The Last Concubine (67 page)

Not long after it became the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Edo Castle was razed to the ground. Where the women’s palace used
to be is now the Imperial Palace East Gardens; the expanse of the gardens gives some idea of how vast the palace must have been. The Gate of the Shoguns’ Ladies with its massive guardhouse – officially known as the Hirakawa Gate – is still there, as is the outer gate of the Shimizu mansion. At Himeji Castle, west of Osaka, the women’s quarters still exist, though much smaller than in Edo Castle. The Tokyo National Museum on Ueno Hill is on the site of what was once Kanei-ji Temple. In Tokyo I paid my respects at Zojoji Temple where Lord Iemochi is buried alongside Princess Kazu. There is a life-size statue of Princess Kazu there. I also reacquainted myself with the Inner Mountain Road (the Nakasendo) and the villages of Tsumago and Magome, on which Sachi’s village is modelled. As for Kano, that is the old name of Gifu, where I lived for the first two years I was in Japan; though the treacherous behaviour of the daimyo of Kano is pure fiction.

History is always written by the winners and never more so than in the case of the civil war that culminated in 1868 with the so-called Meiji Restoration. It is often described as a ‘bloodless’ revolution; as readers of this book know, it certainly wasn’t bloodless. I tried to imagine how it must have been to be one of the hundreds of thousands of people on the losing side, and most especially what happened to the women of Edo Castle after the women’s palace was disbanded.

The history of the time – the plots and counterplots and secret alliances – is labyrinthine. People living through it would have had little idea of what was going on outside their own small world. I’ve simplified it and tried to show it as it must have seemed to Sachi. I’ve lumped the Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa and their burgeoning band of allies together and called them ‘the southerners’, which makes geographical sense and, funnily enough, is exactly as
The Japan Times’ Overland Mail
and other contemporary western observers referred to them.

In the period in which this book takes place Japan had just begun to open up to the West. The Victorians who visited were well aware that they were seeing an extraordinary world – and one that was on the brink of disappearing. Many of them wrote diaries and books which I read with great envy. Some are listed
below. For me, writing
The Last Concubine
has been the latest chapter in a very long love affair with Japan. Everyone who goes there wishes they could have experienced the old Japan – that magical, fragile world which has gone for ever. Writing this book has given me the chance to imagine myself there and to take my readers with me.

Acknowledgements

This book would not exist were it not for my agent, Bill Hamilton. Bill insisted I embark on the project and has been a part of it all the way through, offering wise advice and support. Huge thanks also to Sara Fisher, Corinne Chabert and everyone at A. M. Heath.

I’ve been very fortunate in being able to work with Selina Walker at Transworld. Selina did a great deal to shape this book and keep me pointed in the right direction. I’m much indebted to her and to all her team, including Deborah Adams and Claire Ward, who have been full of support, enthusiasm and patience when required.

Thanks to Kimiko Shiga, who deciphered the archaic Japanese of Takayanagi Kaneyoshi’s
Life in the Women’s Palace at Edo Castle
. Gaye Rowley and Thomas Harper were in on this project from the beginning and shared their extensive knowledge of Japan and of the Edo period, Tom’s speciality. Colin Young – one of only three teachers of the Shodai Ryu school of swordsmanship outside Japan – provided much esoteric information and gave me the chance to wield a real Japanese sword, a thrilling experience. Thanks to all of these for casting a critical eye over the manuscript and making many invaluable suggestions, and also to Louise Longdin and Ian Eagles. Thanks too to the teachers and students of the London Naginata Association, where I learned how to handle a practice stick and watched competition-level
naginata
(halberd) duels. Yoko Chiba and John Maisonneuve (another swordsman) also provided information about the halberd.

The translations are my own. The symbol at the beginning of
each chapter is the Mizuno crest. The endpapers (in the hardback edition only) show a section of the actual kimono on which I based the brocade – Sachi’s mothers overkimono. Greatful thanks to the Tokyo National Museum for permission to use this image of an early-nineteenth-century katabira with landscape with pavilion, gate, rope curtain and nobleman’s cart, (TNM Image Archives Source:
http//TNMAArchives.jp
).

I owe a debt to all the Japan historians whose work I’ve drawn on to write this book (though all mistakes, misinterpretations and liberties with the facts are my own). Some are listed below; there are many more. Professors Donald Keene and Timon Screech kindly shared their expertise. Professor Conrad Totman’s wonderful books on the last years of the Tokugawa Bakufu, together with Professor M. William Steele’s analyses of 1868 Edo, provided the factual underpinning of my story. I enjoyed a lengthy and entertaining email exchange with Dr Takayuki Yokota-Murakami of the University of Osaka on love and sex in old Japan. The information on dried lizard powder is from him. His book listed below, despite the daunting subtitle, is fascinating reading.

Last but most important of all is my husband, Arthur, without whose love and support I couldn’t possibly have written this book. He gave me the leisure to indulge in fiction, read and commented on each draft and, as an expert on military history, made sure I got the rifles and cannons right. He has shared Sachi’s world with me. We walked the Inner Mountain Road together, strolled around Edo Castle, and went to Himeji Castle and to Zojoji Temple to see Princess Kazu’s tomb. At this point he is something of an expert on Edo-period Japan and can even recognize the Tokugawa crest – an ability few can claim!

This book is dedicated to him.

Select Bibliography

There are an enormous number of wonderful books on the Edo period. Below are just a few that I have found particularly inspiring.

