Tokugawa Ienobu
On the twelfth day of the first month of the fourth year of the Shōtoku era (February 26, 1714, by the Western calendar), Ejima, a high-ranking lady in the Ōoku, visited the grave of the late "shōgun" Tokugawa Ienobu. Ejima's visit was a proxy for her superior Gekkō-in, mother of the ruling "shōgun" Tokugawa Ietsugu, who had been a lady-in-waiting and concubine of Ienobu. Ejima then accepted an invitation to attend a kabuki performance by the popular actor Ikushima Shingorō at the Yamamura-za theatre, located near Edo Castle. After the performance, she invited the actor and others to a party at a tea house. The party ran late and Ejima missed the closing of the gates to the Ōoku, and as she went from one gate to the next trying to gain entry, word of her situation reached the officials within. Ejima became the focus of a power struggle between Gekkō-in and her rival Ten'ei-in, the official wife of the late Ienobu. They in turn were part of a larger power struggle between two factions in the Tokugawa elite: one led by Arai Hakuseki and Manabe Akifusa, the two closest advisors to both Ienobu and Ietsugu, and the other was headed by "fudai daimyōs" and the "rōjū" who had been in office since the time of the fifth shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.