TALES FROM HISTORY
Hosokawa Gracia—The Noblewoman Who Inspired Shogun’s ‘Maria’
“The beauty of flowers is to know when to fall”
Many are familiar with James Clavell’s novel, Shogun. This fantastic work of historical fiction is based on the story of William Adams, an English pilot whose crippled Dutch vessel washed ashore in Kyushu in 1600. Like the novel’s hero, Anjin-san, Adams was made a hatamoto by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s future shogun, the fictional Toranaga Yoshii. Many other characters are based on historical people: Ishido on Ishida Mitsunari, Lady Ochiba on Yodo-dono, and even the tea house madam who requested the setting aside of land for Edo’s pleasure quarters.
But of all Shogun’s characters, none evoke more sympathy than Mariko-sama, the tragic Lady Maria. She, too, has her roots in history, modeled after a Christian samurai named Hosokawa Gracia.
Background
Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries in Japan, ambitious warlords vied for power amidst constant conflict. The Ashikaga shogunate, based in the Muromachi district of Kyoto, was powerless to stop the chaos. In 1543, Portuguese sailors landed on a southern island and introduced firearms to the country. The powerful warlord, Oda Nobunaga, used these formidable weapons in his quest to…
