Synopsis

This is the true story of the tragic life of Okichi Saito who became the pawn to placate Townsend Harris, the first American Consul to Japan in the turbulent mid 1800's when Japan was being forced to open its doors to the West. This poignant love story takes place during a period in history when the "Black Ships" arrived in Japan and changed many lives, especially those of Okichi and her financé and lover, Tsurumatsu. Like a butterfly, Okichi was beautiful but fragile, easily tossed about and bruised by the stronger forces.

This was because she was a woman of great beauty born into a poor family without the means to fight the powerful feudal lords who would offer her to appease Harris who took a fancy to her. These powerful forces caused great agony to Okichi and Tsurumatsu as they were torn apart by others as a means to an end.

Feudal Japan was not prepared to accept a woman who had been a concubine to a "foreign barbarian" and she was ostracised after Townsend Harris returned to America. Tojin Okichi spent the rest of her short life drinking away her sorrows and one grey March morning, she drowned herself in the Shimoda Bay ending a tortured life of lost love, pawn in political wheeling and dealing that was beyond her control and intolerable social ostracism.

Her story does have a happy ending in an unexpected way because today Okichi Saito is the respected heroine of Shimoda and every 27th of March, the day she killed herself, an elaborate "Okichi Festival" is celebrated in honor of the woman once reviled and spat upon by he rown people.     

Published

English
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Thai

Russian,

Polish

Dutch