Hatsume no Tsubone

Hatsume no Tsubone (初芽局) is a fictitious Japanese woman from the Sengoku period. She is famous as the main character of the semi-historical novel Sekigahara by Ryōtarō Shiba. In the novel, she is a kunoichi (female ninja) sent by Tokugawa Ieyasu to spy on his political enemy Ishida Mitsunari before the Battle of Sekigahara.

Narrative

In the 2017 film Sekigahara, based on Shiba's novel, Hatsume became a female ninja in Iga after serving as a maid of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's mother. She then fell in love with the character of Ishida Mitsunari and began working for him in the Western army. The director of the movie, Masato Harada, wanted to create a "boy meets a girl" type of romantic encounter. Hatsume appears in various video games, such as Sengoku Taisen (2010) and Puzzle & Dragons (2012). Hatsume (played by Kasumi Arimura) is a protagonist character in the film Sekigahara (2017).