Yoarashi Okinu (夜嵐おきぬ)
Yoarashi Okinu is a character in Shinbun Nishikie (a newspaper with brocade picture) and a title of a film created later based on the story of a poisoner, Kinu HARADA (year of birth unknown, ca. 1844 - March 28, 1872), existed from the end of the Edo period to early Meiji period.
About Kinu HARADA herself, there are few accurate materials except Tokyo Nichinichi Newspaper published when she was executed. The story of Yoarashi Okinu is a dressed-up fiction rather than a story of real-life Kinu HARADA. Naoyuki KINOSHITA mentioned about the story of Yoarashi Okinu that the story and image do not always have to inhere in the affair of Kinu and are left to the judgment of a dramatist and a painter.
Story
Around 1844, she was born as the daughter of Sajiro, a fisherman, in Joga-shima Island located south of the Miura-hanto Peninsula. When she was sixteen years old, she lost her parents, was adopted by her uncle, and moved to Edo to become a geisha girl. Then at 'Owari-ya,' she called herself as 'Kamakura Koharu' and got reputation in Edo for her beauty.
Then OKUBO "Sado no kami" (a lord of the Karasuyama Domain in Shimotsuke Province, which was rated at thirty thousand koku) fell in love at first sight with Kinu, and Gentatsu KUROSAWA (a doctor lived in Nihombashi [Chuo Ward, Tokyo]) acted as proxy parents of Kinu so that Kinu can become a concubine of the Okubo family, changing her name as Hanayo. In 1857, she gave birth to an heir child, Haruwaka-gimi, but three years later, Tosa no kami died young age of 44, giving an end to their newly married life.
Hanayo entered the Buddhist priesthood in accordance with customary practice of the time to pray for the soul of her dead husband, changing her name as "Shingetsu-in." However, since she was half-compelled to take the tonsure rather than from her true religious mind, she could not adopt herself to such life. Before long, she had depression, and she went to Hakone for some rest and recuperation, following on recommendation.
In Hakone, however, she met Kakutaro, a son of Kinokuniya in Nihombashi (Chuo Ward, Tokyo), a kimono fabrics dealer, who won the nickname of "Ima ARIWARA no Narihira" and they fell in love before long. After returning to Edo, their relationship continued, and Kakutaro visited Kinu frequently. Of course, such forbidden love was beyond forgiveness, and their immorality and misconduct became known to the Okubo family. Kinu was banished from the family. Given an offer of marriage, Kakutaro was estranged from Okinu.
After that, she got back to geisha. Kinpei KOBAYASHI, a Shizoku (family or person with samurai ancestors) in Tokyo Prefecture, who was a hawker during the time of the Boshin War and the Edo period and then ran a moneylending business, fell in love with Okinu and paid way out in 1869. He built a house in Sarukawa-cho near Kabuki Edo Sanza in Asakusa to have Okinu lived in the house. Kobayashi was so infatuated with Kinu that he gave her whatever she wanted.
Okinu got absorbed in a Kabuki actor, Rikaku ("Rikaku" was a Kabuki actor's offstage name that can be used officially and privately of the third Rikaku ARASHI, and he was later to be known as the second Gonjuro ICHIKAWA), paying for sex with him. Wished for marriage with her lover, Okinu murdered her husband Kinpei KOBAYAHI, who was a serious barrier to her wish, with a rat poison.
When she was arrested and brought to court for trial, she was pregnant. After receiving death sentence, execution of the sentence was postponed until she gave birth to a child, and she was executed at Koｚukappara Keijo. Since modern Penal Code was not established at that time, her head was exposed at the gates of the prison for three days after beheading. In the story, Kinu was called by her nickname "Yoarashi Okinu" from her death poem, "Yoarashi no Samete Atonashi Hana no Yume" (Wake up and there is no sign of night storm, it was dream of flower). However, real Kinu left no death poem (p.32 in "Meiji Hyakuwa" vol. 1). Rikaku was given a three-year jail sentence for illicit intercourse.
Atsushi HACHISU wrote the details of the affair that Okinu committed murder during wandering because Tadayori OKUBO abandoned her after she gave birth to an heir boy though he had Okinu a concubine.
Filmography
Created a sensation, this affair was known to the world as 'a femme fatale Yoarashi Okinu.'
Within 10 years after Kinu's execution, Kisen OKAMOTO novelized the affair as "Yoarashi Okinu Hana no Adayume" (1878-1880). In later years, it became a theme of a film.