Okiko-naishinnō became empress following the abdication of her father. The succession was considered to have been received by the new monarch; and shortly thereafter, Empress Meishō is said to have acceded. The events during her lifetime shed some light on her reign. The years of Meishō's reign correspond with the development and growth of the Tokugawa shogunate under the leadership of Tokugawa Iemitsu.
January 9, 1624: The birth of an Imperial princess who will become known by the posthumous name of Empress Meishō.
1627 : The "Purple Robe Incident": Emperor Go-Mizunoo was accused of having bestowed honorific purple garments to more than ten priests despite the shoguns edict which banned them for two years. The shogunate intervened and invalidated the bestowal of the garments.
December 22, 1629 : The emperor renounced the throne in favor of his daughter. The reign of the new empress was understood to have begun. She was aged 5; and she would grow to become the first woman to occupy the throne since Empress Shōtoku, the 48th sovereign who died in 770.
1634 : Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu visited Miyako; and it is believed that Meishō's father actually ruled in her name until she abdicated in favor of her younger half-brother.
1635 : An ambassador from King Injo of Korea is received in Miyako.
1637 : A major rebellion occurs in the Arima and Shimabara with many Christians involved; shogunal forces are sent to quell the disturbance.
1638 : The Arima and Shimabara revolt is crushed; and 37,000 of the rebels are killed. The Christian religion is banned in Japan under pain of death.
1640 : A Spanish ship from Macau brought a delegation of 61 people to Nagasaki. They arrived on July 6, 1640; and on August 9, all of them were decapitated and their heads were stuck on poles.
Empress Meishō reigned for fifteen years. Although there were seven other reigning empresses, their successors were most often selected from amongst the males of the paternal Imperial bloodline, which is why some conservative scholars argue that the women's reigns were temporary and that male-only succession tradition must be maintained in the 21st century. Empress Gemmei, who was followed on the throne by her daughter, Empress Gensho, remains the sole exception to this conventional argument.
December 4, 1696: The former empress died at age 72.
Kugyō is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted. In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Meishō's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
