Stories of the Japanese 00594 [Early Kamakura Period] The Hiki Yoshikazu Incident: Divorce from Hime no Mae

The Hiki Yoshikazu Incident is believed to have torn apart a certain couple: Hojo Yoshitoki and his legal wife, Hime no Mae.
Yoshitoki originally had a wife named Awa no Tsubone, with whom he had his eldest son, Yasutoki (1183–1242). This Awa no Tsubone is a different person from the Awa no Tsubone who was Yoshitoki's older sister and married Ano Zenjo, despite sharing the same name. At the time, there were few variations of court lady names, so it is likely that the names of these two women in the vicinity simply happened to overlap.
As an aside, historian Koichi Sakai speculates that this Awa no Tsubone is the same person as Yae, Minamoto no Yoritomo's first wife (see entry 00457), and this is how she is depicted in the Taiga drama 'The 13 Lords of the Shogun'.
Yoshitoki's second wife was Hime no Mae. Hime no Mae was the niece of Hiki Yoshikazu and was said to be a great beauty. The Azuma Kagami contains the following description:
'Yoshitoki had been sending love letters to Hime no Mae for over a year, but she would not be swayed at all. Seeing this, Yoritomo intervened, making Yoshitoki write a written oath promising never to divorce her, and had the two married.'
This is recorded.
Yoshitoki and Hime no Mae had a second son, Tomotoki, and a third son, Shigetoki. Because Tomotoki inherited and lived in the Nagoe Tokimasa residence, he came to be called Nagoe Tomotoki (1193–1245), and because Shigetoki founded the Gokuraku-ji temple, he came to be called Gokuraku-ji Shigetoki (1198–1261).
The couple of Yoshitoki and Hime no Mae likely symbolized the cooperative relationship between the Hojo and Hiki clans at first, but the two families could not coexist, and in the end, the Hiki were destroyed. It is interesting to wonder how much Hime no Mae suffered between the two families, but unfortunately, there is no record of it.
Now, looking at the entry for the 5th day of the 11th month of the 2nd year of Karoku (1226) in Teika's diary, the Meigetsuki, it states:
'The child of Minamoto no Tomochika is a younger brother of Tomotoki by the same mother, and there was a recommendation for an official appointment from the shogunate.'
In other words, at some point, Hime no Mae had a child with Minamoto no Tomochika.
From this, it can be inferred that Hime no Mae divorced Yoshitoki (likely due to the Hiki Yoshikazu Incident) and remarried Minamoto no Tomochika, a court noble in Kyoto. The Hiki Yoshikazu Incident, therefore, triggered Yoshitoki's divorce.
Incidentally, Nagoe Tomotoki was ordered to undergo confinement for making advances toward a court lady serving Minamoto no Sanetomo's wife, Bomon Nobuko (1193–1274), and he seems to have been the problem child of the Hojo clan. The Nagoe Hojo clan, which began with Tomotoki, later caused the Miya Disturbance and the February Disturbance, and seems to have been a family with many dissatisfied elements.
On the other hand, the Gokuraku-ji Hojo clan, which began with Shigetoki, well supported the direct line of the Hojo clan and continued to be valued as a family that shouldered the core of the shogunate government.