Taira no Tokiko

Nii no Ama rescuing boy-Emperor Antoku from a dragon, in a print by Yoshitsuya Ichieisai.

Taira no Tokiko (平 時子, 1126–1185) was the wife of Taira no Kiyomori, mother of Taira no Tokuko, as well as grandmother of Emperor Antoku. Later she took the vows to become a nun, after which she was generally referred to by her Buddhist name as the "Nun of the Second Rank" (Nii no Ama 二位尼).^[1] According to the Tale of the Heike, Taira no Tokiko drowned herself during the Battle of Dan-no-ura together with the boy-Emperor Antoku.^[2] She also took with her into the sea the Sacred Sword, i.e., one of the Three Imperial Regalia of Japan.

References

1. McCullough, Helen Craig. (1988) The Tale of the Heike. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1418-1, p. 210.
2. ibid., pp. 377-78

Additional reading

• Brown, Delmer and Ichiro Ishida, eds. (1979). [ Jien (1221)], Gukanshō; "The Future and the Past: a translation and study of the 'Gukanshō,' an interpretive history of Japan written in 1219" translated from the Japanese and edited by Delmer M. Brown & Ichirō Ishida. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03460-0
• Kitagawa, Hiroshi and Bruce T. Tsuchida. (1975). The Tale of the Heike. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. ISBN 0-86008-189-3
• McCullough, Helen Craig. (1994). Genji and Heike. Selections from The Tale of the Genji and The Tale of the Heike. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2258-7
• Watson, Burton and Haruo Shirane. (2006). The Tales of the Heike (abridged). New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-13802-4