The Fall of Ōsaka: In 1615, Yodo-dono Vanished into the Flames with Her Son

In the fifth month of 1615 (Genna 1), at Ōsaka Castle (present-day Ōsaka City). By the all-out assault of the great army led by Tokugawa Ieyasu (this site's id 3), the Ōsaka Castle hailed as impregnable at last fell.

Deep within the castle, in the blazing flames, were Yodo-dono and her child Toyotomi Hideyori.

Mother and son were cornered and took their own lives together. Yodo-dono was forty-seven.

Following her father Azai Nagamasa's Odani Castle and her mother Oichi's Kita-no-shō Castle, it was a third castle-fall.

This time, it was the turn of herself and her child.

After Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu steadily grasped the real power of the realm.

Through the Battle of Sekigahara, the Toyotomi house fell to the position of a single daimyō.

Even so, at Ōsaka Castle there were Hideyori and Yodo-dono, and it remained a symbol where daimyō indebted to the Toyotomi and masterless warriors gathered.

For Ieyasu, the existence of the Toyotomi house was the last spark that threatened the Tokugawa age.

Using as a pretext a false accusation over the bell inscription of Hōkō-ji, Ieyasu at last turned his soldiers toward Ōsaka.

Yodo-dono and Hideyori were driven into an all-out confrontation with the Tokugawa.

In the Winter Siege of Ōsaka of 1614, the Toyotomi side, thanks in part to the desperate fighting of Sanada Nobushige (this site's id 9) and others, fought well against the great Tokugawa army.

But as a condition of the peace, Ōsaka Castle had its moats filled in and was made all but a bare castle.

In the Summer Siege of the next year, 1615, there was no means to defend the stripped castle.

The Toyotomi generals were cut down one after another, and Ōsaka Castle was stormed by the Tokugawa army.

Yodo-dono and Hideyori were driven into a corner of the castle. The fall was no longer avoidable.

In the burning Ōsaka Castle, Yodo-dono met her last hour with her child Hideyori.

Mother and son took their own lives, and the Toyotomi house perished here. The girl who had once lost her father at four and her mother at fifteen to castle-falls now, at forty-seven, sank herself and her child into the flames.

It was a life in which, carrying the blood of the three great Sengoku houses of Azai, Oda, and Toyotomi, she saw all of them go to ruin before her eyes.

In later ages, Yodo-dono was disparaged as the arrogant woman who destroyed the Toyotomi.

But her true figure is that of a single mother who, in the raging current of the age, tried to protect those she loved and could not.