Background
Okichi Tojin was born in 1841 in Japan. She was the daughter of a carpenter named Ichibe Saito, she was adopted at the age of seven by one Sen Murayama.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Okichi Tojin
Edit Profileお吉 唐人
Career
Okichi Tojin became a geisha (1854) and soon after Townsend Harris, American consul to Japan, took a fancy to her. When Shinjiro Isa, commissioner of Shimoda, realized this infatuation of the American for the Japanese girl he persuaded her to go and live with him. She thus lived with the American consul at Gyokusenji Temple, and when the Consulate closed in Shimoda and Harris went back home she came to live with Tsurumatsu at Yokohama (1868).
Later she returned to Shimoda where she worked as a hairdresser and then as a restaurant owner at Anchokuro. There she is said to have led a life of dissipation, which ended with her drowning herself in the Okichi-ga-fuchi in the year 1890.
Connections
- Father:
- Ichibe Saito
- Lover:
- Townsend Harris
References
-
Butterfly in the Wind: The Life of "Tojin" Okichi, Concubine Against Her Will of the First American Consul in Japan
Combining a gripping love story with a revealing look into 19th-century Japan, this biographical novel chronicles the bittersweet story of Tsurumatsu and Okichi Saito-a young Japanese couple torn apart by the whims of international politics. When the first American consul, Townsend Harris, arrived in Japan, he took a liking to Okichi, who, despite already being married, was promised by her local governor to Harris, and remained his concubine for five years. Her marriage with Tsurumatsu was destroyed and she was never fully reaccepted into Japanese culture after having been a foreigner's mistress. Recounting the depths of suffering that befell Saito after Harris returned to America, this work reveals a tumultuous era in Japanese history through one young woman's moving story.
2004
