A fascinating fictional insight into the popular “what if” discourse - what if women ruled the world?


Based on the manga series of the same name, Oooku is a historical drama anime set in Japan where the state has been hit by a pandemic that only affects the male population. When the female-to-male ratio drops to 5:1, men become the “prize” as wealthy women have to pay for sperm and women dominate all working areas and are slowly allowed to inherit land. While Japan suffers from a scarcity of men, more agile good-looking men are recruited into the Shogun’s Ooku which reportedly houses 3000+ men.


The eighty minutes prologue of Ooku sets the foundation for the story as it follows starcrossed lovers O-Nobu and Yunoshin who can't be together due to their class difference. To avoid getting married off, Yunoshin joins the Shogun’s Ooku and discovers all kinds of secrets there.



Pilot Spoilers ahead


Yunoshin learns that the men of the Ōoku are extremely catty, barely number up to eight hundred and love to rape pretty newcomers as some sort of welcome gift. He also learns that the Shogun is actually a woman and he is to become her Groom of the Bedchamber (pretty much her boy toy). 


The eighth shogun, Yoshimune is less vain than her predecessors and immediately starts cutting costs by letting go of a significant percentage of the Ooku. She also starts asking important questions about why the women are heads of family but still bear male names and why the Ooku has a rule of killing the first man the Shogun beds.


Yoshimune’s curiosity takes the viewers into the beginning of the Ooku - the reign of the first female Shogun, Iemitsu. It’s quite intriguing watching the reasoning behind the events in the prologue unfold – it sheds light on how humanity mindlessly adopts customs without ever stopping to ask why. 


In this alternate reality where women rule, the world is not so different. In fact, this matriarch world seems to benefit the few available men as all they have to do is sleep with women (which a lot of them seem to love). 




At its heart, Ōoku could be described as a love story between lovers who aren't meant to be; but there’s a lot of (sexual) violence, insecurity, and unfathomable absurdity at the surface. It’s incredibly difficult to root for the main couple Iemitsu and Arikoto considering the circumstances under which Arikoto was brought into the Ooku and by the time their love story ends, Arikoto seems to be a shadow of himself while Iemitsu remains a spoiled unempathetic brat who’s yet to heal from past trauma.

One of the biggest mysteries of the anime is the reasoning behind Kasuga’s actions - why did she go to those lengths? Why did she do all of what she did? What was she trying so hard to protect? The series wraps up without giving an answer to any of these questions.


The main characters of Ōoku are not very easy to root for and despite her habit of grabbing ugly men to bed against their will, Yoshumune’s story would have been much more fascinating given how mature, logical and curious about customs she was.

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is not a feminist story – far from it. Instead, it’s quite tragic watching women in power do nothing to break the cycle but rather, bend over backwards to perpetuate patriarchy and willingly choose to be a shadow until the men are able to return to their “rightful” place.



Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is currently streaming on Netflix