The Golden Chrysanthemums are a terrorist organization seeking to the overthrow the Kusari government and institute a matriarchy.
Most scholars date the start of the group as the publication of Golden Chrysanthemum in Bloom in 642 AS. The author, Yomi Matsuda was a young but critically acclaimed poet. Charismatic and well-spoken, Matsuda had considerable fol lowing among young Kusari women, who found their lives lacking in direction but were reluctant to become marries and fulfill their traditional role in Kusari society.
Matsuda decried what she saw as the corruption of the Kusari male-dominated culture and preached, a revolution led by the long-suffering women of Kusari. These ideas were eventually encapsulated in Golden Chrysanthemum in Bloom, in which Matsuda described a fictitious nation called Yomi. A place of fat, lazy male bureaucrats who handed out concessions at the whim of entrenched mega-corporations, Yomi was eventually engulfed in revolution and united under the rule of a benevolent Empress personally selected by the goddess Amaterasu to watch over her people.
Matsuda looked to the foreigners as a mode, where women could be president and run corporations. The Chrysanthemum went on to become a best-seller. Unfortunately, in 648 AS, Matsuda crossed the dangerous line between ideas and actions when she was implicated in the botched assassination attempt of the planetary governor of Kyushu. Rather than face the ignominy of imprisonment, Matsuda chose ritual suicide instead. An increase in attacks on government personnel and installations followed soon after. Neither as well armed as the Blood Dragons nor as influential as the Hogosha, the Golden C. have been more of an irritant to the government than an actual threat.
