Otose (お登勢)
"Otose" refers to two things; 1) a title of a novel written by Kaoru FUNAYAMA, which describes the Kogo incident (Inada uproar), and 2) a title of a drama created by NHK based on the novel. For details, refer to "Otose (Kaoru FUNAYAMA)."
Otose was a landlady of the Teradaya Inn, who lived during the end of the Edo Period. A detailed description is provided on this page.
Otose (around 1829 - September 7, 1877) was a landlady of the Teradaya Inn, who lived during the end of the Edo Period, the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Otose was born as a second girl to Jubei OMOTO who run a Japanese-style hotel in Otsu. Although Otose got married to Inosuke TERADAYA, the sixth landlord of the Teradaya Inn (an inn for sailors in Fushimi, Kyoto), Inosuke deteriorated his business for being debauched and even died young for excessive drinking. Therefore, she had taken charge of running the Inn since then. As Otose originally liked taking care of people, she voluntarily protected soldiers who had the thought of Sonno Joi (reverence for the Emperor and the expulsion of foreigners) such as Ryoma SAKAMOTO from the bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun), although the bakufu wanted to expel them. Therefore, Otose was once regarded as a dangerous person by the bakufu and had a narrow escape from being imprisoned.
In 1863, after feudal retainers of the Satsuma Domain killed each other in the Teradaya Inn (the Teradaya Incident), Otose ordered her servants to replace battered tatami (mats) and fusuma (sliding doors) immediately to prepare for resuming a business. It is said that she continued to hide Ryoma and other soldiers of Sonno Joi sometimes even after the Incident. Otose died in 1877.
In most of the letters written by Ryoma to Otose, Ryoma described some personal requests or his frustrations associated with his work to Otose.