Who Is Lady Nii (Taira no Tokiko) (Nii-dono)?
Kiyomori's wife, who leapt into the sea holding the child emperor
Taira no Tokiko
Lady Nii is Taira no Tokiko, the wife of Taira no Kiyomori. She was the mother of Kenreimon-in and the grandmother of Emperor Antoku. Because she became a nun along with her husband, she was called Nii no Ama or Nii-dono, after her court rank of Second Rank (nii).
In The Tale of the Heike, before Kiyomori dies, she dreams that a burning carriage has come from the court of Enma, king of hell, to take her husband away. She is also the one who hears Kiyomori's last words on his deathbed. When the Heike's defeat at Dan-no-Ura is certain, she tucks the sacred jewel, one of the Three Sacred Treasures of the imperial throne, under her arm, puts the sacred sword at her waist, and takes the eight-year-old Emperor Antoku in her arms. When the little emperor asks where they are going, she comforts him: "There is a capital beneath the waves, too." Then she throws herself into the sea with him.
The tale says the sacred sword that sank with them was never found.
Episodes featuring this character3
NEWEpisode 6
The Army That Lost to a Flock of BirdsBattle of Fujigawa / Death of Kiyomori
Having moved the capital to Fukuhara, Taira no Kiyomori hands a vast army to his grandson Taira no Koremori to crush Minamoto no Yoritomo's uprising. But the Heike troops, already shaken by the old warrior Saitō no Sanemori's tales of eastern fighters, flee without a fight when a flock of waterfowl takes off in the night. The year after Nara's Great Buddha Hall burns, Kiyomori, a tyrant who still had a soft spot for his own family, is seized by a fever like fire. His last command: "Hang Yoritomo's head before my grave."
19 pages
NEWEpisode 13
An Emperor, Age 8, Carried Into the SeaThe Battle of Dan-no-ura / The Death of Tomomori
To the sound of a biwa, the Heike's final day begins. Taira no Tomomori is the first of his clan to realize the battle is lost. He watches a betrayal, the young Emperor and his grandmother sinking into the sea, and Noritsune's last fight. Then, saying "I have seen all that I needed to see," he takes the hand of Ienaga, the retainer who grew up beside him like a brother, and leaps into the waves.
20 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