Today’s Featured Article at Wikipedia is about Lady Saigō:
Lady Saigō (西郷の局 or 西郷局 Saigō-no-Tsubone) (1552 – 1 July 1589), also known as Oai, was the first consort and trusted confidante of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the samurai lord who unified Japan at the end of the sixteenth century and then ruled as Shogun. She was also the mother of the second Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada.
During their relationship, Lady Saigō influenced Ieyasu’s philosophies, choice of allies, and policies as he rose to power during the late Sengoku period, and she thus had an indirect effect on the architecture of the Tokugawa shogunate. Although less is known of her than some other figures of the era, she is generally regarded as the “power behind the throne”, and her life has been compared to a “Cinderella story” of feudal Japan.[1] Her contributions were considered so significant that she was posthumously inducted to the Senior First Rank of the Imperial Court, the highest honor that could be conferred by the Emperor of Japan.
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