Saimori family

* Anime
* Manga

The **Saimori family** (斎森家, *Saimori-ka*?) is one of the main families in the *My Happy Marriage* series.

## Known Members

* Shinichi Saimori: current head
* Sumi Saimori: Shinichi's first wife
* Kanoko Saimori: Shinichi's second wife after Sumi's death
* Miyo Saimori: Shinichi and Sumi's daughter
* Kaya Saimori: Shinichi and Kanoko's daughter
* Kouji Tatsuishi: Kaya's fiancé and the futur head
* Hana Kanao: former maidservant

## Description

The Saimoris are one of the few families with the Gift. They are from a long-established noble line, one of the families who has risen to prominence through ridding the land of Grotesqueries. Due to a remnant of their past achievements, the Saimoris has a high rank among the noble families. Their rank is close to the Kudou family, leading Kiyoka Kudou to initially believe they could easily be plotting to assassinate him to seize his social position. Their high rank also causes other families not paying much attention to their current family situation and nobody learning about the eldest daughter, Miyo Saimori, living among the servants.

However, the Saimoris hasn’t enjoyed a good reputation in a very long time. The status of the family is hanging by a thread. In social circles, the Saimoris are never worthy of mention when the topic of noteworthy families with the Gift surfaced. People thought they lack both capability and promise. Although the beloved daughter Kaya Saimori has been born with Spirit-Sight, her supernatural abilities aren't worth mentioning, and if her own children does not turn out to be extraordinarily Gifted, the Saimori family would no longer be able to fulfill their role as retainers to the Emperor. Stripped of privilege and their stipend, they would have to rely on their amassed wealth to get by, but there is only so much to go around. Though their wealth and status from their past achievements still force their peers to accept them as nobility at present, they certainly don't command much respect. The family is considered to be already on the path toward ruin.

The Saimoris have a relation with the Tatsuishi family that go back a long way. Their residences are nearby each other, located in an area in the Imperial Capital, in a part of the city where many wealthy families have their estates. The Tatsuishis, however, faces a similar predicament and will not be of much help.

## History

The current head of the family, Shinichi Saimori, married Sumi Usuba for purely strategic reasons. Both of them possessed the Gift, and their respective families had arranged the marriage to improve the bloodline. Although Shinichi had been opposed to this, his protests went unheeded. Eventually, he broke off his relations with his lover Kanoko and reluctantly consented to marry Sumi. Their loveless union resulted in Miyo Saimori’s birth. In her first few years of life, they had cherished her and her father used to dote on her and that she was the apple of her mother’s eye. It is believed that the former head of the Saimoris must have known about the power of Dream-Sight, considering how hard they pursued Sumi. Knowing a child with the ability would be exploited and having no hope of living a normal, happy life, Sumi had sealed Miyo’s supernatural powers away and pretended she didn’t have any. Everything changed, however, when her mother passed away from illness when Miyo was two years old and her father married his former lover.

Miyo’s stepmother hated her for being the child of the woman who’d separated her from Miyo’s father. Her father, meanwhile, was so overcome with guilt toward his second wife that he deferred to her in everything. He lost all interest in Miyo when her half sister Kaya Saimori was born since he preferred the daughter of his beloved. Kaya (Miyo’s younger sister) was not only the more beautiful of the two, but also skilled at twisting people around her little finger. To top it all off, she possessed Spirit-Sight, which Miyo lacked. It hadn’t taken long for the younger girl to begin treating her sister with scorn, just as her mother had done.

## Plot

After Miyo Saimori turns nineteen, an age when girls from good households would usually marry, her father and the current head of the Saimoris, arranges for her to marry Kiyoka Kudou. Although he has no expectations for his firstborn daughter and doesn't care much what happened to her, if there is an advantage to be potentially gained from offering her to the Kudou family, Shinichi gladly takes that bet. It would help him establish valuable ties with a powerful house. He also arranges for his other daughter, Kaya Saimori, to marry Kouji Tatsuishi, the Tatsuishi family's second son, adopting him into his family, so he would become the future head of the Saimori family.

After the Kidnapping of Miyo Saimori, the Saimoris lose their status, houses and wealth. The family is reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Shinichi and Kanoko move to a smaller residence in the countryside where they are forced to live in lower living standards. It is also the end of their career serving the emperor. Kaya has been sent to serve a family infamous for their strict house rules as Kiyoka believes the experience will help her build some character.

## Trivia

* The surname **Saimori** means "(religious) purification, Buddhist food, room, worship, avoid, alike" (斎, *sai*?) and "forest" (森, *mori*?).

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 1
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 3
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 5
4. ↑  Novel, Volume 1 Epilogue
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 4
6. ↑  Novel, Volume 2 Chapter 3