Three Castle-Falls: Yodo-dono Had Her Father and Mother Torn Away by the Flames of War

In 1573 (Tenshō 1), at Odani Castle in Ōmi (present-day Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture).

The castle of Azai Nagamasa, besieged by the great army of his brother-in-law Oda Nobunaga, went up in flames.

The castellan Nagamasa took his own life, and his young eldest daughter Chacha (the later Yodo-dono) fled the castle led by the hand of her mother Oichi (this site's id 63) and her younger sisters.

For Chacha, about four years old, this was the first castle-fall of her life. Her father's death and the castle's flames were carved deep into her young memory.

Chacha's father Azai Nagamasa had taken Nobunaga's sister Oichi as his wife and formed an alliance with Nobunaga.

But the relationship between the two houses broke down, and Nagamasa turned against Nobunaga.

Odani Castle was taken by Nobunaga, and Nagamasa took his own life. Nobunaga's niece and at the same time the daughter of an enemy general destroyed by Nobunaga — Chacha bore torn blood from birth.

Her mother Oichi and the three sisters were taken in by Nobunaga and survived.

In 1583 (Tenshō 11), at Kita-no-shō Castle in Echizen (present-day Fukui City, Fukui Prefecture).

Shibata Katsuie, to whom her mother Oichi had remarried, was defeated by Hashiba Hideyoshi at the Battle of Shizugatake and cornered at his castle of Kita-no-shō.

Katsuie chose to take his own life, and Oichi died with him, sharing the fate of the castle.

Chacha was sent out of the castle with her younger sisters and survived, leaving her mother in the flames.

It was a second castle-fall, at about fifteen. After her father, Chacha had even her mother torn away by the flames of war.

What awaited the Chacha who had survived two castle-falls was an ironic fate. Hashiba Hideyoshi (this site's id 2), who stood at the summit of the side that had driven her father Nagamasa and her mother Oichi to death, would in time take Chacha as his concubine.

To live under the enemy of one's kin. That was a harsh reality imposed on the women of the Sengoku.

But Chacha, amid that fate, bore the heir of the Toyotomi house, and in time became mistress of Ōsaka Castle herself.

The girl who had lost her father's castle and her mother's castle would, thirty years later, meet a third castle-fall together with her own child.