Ooku/Tear Jerker

• If Ooku: the Inner Chambers does not brings one to tears at least once per volume....
  • The end of chapter three, where the merchant's daughter O-nobu is reunited with Yushonin, who entered the Shogun's Harem rather than be married off to someone else first lays eyes on the tradesman Shinkichi who seeks her hand.
  • The flashback in chapter nine, giving more detail on the life of the girl now known as Shogun Iemitsu is something that should wring one dry, but then we see Arikoto offering the her the womanly overrobe she made him and the other men in her incipent harem wear for her amusement.

Arikoto: <draping it over her shoulders> "Here. It doth look so much more beautiful on you, my lord."
<Iemitsu breaks down in tears>

• • Chapter twelve gives us Arikoto's and Iemitsu's response to Kagura ordering the former to vacate the Shogun's bedchamber after a year without a sign of conception. They pledge to be Together in Death once it becomes clear that Iemitsu is in fact barren... then it turns out that she is not.