Rikichi's wife. She gave herself willingly to the bandits to save Kanna village. Kirara discovers from the bandits that Sanae and other "choice" girls that they abduct, are sent to the capital.
When Kambei goes to the capital to rescue her, he discovers that Sanae is the emperor's consort and that she is pregnant with his child. She was so mentally traumatized in the capital that she develops a condition similar to Stockholm Syndrome, in which she believes that she actually loves the emperor and forgets her original reason for sacrificing herself to the him in the first place. After Ukyo murders the emperor and usurps his throne, Sanae suffers an emotional breakdown. That, combined with abuse from Ukyo's harem, causes her to have a miscarriage and she ends up losing the baby. After being rescued by the samurai, Sanae is taken to the Firefly house to recover, where she starts coming to her senses. When Rikichi arrives at the Firefly House, she refuses to see him, telling him that she is unfit to be his wife anymore after everything that happened to her. Rikichi eventually convinces her to come back to him, and she stays at the Firefly House during the final battle. A few weeks after the final Battle with Ukyo, Sanae is seen planting the new rice crop in the fields alongside her husband Rikichi.
