Mochizuki Chiyome facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mochizuki Chiyome 望月 千代女
Born	16th century
Died	Unknown date
Allegiance	Takeda clan
Commands held	Allegedly the leader of female ninjas (Kunoichi) of the Takeda clan
Spouse(s)	Mochizuki Moritoki

Mochizuki Chiyome (望月 千代女), also known as Mochizuki Chiyojo (望月 千代女) or Mochizuki Chiyo (望月 千代), was a 16th-century Japanese poet and noblewoman. She is known for allegedly creating a group of kunoichi in service of the Takeda clan.

Biography

Chiyome, a descendant of the 15th-century ninja Mochizuki Izumo-no-Kami (望月出雲守) of the Kōga-ryū school, was the wife of Mochizuki Moritoki, a samurai lord of Shinano's Saku District and himself a distant relative of Izumo-no-Kami. After Moritoki was killed in the Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima, Chiyome was left in the care of the daimyō Takeda Shingen, the leader of the Takeda clan and an uncle of her late husband. It was then when Takeda approached her and tasked her with creating an underground network of kunoichi (female ninja) for use against rival warlords.

Takeda's plan was to have fully trained female operatives who could act as spies and agents used to gather information and deliver coded messages to his allies; Mochizuki was the best candidate for this, since she came from a long line of Kōga ninja. She accepted the task, set up her operation in the village of Nezu (祢津村) in the Shinshū region (present-day Tōmi, Nagano), and searched for potential candidates. .....

Eventually, Chiyome and her kunoichi had set up an extensive network of some 200–300 agents that served the Takeda clan. Shingen was always informed of all activities, putting him one step ahead of his opponents at all times until his mysterious death in 1573, after which Mochizuki disappeared from historical records.

Historicity

It has been alleged that Mochizuki's name first appeared the 1971 book Investigation of Japanese History (考証日本史) by non-academic Shisei Inagaki (稲垣史生). Inagaki:

1. Describes the details of the Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima.
2. Claims that Moritoki Mochizuki was a husband of Chiyome and that he died at this battle.
3. Presents a historical written permission to Chiyome issued by Shingen and claims that, due to this permission, the "miko village" emerged.
4. Claims that the miko of the village became spies.
5. Claims that Chiyome then became a ninja.

However, Katsuya Yoshimaru (吉丸雄哉), an associate professor of Mie University who studies Japanese Edo period literature and the ninja, claims that Chiyome did not actually exist and lists the allegedly erroneous points of Inagaki's book:

1. There is no historical document describing the details of this battle.
2. Moritoki did not die in this battle.
3. This written permission is not extant. Generally speaking, most of such kind of written permissions are forged ones.
4. The claim of spy activities of the miko is groundless; it is based only on guess of Inagaki.
5. This is groundless as well. Although Inagaki refers History of Japanese Miko (日本巫女史), 1930, written by Taro Nakayama (中山太郎), this book says nothing about ninja and all mentions first appear in Inagaki's book.

Mochizuki's name became popular after a two-page article about her was published in a 1991 special issue of the magazine History Reader (歴史読本) titled Extraordinary Special Issue: All the Definitive Types of Ninja (臨時増刊号『決定版「忍者」の全て』). This article said that she was an upper ninja (上忍); according to Yoshimaru, historically there was no such rank in a ninja hierarchy.

See also

In Spanish: Chiyome Mochizuki para niños