Who Were The Lady Samurai?
We delve into Japanese history to reveal the so-called onna bugeisha – fearsome, skilled female warriors who took to the battlefield
Discover the women who fought for Japan
War and combat is not the province of men alone. Throughout history, regardless of gender, women have survived war and been combatants. And while many of the household names in Japanese military history are male, women have always been part of Japanese warfare, despite their frequent erasure from popular history. The common term one often encounters today for women combatants in Japanese history is onna bugeisha, which we’ll translate here as ‘women martial artists’.
Who were these women, and how do their stories fit into the broader story of pre-modern Japanese military history? If we’re to seek out these stories, we need to be mindful of where and how to search. And we need to seek out women’s stories on their own terms, rather than as an extension of the men. In the opening words of the first issue of early feminist magazine Seito (Bluestocking) in 1911, author and activist Hiratsuka Raicho (18861971) famously wrote, “In the beginning, woman was the sun.” She was evoking the image of the sun goddess Amaterasu as she explained the magazine’s aims of helping reclaim the inner ‘light’ of women’s independence in an era that was seeking to force women into the role of “good wife, wise mother”. Seeking the story of women at war in pre-modern Japanese history is, to this writer, one way of seeking out that light.
The first thing to bear in mind with the term onna bugeisha is that it’s a modern day catch-all term used more in non-japanese writing than in Japanese writing. Martial arts, as they exist today as systematised schools of practice in which one can become licensed, have not always existed. If you search for ‘onna bugeisha’ online you’ll certainly find modern writing on some women, especially those in the Edo period who were notable practitioners of their martial arts. Chiba Sanako (183896), part of the famed Chiba family of instructors in Hokushin Itto-ryu, is a good example of this. But to apply ‘bugeisha’ to people in Heian or Sengoku era warfare is a bit of a stretch.
The term, as it tends to be used particularly in English, is looking not only at skill in systematised martial arts but more broadly at the histories of women at war. So where are these women ‘hiding’? We must try to think more broadly, to find more of their stories. Rather than bugeisha (martial artist), where there may or may not have been practical application, we
think it’s worth approaching the subject of women combatants more broadly, whatever form that may take.
Some women combatants in Japanese history are particularly well known, even in English-language writing – they’re likely to be the first ones you encounter if you do a little searching even in English. Tomoe Gozen (c.1157-c.1247) is at or near the top of that list. She was a combatant in the Genpei Wars of the late-12th century, under the command of Kiso no Yoshinaka, one of the Genji generals. And she appears in the classic text Heike Monogatari, which offers us one of our best descriptions of her appearance and her skill at arms.
Off the battlefield, but no less important in the shaping of military and civil policy, was Hojo Masako (1156-1225), remembered as the Nun-shogun (Ama Shogun) for the significant political power she wielded in the early Kamakura shogunate. Through her marriage to Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first Kamakura shogun, she also ensured her birth family’s continued political influence in the shogunate for the rest of its existence. Several decades after her death, it was a Hojo regent
Hojo Tokimune (1251-84) under whose leadership the Kamakura Shogunate rallied Japanese forces in their defence against the Mongol Empire’s two attempted invasions of Kyushu.
But of course, Tomoe Gozen and Hojo Masako are far from the only women in Japanese military history. This writer’s research into women at war in Japanese history only made headway because of a focus on, and drawing from sources in, local history. Bear in mind, the perspective of Japanese-language scholarship by Japanese scholars is going to be different from the work of a non-japanese scholar using Japanese and English sources and writing in English. With that caveat, here is just a bit of what we have learned.
Some women combatants we learned about were at the top of the samurai caste – women who came from the families of daimyo and their highest retainers. Occasionally, especially when there were no other heirs to inherit a lineage, there were some among them who were, in effect, daimyo themselves, a position typically the preserve of men. Two examples worth considering are Date Onami (1541-1602) who became castellan of Sukagawa after the death of her husband Nikaido Moriyoshi (1544-81), while Tachibana Ginchiyo (1569-1602)
“Tomoe Gozen and Hojo Masako are far from the only women in Japanese military history”
inherited the leadership of the house of Tachibana in Kyushu after her father Tachibana Dosetsu (1513-85) died without a male heir. Not all of those women went into battle themselves, but there were plenty of (male) daimyo who did not personally take to the field either. Being a regional governor of this sort did not require your engagement in battle.
