Chiyo Harumi

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**Chiyo Harumi** (春見 ちよ, *Harumi Chiyo*), also known as **Igogusa** (いご草), is a Japanese woman from Sado, Niigata and an ex lover of Hajime Tsukishima. She got married to the son of a Mitsubishi zaibatsu executive and then moved to Tokyo.

## Appearance

Chiyo is a young Japanese woman with long curly hair that resembles igogusa (egogusa) seaweed. Occasionally, she would wear her hair in an updo.

Chiyo wears a kimono with flowery pattern, obi, and geta.

## Personality

Little is known about Chiyo's personality. Tsukishima remembers her as a kind girl who treated him with love and didn't care about the rumors of his father being a murderer. Chiyo doesn't enjoy violence, as she remarks that Tsukishima's tendency to get into fights is the reason people hate him.

## Background

Chiyo lived in the same village as Hajime Tsukishima. The locals would make fun of her hair and gave her the nickname Igogusa, comparing it to seaweed. However, as Tsukishima grew closer to her, he told Chiyo that he loved her hair. Despite the rumors and the derogatory names other villagers called Tsukishima, Chiyo would only call him by his first name, Hajime, an act which Tsukishima deeply valued.

Chiyo and Tsukishima were planning to leave the island and get married after Tsukishima returned from the First Sino-Japanese War. Chiyo would write letters to Tsukishima, but shortly before the war ended they stopped coming. After returning back home, Tsukishima discovered that Chiyo went missing ten days before his return, with only her shoes found on the shore. Tsukishima frantically searched for her body for days, but to no avail. Concluding that it must have been his father who spread the rumors, Tsukishima murdered him in a fit of rage but later justified it by claiming his father caused the girl's death.

However, as it was revealed by Tokushirou Tsurumi, Chiyo didn't kill herself. She got married to the son of a Mitsubishi executive and moved to Tokyo in secrecy, unaware of what her parents planned. Her parents paid Tsukishima's father to spread rumors of his son's death, and then they pretended that Chiyo took her own life. Tsurumi met up with Chiyo's parents and pressed them into telling him the truth. He then talked with Chiyo but didn't tell her that Tsukishima was still alive. Chiyo gave Tsurumi a lock of her hair, asking him to bury it with Tsukishima's bones.

In 1904, during the Mukden battle, Tsukishima learned from a soldier from Sado that Chiyo's body was found beneath his house just after he got imprisoned for patricide. Enraged by Tsurumi's lies, he confronted the First Lieutenant, who later revealed that he staged the exhumation to get Tsukishima released from the death row. Further confirming that Chiyo is alive, Tsurumi said that there was no death certificate issued for her and her status in family registry remained unchanged. Tsukishima accepted it as the truth, however, the same Sado soldier appeared again later, nodding to Tsurumi, alluding to the ambiguity of Tsurumi's words and Chiyo's fate.

After the war, Tsukishima threw the lock of hair he received from Chiyo into the sea, resigning himself to serving under Tsurumi.

## Legacy

The loss of Chiyo greatly affected Tsukishima and his life. The act of throwing away his memories of Chiyo is what turned Tsukishima into the shell of a man he used to be, now only driven by following Tsurumi's goals.

## Trivia

* Chiyo's nickname **Igogusa** was given to her for her wild, unruly hair that looked like igogusa seaweed.
	+ On the Niigata mainland, igogusa seaweed is called egogusa instead, so, unlike Tsukishima, Tsurumi pronounces her nickname in that manner.
* Chiyo's surname **Harumi** means "spring" (春) (**haru**) and "see, hopes, chances, idea, opinion, look at, visible" (見) (**mi**).