Biographies of Edo-period samurai, novels and other books that make the period come alive:

Bolitho, Harold,
Bereavement and Consolation: Testimonies from Tokugawa Japan
, Yale University Press, 2003

Katsu Kokichi,
Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai,
translated with an introduction and notes by Teruko Craig, University of Arizona Press, 1988

McClellan, Edwin,
Woman in the Crested Kimono: The Life of Shibue Io and Her Family Drawn from Mori Ogai’s ‘Shibue Chusai
’, Yale University Press, 1985

Meech-Pekarik, Julia,
The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization
, Weatherhill, 1987

Miyoshi Masao,
As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States
, Kodansha International, 1994

Shiba Ryotaro,
The Last Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Yoshinobu
, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, Kodansha International, 1998

Shimazaki Toson,
Before the Dawn
, translated by William E. Naff, University of Hawaii Press, 1987

Walthall, Anne,
The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration
, University of Chicago Press, 1998

Yamakawa Kikue,
Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life
, translated with an introduction by Kate Wildman Nakai, Stanford University Press, 2001

Diaries of Victorian travellers:

Alcock, Rutherford,
The Capital of the Tycoon, volumes I and II
, Elibron Classics, 2005 (first published 1863)

Cortazzi, Hugh,
Mitford’s Japan: Memories and Recollections 1866–1906
, Japan Library, 2002

Heusken, Henry,
Japan Journal: 1855–1861
, translated and edited by Jeannette C. van der Corput and Robert A. Wilson, Rutgers University Press, 1964

Notehelfer, F. G.,
Japan through American Eyes: The Journal of Francis Hall
, Westview Press, 2001

Satow, Ernest,
A Diplomat in Japan: The Inner History of the Critical Years in the Evolution of Japan When the Ports were Opened and the Monarchy Restored
, Stone Bridge Press, 2006 (first published 1921)

Indispensable and well-loved works on literature and poetry:

Keene, Donald (ed.),
Anthology of Japanese Literature: to the nineteenth century
, Grove Press; Penguin Books, 1968

Miner, Earl,
An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry
, Stanford University Press, 1968

Waley, Arthur,
The No Plays of Japan
, George Allen and Unwin, 1921; Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1976

Key academic works about the period:

Keene, Donald,
Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World,
Columbia University Press, 2002

Roberts, John G.,
Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business
, Weatherhill, 1973

Steele, M. William, ‘Against the Restoration: Katsu Kaishu’s Attempt to Reinstate the Tokugawa Family’, in
Monumenta Nipponica
, xxxvi, 3, pp. 300–16

Steele, M. William, ‘Edo in 1868: The View from Below’, in
Monumenta Nipponica
, 45:2, pp. 127–55

Totman, Conrad,
Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600–1843
, Harvard University Press, 1967

Totman, Conrad,
The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868
, University Press of Hawaii, 1980

Yokota-Murakami, Takayuki,
Don Juan East/West: On the Problematics of Comparative Literature
, State University of New York Press, 1998

The best book on the women’s palace:

Takayanagi Kaneyoshi,
Edojo ooku no seikatsu (Life in the Women’s Palace at Edo Castle
), Tokyo Yuzankaku Shuppan, 1969

And a fantastic website on the Nakasendo, the Inner Mountain
Road:
http://www.hku.hk/history/nakasendo/

ABOUT THE BOOK

Lesley Downer’s first novel,
The Last Concubine
, is an enthralling narrative that is equal part historical drama, epic romance, and coming-of-age story.

Growing up in rural Japan in the 1860s, Sachi has often felt different; her pale skin, aristocratic features, and slight size make her unlike the other girls in the village. However, Sachi lives a normal life until her eleventh year, when Princess Kazu and her royal procession come through her village on their way to Edo Castle, where the princess is to marry the young shogun, Lord Iemochi. The princess immediately notices Sachi, selects her to be one of her ladies-in-waiting and Sachi is swept off to Edo Castle.

Lined with gold-leaf walls, the women’s palace is lavish and beautiful, rich with the scent of incense and acres of gardens, and filled with exquisite silk brocade, tea, and cosmetics. It is here that three thousand women live bound by tradition and duty in a strictly hierarchical system that is mired in gossip, secrets, and malevolence. Ladies-in-waiting, with their maids and their maids-of-maids, spend their days writing poetry and practising calligraphy, tea ceremony, incense guessing – and the halberd, so they can defend the shogun from intruders if necessary.

When Sachi turns fifteen, the princess offers Sachi to her husband as a concubine. Sachi is in awe of the attractive young shogun, but he leaves the castle after their night together, and Sachi finds herself at the mercy of the jealous and powerful women of the castle.

Then almost overnight, everything changes. The shogun never returns, and the heartbreaking news of his death signals the end of life as they know it. As war breaks out and southern armies invade the north, Sachi and her loyal friend Taki are shuttled from the castle as a decoy for the princess. Alone, unprotected, and outside the castle walls, they must decide whether they trust the band of
ronin
who offer to lead them to safety. And what will Sachi do now that the shogun is dead and the beautiful life they led at Edo Castle is no more?

Against the tumultuous backdrop of civil war, Sachi begins a quest for freedom, happiness, and her true self. Time and again, she finds herself in the path of a rough samurai named Shinzaemon, and together they overcome age-old class prejudices, endure the upheavals of civil war, and eventually discover the unexpected truth about Sachi’s father and mother.

Based on careful research and meticulous details,
The Last Concubine
brings to life the grandeur of Edo-period Japan and the timeless beauty of a young woman’s quest for self-discovery.

AN INTERVIEW WITH LESLEY DOWNER

Q:
Many reviewers of the book are fascinated by the breadth of historical detail. How important was historical accuracy to you? Did the research take longer than the writing of the story itself?

I was determined to make my story as authentic as possible, so I spent a lot of time looking into the clothes, buildings, food, perfumes, and modes of transport. But it was even more important to try to imagine the way people of Sachi’s era might have thought and behaved. I immersed myself in books written in and about the period, in movies and kabuki theatre set in the period, and in woodblock prints and old photographs.