Others were skilled politicians and teachers of men who have become household names. Katakura Kita (1538-1610), whose male relatives were senior vassals to the house of Date, was a well-read, welltrained, well-connected person, arguably better educated and prepared for leadership than many of the men she knew. She helped guide the clan’s policy and outside relations at Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s court in Kyoto, and ensured that the clan stayed on Hideyoshi’s good side amid the politicking and wars of the 1590s. Kita was also a wet nurse and first teacher in both literature and fighting arts to Date Masamune (1567-1636), the famed oneeyed xenophile warlord who founded the modern city of Sendai (now Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture). Kita thus had a critical role in building not only the clan’s future but also, by extension, the future of northern Honshu. There are many more women like her in the histories of any major clan of that era, with or without skill in handling deadly weapons.
Other women in premodern Japanese military history were not quite so high in the samurai caste, but nonetheless established reputations for themselves as skilled practitioners of the martial arts as well as combatants. In some parts of Japan in the Edo period, basic proficiency in the martial arts was expected from women born to the warrior caste. This is not something separate from the world that the samurai caste built and inhabited, but rather was part and parcel of it. Even in domains like the northern Aizu domain (modern Fukushima Prefecture), where women’s participation in politics was prohibited by law, women still pursued training in the martial arts. This was at the very least perfunctory, and for some, in greater depth. In times of emergency, they were some of the first on the street in the castle town to ensure the protection of their community.
The Aizu women were another excellent example as they also famously put their training to practical application in the Boshin War of 1868-69. Nakano Takeko (184768), who like Chiba Sanako was a skilled and certified martial artist in peacetime, is Aizu’s most famous woman combatant. Her affiliation to the Aizu domain was by proxy, as she was from a family of
Aizu vassals permanently assigned to the domain’s estates in Edo (now Tokyo). She joined the fighting outside the castle walls during the siege in 1868, dying in combat there. Yamamoto Yae (1845-1932) came from a family of gunnery instructors and was a skilled sharpshooter and artillerist renowned for her physical strength even at a young age. She too took part in the fighting at the Aizu siege and was noted for her use of the Spencer cavalry carbine, a surplus weapon imported from the recently ended American Civil War. After the war, she went to Kyoto and devoted herself to the cause of women’s education. Later, Yae married Niijima Jo, an Americaneducated pastor, and together with him was a co-founder of Doshisha University, which still stands in Kyoto today.
Finally, there are those women about whom our historical picture is the most incomplete. One of them was a female
warrior in Kokura domain. We don’t know her name for sure, nor do we know whether she was of samurai birth and what, if any, training she’d accrued in the martial arts. What we do know is that when Choshu troops took the northern Kyushu castle town of Kokura during the Second Choshu War in 1865, she was the only person the Choshu men found in the evacuated and torched town. This woman, who waited in the estate of a senior Kokura clan retainer, was armed with a sword. A Choshu rifle squad raked the building with gunfire before entering, and she killed at least one before being mortally wounded. One story has it that she looked the men in the eye before ending her life with her sword, denouncing them for their cowardice.
Another woman who took part in the battles of 1860s Japan was Koike Shisetsu (1824-78). Again, our picture is incomplete, but in this case it was because she lived a wandering life. She was born in Kaga (modern-day Ishikawa Prefecture) and was actually an artist by training, specialising in a Chineseinfluenced style of ink painting called nanga. Perhaps even more interestingly is our discovery that, in modern terms, she might be considered a member the LGBTQ community. But when the civil war of 1868 broke out, Shisetsu went north, taking part in the defence of Aizu alongside women like Nakano Takeko. Captured by the imperial army, she was released when it was discovered that she was not otherwise affiliated with the Aizu domain. Shisetsu went to Toyohashi, part of modern Aichi prefecture, and lived there for the rest of her life, continuing her work as an artist. Why did she go to Aizu, a place with which she had no prior affiliation? What prior experience did she have in handling a weapon, if any? These are worthy questions, and since she’s never had more than a brief biography in various biographical dictionaries, Shisetsu is one historical figure whose story remains fascinating, and for which we will need to continue to search for further clues.
In short, the historicity of the term onna bugeisha notwithstanding, women combatants have always been part of military history, be it in Japan or anywhere in the world. Their place in the world of the samurai caste, in peacetime as well as at war, was integral. Their stories are there for the finding, if only we do due diligence in searching for them, especially in rich local histories and abundant local records. And in our search for those stories, it behooves us to ask why these tales seem to have been buried and why there are biases in both the source material as well as in modern interpretations of that source material. This, too, will help guide our further study and return these brave warriors to the place in history that they so clearly deserve.
“She was the only person the Choshu men found in an evacuated and torched castle town”