of Japan". Oda Nobunaga was a ...

. Tomo was the founder of Zensho-ji Temple. She was one of the last survivors of the Toyotomi clan; clan that was exterminated after the

Siege of Osaka The was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages (winter campaign and summer campaign), and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege ...

Life

Her personal name was Tomo or Tomoko, but she was commonly known as Munakumoni or Nisshu-ni. Her pseudonym was Zuiryu-in. Tomo married Miwa Yasuke, a farmer who called himself a relative of the Miwa Family in Yamato Province and renamed himself Miwa Yoshifusa later. During the marriage, Tomo gave birth to Hidetsugu (1568), Hidekatsu (1569) and Hideyasu (1579). In 1591, Hidetsugu and Hidekatsu became adopted sons of Hideyoshi and also became kanpaku (advisor to the emperor) but the relationship between Hidetsugu and Hideyoshi began to deteriorate after his son

Toyotomi Hideyori was the son and designated successor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who first united all of Japan. His mother, Yodo-dono, was the niece of Oda Nobunaga. Early life Born in 1593, he was Hideyoshi's second son. The birth of Hideyori cre ...

was born, and he was ordered to commit seppuku while his wife and all other women of his household with him were executed beside Sanjo-gawa River. The harshness and brutality of executing 39 women and children shocked Japanese society and alienated many ''daimyō'' from Toyotomi rule. Combined with the fact that Hidetsugu was the last adult member of the Toyotomi clan besides Hideyoshi himself, the whole incident is often seen to be one of the key causes of the Toyotomis downfall. Following this incident, Tomo became a Buddhist nun, took the name Nisshu-ni and established a Buddhist hall on the site of the present Zensho-ji Temple. Zuiryu-ji Temple was dedicated by Nisshu to pray for her own soul following her death. This temple began with a thatched hut that was built in 1597 in Kameyama, Saga to pray for the soul of Hidetsugu Her husband Yoshifusa died of illness around 1600. Nisshu had Ondahime, her great-granddaughter and the fifth daughter of

Sanada Yukimura , also known as , was a Japanese samurai warrior of the Sengoku period. He was especially known as the leading general on the defending side of the Siege of Osaka. Yukimura was called "A Hero who may appear once in a hundred years", "Crimson D ...

, take refuge at her residence at the time of the downfall of the Toyotomi Family resulting from the

in 1615. Later, Ondahime married

Iwaki Nobutaka Iwaki (岩城、磐城) may refer to: Places *Iwaki, Fukushima (いわき市), a city in Japan *Iwaki, Akita (岩城町), a former town in Japan *Iwaki, Aomori (岩木町), a former town in Japan *Iwaki Province (718) (岩城国), an old province of ...

, the younger brother of

Satake Yoshinobu was a ''daimyō'' in Sengoku period and early Edo period Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate and the 19th head of the Satake clan and 1st ''daimyō'' of Kubota Domain in Dewa Province. His courtesy title was '' Sakonoeshōshō'', later '' Uky ...

. Tomo survived the entire period of the fighting states, seeing the rise and fall of the Toyotomi family, the clan that unified Japan before the formation of the Tokugawa Shogunate. She was the only survivor of the main lineage of Toyotomi's matriarch, Omandokoro, passing away on April 20, 1625. She was 92 years old.

References

Bibliography

Yosuke Watanabe National Diet Library Digital Collection "Toyota Ko and his Family"
Japan Academic Promotion Association, 1919 . {{DEFAULTSORT:Tomo 1534 births 1625 deaths Toyotomi clan 17th-century Japanese women 16th-century Japanese women