Oku

depiction of the by Hashimoto Chikanobu The was historically the women's quarters of Edo Castle, the section where the women connected to the reigning resided. Similar areas in the castles of powerful , such as the Satsuma Domain, were also referred to by this term. During the reign of the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada, Ōoku was established in Edo Castle as a women's room where his , Oeyo, resided. During the reign of the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the Ōoku was expanded at the suggestion of his nanny, Lady Kasuga, to ensure the birth of a male heir to the shogun's lineage, and became a vast shogun's harem with nearly 1,000 women working as maidservants. The Ōoku was inhabited by the official wife and concubines of the shogun. The women of Ōoku were highly hierarchical, with the official wife of the shogun, who was of aristocratic lineage, ruling at the top, and the older women who had served her for a long time actually controlling Ōoku. The women who worked as maidservants in Ōoku were daughters of the , a high-ranking class of samurai, and they had servants from the and peasants who worked for them. Even low-ranking servants were treated as concubines of the shogun if they bore his children. One such example was Otama, the daughter of a grocer, who gave birth to the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Ietsuna.…

Oku or OKU may refer to: Oku, Cameroon, subdivision in the Northwest Region of Cameroon Lake Oku, a crater lake on the Bamenda Plateau in the Northwest Region of Cameroon Mount Oku, the largest volcano in the Oku Massif, in the Cameroon Volcanic Line Oku language, a Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon Oku people (Sierra Leone), an ethnic group of Yoruba descent in Sierra Leone. Ökü, a village in Azerbaijan Oku District, Okayama, a former district located in Okayama Prefecture, Japan Oku, Okayama, a former town in the district, merged with other towns to create the city of Setouchi Oku (surname), a common Japanese surname Princess Ōku (661–702), a Japanese princess during the Asuka period in Japanese history OKU, IATA Airport Code for Mokuti Lodge Airport in Namibia Ogan Komering Ulu Regency, a province in South Sumatra, Indonesia Osaka Kyoiku University, a national university in Japan University of Oklahoma, abbreviated OU and, less commonly, OKU ==See also== Oku Station (disambiguation), several train stations in Japan

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