The Mistress of the Yodo Castle

The novel by the famous Japanese writer Yasushi Inoue (1907–1991) is dedicated to the real events of one of the brightest and most dramatic periods in Japanese history. The end of the 16th century approaches. The warlord Nobunaga Oda is fighting to unify the fragmented principalities into a centralized state, and he is succeeded by Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who reaches the heights of power. After his death, it is the turn of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the founder of a new dynasty of shoguns. In the midst of the civil wars, against the backdrop of burning castles and amid the noise of bloody battles, the princess Chikata, daughter of Nagamasa Asai and niece of Nobunaga Oda, matures, grasping the concepts of honor and duty. She is destined to become the concubine of the bitterest enemy of the Asai clan, the taiko Hideyoshi, to bear him an heir, to raise a brave warrior, and to accompany him on his last journey at the ruins of the burning Osaka Castle.