Akeno Tsugikuni

Akeno is a small, slender woman with fair skin and long black hair that falls to her waist. The hair is parted at the front and tied near the base of her back, with two shorter strands framing her eyes.

She dresses in a magenta kimono worn over a white juban. Layered above this is a flowing set of formal robes that may draw on the courtly junihitoe style, decorated with overlapping pale crescent moons and dotted patterns. The garments trail well past her bare feet along the ground.

Akeno is portrayed as devout and gentle, praying daily to the sun deity that calamity might spare the world while worrying constantly over her two sons. Those around her describe her as calm, soft-spoken, and almost doll-like in her stillness.

Beneath that quiet exterior lies a fierce protectiveness toward her children. She confronts her husband furiously when he considers killing the newborn Yoriichi, requiring servants to restrain her. Despite her own failing health, she accepts her son's help without protest, letting young Yoriichi support her weakened side as she walks.

Akeno lives during Japan's Sengoku period, roughly five centuries before the Taisho era. She gives birth to twin boys at a time when twins are seen as an ill omen, and the younger child carries a large strange mark on his head. Her husband proposes killing the infant, but Akeno's outrage forces him to relent, and he agrees the boy will enter the temples when older. The elder twin becomes Michikatsu and the younger becomes Yoriichi.

Her husband's coldness toward Yoriichi sparks constant friction in the household, while Akeno also wrestles with an illness that gradually spreads through her body. Yoriichi, whose mark lets him perceive her sickness, quietly supports her, a kindness that breeds resentment in Michikatsu. Because Yoriichi rarely speaks, Akeno fashions hanafuda charm earrings for him and prays for his deafness to be cured. She records her thoughts in a diary until the illness claims her life, leaving a final wish that her family live together happily.