The third daughter of Azai Nagamasa and Oda Nobunaga's sister Oichi, and the youngest of the Azai Three Sisters, whose elder sisters were Yodo-dono (Chacha) and Ohatsu. Around 1583 she married Saji Kazunari, lord of Ono Castle in Owari, but after Kazunari sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu during the 1584 Komaki-Nagakute campaign, an enraged Toyotomi Hideyoshi forced their divorce within a few years, and she left Ono Castle. After a subsequent marriage to Toyotomi Hidekatsu, she married Tokugawa Hidetada around 1600 and became the mother of the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu.

Having survived the fall of both the Azai and Shibata clans as a child and endured repeated politically arranged marriages, she is remembered for the resilience with which she built her position as principal wife of the Tokugawa house.

As principal wife of the Tokugawa shogunal house, she gave birth to the third shogun Iemitsu and to Masako (Tofukumon-in), who became empress consort to Emperor Go-Mizunoo, helping to bind the Tokugawa house to the imperial court. Her brief marriage of only a few years at Ono Castle in present-day Tokoname, Aichi, is remembered as one chapter in her turbulent life.