A Dark Cloud Over London/Elizabeth Ann Tokugawa

Mrs Elizabeth Ann Tokugawa
Plays in A Dark Cloud Over London

Humble beginnings

Elizabeth Ann was born in 1818, to Captain Horace Winston, of the British Royal Navy, out of Portsmouth. Her father made regular trips to the Indies and China escorting and protecting merchant vessels from privateers. His regular sea voyages kept him absent, and after the death of her mother to cholera in 1832, the young Elizabeth Ann Winston was sent to a girl's school in London until she was fifteen. Her father was injured, and for his service was retired to the post of a Governorship in Company controlled India, where he sent for his daughter in the anticipation that she would assist him in setting up a household.

Follies of Youth

Elizabeth Ann left school and boarded The Royal Spider bound for Bombay. Tragedy struck when the boat foundered en route, and of the hundreds aboard, 34 souls survived, washing ashore on the coast of Japan. Some of the sailors, who had previously been to Dejima in Nagasaki, spoke rudimentary Japanese and were able to communicate both their plight and the status of some of the passengers.

First Awakenings

Due to the inadvertent breach of sakoku, the rescued captives were brought to the attention of the Tokugawa shogunate for a determination as to how they were to be dealt with. The unexpected consequences of this was the instant attraction of the Tokugawa Kaneda, second son of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi. Although second in line of succession, Kaneda was preferred by his father and the nation generally to his melancholy and retiring brother Iesada. When Kaneda made demands or requirements, his father readily acquiesced to them, and it was anticipated that he would undertake the "true" rulership of Japan when Iesada came to power. When Kaneda determined that a young foreign woman was to be his wife, it through the Shogun's court into an uproar. This was all the more pressing based on the demands of Miss Winston - that she could not marry a man who was not a Christian, and she could not marry without her father's presence and consent.

Mysterious Origins

The relationship proved a flashpoint for the critical issues of opening Japan to the West and to the continued suppression of the Kirishtan tradition. Kaneda, and as her affection for him and grasp of Japanese improved, Winston, allied themselves with the factions pushing for Western association and were able to force the eventual opening of the islands with the assistance of the United States by 1843. To avoid any implication of scandal, Elizabeth was sent to a monastic order outside of Kyoto, where she was taught their arts of mediation, and, it is said, the arts of ninjitsu. To international sensation, Ms Winston became Mrs Elizabeth Anne Tokugawa (in the British style) in 1844. After her marriage, she insisted on observing and being taught by her husband the traditional skills of the samurai, which, although not openly known, she was permitted to learn. After the death of Shogun Ieyoshi (rumoured to be poisoned by political enemies with doctored chrysanthenum tea), it was determined that it was too dangerous for Elizabeth Ann and her husband to remain in the newly opened Japan personally. Kaneda determined to learn British naval warfare after making the acquaintance of American Naval Commodore Matthew Perry, as well as Elizabeth Ann's father. The couple returned to England in 1848, where Mrs Tokugawa was welcomed into the higher echelon of society, where she was seen both as an exotic curio, and an exercise in odd taste and judgment. This idyll was disrupted by a second, life-changing shipwreck. In March of 1850, Tokugawa Kaneda's ship disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. He has not been seen since. Not declared officially dead, his disappearance nevertheless powerfully aided their political enemies in Japan, and left Mrs Tokugawa, in England, with her exotic assortment of skills, and at a loose end...