Who Is Giō (Gio)?
The dancer cast aside by Kiyomori
Giō was a celebrated shirabyōshi (a female performer who sang and danced) in the capital and the favorite of Taira no Kiyomori. When Kiyomori's affection shifted to Hotoke Gozen, she was driven from his mansion and became a nun at twenty-one.
In the chapter "Giō" in Book One, when Hotoke Gozen arrives uninvited and is about to be turned away, Giō speaks up for her and gives her the chance to dance. But Kiyomori falls for Hotoke Gozen and throws Giō out. As she leaves, Giō writes a poem on a sliding door: "Sprouting or withering, all are grasses of the same field; which of them can escape the coming of autumn?" The next year Kiyomori summons her and humiliates her by making her dance from the lowest seat. She even thinks of drowning herself, but her mother Toji stops her, and she goes to live as a nun with her mother and sister in a mountain village in Saga.
The site of the hut where Giō and her family lived is said to be today's Giō-ji temple in Saga, Kyoto.
Episodes featuring this character2
NEWEpisode 2
She Saved the New Girland Lost Her Stage — Giō (The Tale of the Heike)
Giō, a dancer adored by Kiyomori, the most powerful man in the capital, stands up for Hotoke, a bold young girl who shows up uninvited. Overnight, Giō is thrown out of the mansion. Humiliated and in despair, she becomes a nun. Then one autumn night, Hotoke comes knocking, having given up everything.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 14
He Doomed Her ClanThen Came to Visit — The Imperial Visit to Ōhara (Kenreimon-in)
the series finale. Kenreimon-in was the only one of her clan pulled alive from the sea at Dan-no-Ura. Now she spends her days in prayer at a mountain hermitage in Ōhara. One early summer, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, the man who ordered the war that destroyed her family, comes to see her in secret. She tells him to his face how much she has resented him. Then she begins to tell her life story as a journey through six realms.
19 pages