* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Oichi no Kata
お市の方
Younger Sister of Oda Nobunaga, Renowned as the Greatest Beauty of the Sengoku Era, Who Endured the Fall of Two Castles
Description
Nobunaga's Sister, Hailed as the Greatest Beauty of the Sengoku Era
Oichi no Kata (1547-1583) was born in Owari as the younger sister (by one account, the cousin) of Oda Nobunaga. Commonly called 'Ichi,' she was later celebrated as 'the greatest beauty of the Sengoku era.' While the tradition of her appearance is not based on any verified contemporary portrait, her dramatic life—surviving the fall of two castles amid the turbulence of the age—etched her deeply into later memory.
Marriage to Asai Nagamasa
Around 1567, when Nobunaga formed an alliance with Asai Nagamasa, a warlord of northern Omi, he gave Ichi to Nagamasa in marriage. Though a political union, Ichi and Nagamasa are said to have enjoyed a harmonious relationship, producing three daughters (Chacha, Hatsu, and Gō) and a son. When Nobunaga and Nagamasa fell out in 1570, however, Ichi was caught between her brother and her husband. At the fall of Odani Castle (1573), Nagamasa took his own life, and Ichi escaped the castle with her three daughters to return to her brother Nobunaga.
Remarriage to Shibata Katsuie and the Fall of Kitanoshō
After Nobunaga perished in the Honnōji Incident of 1582, Ichi remarried Shibata Katsuie, a senior Oda retainer. But in 1583, Katsuie was defeated by Hashiba Hideyoshi at the Battle of Shizugatake and took refuge in Kitanoshō Castle in Echizen. As Hideyoshi's forces closed in, Ichi sent her daughters out of the castle while choosing to remain with Katsuie, and on the 24th day of the fourth month she died by her own hand alongside her husband. She is said to have been thirty-seven.
A Bloodline Carried On Through Her Three Daughters
The three daughters Ichi left behind each lived lives that came to symbolize the turbulent age. Her eldest, Chacha, became Yodo-dono, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's concubine, and bore Toyotomi Hideyori; her second daughter, Hatsu, became the principal wife of Kyōgoku Takatsugu; and her third daughter, Gō, became the principal wife of Tokugawa Hidetada and mother of the third shogun, Iemitsu. That Ichi's blood flowed into both the great Toyotomi and Tokugawa houses symbolizes the transition from the Sengoku era to the Edo period.
Connection to Swords
Reliable sources identifying a sword carried personally by Oichi no Kata are scarce. However, women of warrior families in the Sengoku period customarily carried a kaiken (a short protective blade) upon marriage, regarded as a symbol of their resolve to guard their chastity and their family's honor in moments of crisis. Having experienced the fall of two castles and ultimately chosen death alongside her husband, Ichi's life conveys to us today that for women of warrior families, the blade (kaiken) was a spiritual pillar transcending its function as a mere weapon.
Notable Swords
- Kaiken (short blade) of a warrior-class woman—a protective sword carried by women of warrior families upon marriage in the Sengoku period. Although reliable records identifying a sword personally carried by Oichi are scarce, her life—surviving the fall of two castles and ultimately choosing to die by her own hand—illustrates that for warrior-class women the kaiken was a symbol of chastity and resolve