Rowland takes some literary licence with known figures, creating fictionalised versions of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, Emperor Higashiyama in "The Samurai's Wife", and Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu.
Yanagisawa appears as a character in most of the novels by American mystery writer Laura Joh Rowland set in Genroku-era Japan as the antagonist to the books' main character Sano Ichiro.