Tango no Naishi (丹後内侍)

Tango no Naishi (year of birth and death unknown) was a woman who lived from the end of the Heian period to the beginning of the Kamakura period.

She was the first daughter of Hikinoama who was menoto (a woman providing breast-feed to a highborn baby) of MINAMOTO no Yoritomo. She was a wife of Morinaga ADACHI who was gokenin (an immediate vassal of the shogunate in the Kamakura and Muromachi through Edo periods) of the Kamakura bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun). Her children were Kagemori ADACHI, Tokinaga ADACHI, a wife of MINAMOTO no Noriyori and so on.

According to "the family tree of the Yoshimi clan," when she served the Emperor Nijo in Kyoto as nyobo (a court lady), she formed a liaison with KOREMUNE no Hirokoto and gave birth to Tadahisa SHIMAZU, then went to the Kanto region after getting divorced and married Morinaga ADACHI. Morinaga had been a close adviser to Yoritomo from the period of his exile and it seems that he began to serve Yoritomo because of his wife's relationship. Nijoin no Sanuki, the daughter of MINAMOTO no Yorimasa, served Nijoin as nyobo.

According to "Azuma Kagami" (The Mirror of the East), she served as a waiter at the obi-wearing ceremony to pray for the safe delivery of the baby on April 20, 1182 when Masako HOJO, a wife of Yoritomo, was pregnant with MINAMOTO no Yoriie, their first son. Her two sisters were menoto of Yoriie.

On July 5, 1186, when Tango no Naishi was sick in bed, Yoritomo visited her secretly in the residence of Morinaga only with two followers. It is said that Yoritomo prayed for her and felt relieved when Tango no Naishi recovered a few days later.

Thus, since she was familiar with Yoritomo, there are two theories of Rakuin (child born out of wedlock) about Yoritomo in later years such as her son Kagemori was the son of Yoritomo ("Horyakukanki" (A History Book of the 14 century in Japan)) and Tadahisa SHIMAZU, the patriarch of the Shimazu clan, identified himself as a son between her and Yoritomo. There is no record in the historical sources of that age including "Azuma Kagami" which showed Tango no naishi gave birth to a child of Yoritomo.

[Original Japanese]