Senhime

Senhime (千姫; Japanese pronunciation: [seɰ̃.çi.me], 26 May 1597 – 11 March 1666), or Lady Sen, was the eldest daughter of the samurai, daimyo and shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada and later the wife of Toyotomi Hideyori. She was remarried to Honda Tadatoki after the death of her first husband. Following the death of her second husband, she later became a Buddhist nun under the name of Tenjuin (天樹院).

Biography

Early life

She was born in 1597 as the eldest daughter of the then-daimyo and later shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada and his wife Oeyo during the Warring-States period of Japanese history. Her paternal grandfather was the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu; her maternal grandfather was Azai Nagamasa; her grandmother was Oichi, whose brother was Oda Nobunaga. When she was six or seven, her grandfather wanted her to marry Toyotomi Hideyori, who was the son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

In 1603, when Senhime was seven years old, she married the successor to the Toyotomi clan, Toyotomi Hideyori and lived with him in Osaka Castle along with his mother, Lady Yodo, who was a sister of Oeyo, Senhime's mother and accompanied by her wet-nurse, Gyōbukyō no Tsubone. The marital relationship was recorded as good, but they were unable to have children. Her grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu, besieged the castle in 1615, when she was nineteen. When Osaka castle fell, Hideyori committed ritual suicide beside his mother, his son was executed at the age of 7 years old.