Background
Chikako Kazunomiya was born on 1 August 1846 in Kyoto. She went by the name of Princess Chikako, eighth daughter of Emperor Ninko, younger half-sister of Emperor Komei, and wife of the fourteenth Edo period shogun Tokugawa Iemochi.
Chikako Kazunomiya was born on 1 August 1846 in Kyoto. She went by the name of Princess Chikako, eighth daughter of Emperor Ninko, younger half-sister of Emperor Komei, and wife of the fourteenth Edo period shogun Tokugawa Iemochi.
In 1868, when the shogunate was abolished and power was restored to the throne.
During the years 1869-74 she resided in Kyoto, but later returned to Tokyo and died in Hakone, where she had gone for her health.
After Ye- mochi’s death in 1866, she became a Buddhist nun with the religious name Seikan’in-no-miya.
She was noted for her skill in calligraphy and traditional Japanese style poetry.
In 1860, the shogunate, as a means of strengthening ties between it and the imperial court, had proposed a marriage alliance between the emperor’s younger sister and Tokugawa Iemochi, who had just become shogun. The proposal, it was said, had originally been planned by the chief shogunate official Ii Naosuke, who was assassinated the same year outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle.
The princess had already become engaged to the imperial prince Arisuga- wa-no-miya Taruhito in 1851, and Emperor Komei accordingly refused the request. The shogunate, however, persisted in its petition, while at court Iwakura Tomomi, a member of the court nobility, acted as mediator in the negotiations. When the shogunate, as part of the arrangement, promised to take action to drive foreign traders out of the country, the emperor finally gave his consent, and Princess Kazunomiya was persuaded to agree as well. In 1861 she left Kyoto for Edo and the following year was married. In 1866, however, her husband, Iemochi, died of illness at Osaka Castle while under-taking an expedition to punish the domain of Choshu for insubordination. The following year the princess’s elder brother, Emperor Komei, also died.