In the seven centuries samurai ruled Japan, women played an essential role in both creating and upholding the warrior state. Aside from a brief period in the 14th century, the emperor was little more than a figurehead while true power rested in the hands of the shogun, the country’s military leader.
Under the first shogun, Yoritomo Minamoto, in the 12th century, women acted as local constables and met military obligations from providing soldiers to personally defending estates. Daughters and sons generally had an equal right to inheritance while Minamoto’s family ruled (called the Kamakura shogunate).
“There might not have been a Kamakura shogunate without women,” Mike Wert, associate professor of East Asian history at Marquette University, wrote in The Samurai: A Concise History.
The prominence of samurai women diminished after the Kamakura shogunate, and their role shifted to mainly political maneuvering through marriage. However, sieges were common in the civil wars of the Sengoku period (15th to 17th centuries), and it was the lady of the castle’s responsibility to oversee its defense if her husband was absent. The lady and her entourage were trained to use a dagger for self-defense and, if all was lost, to maintain their honor at all costs.
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Martial arts training for samurai women depended greatly on the individual family. For some, training fulfilled a spiritual role as preparation for married life and motherhood. Others, like the samurai women of Aizu, took military training very seriously.
“Aizu’s women-warriors… received in-depth combat drilling, particularly in the use of the halberd,” Diana E. Wright wrote in Female Combatants and Japan’s Meiji Restoration: the Case of Aizu. “Educated to be equally skilled in the ‘ways of the pen and the sword’, they were also indoctrinated with the belief their duty was first to protect their domain and lord, and then their families.”
These are the stories of three legendary samurai women: two who showed their heroism at the start of the age of samurai, and one who fought at its end.
Gozen Tomoe: untangling myth from history
Tomoe may be Japan’s most famous female warrior, but specific details of her life are uncertain. During the Genpei War, it’s believed Tomoe played a prominent role in samurai warlord Yoshinaka Minamoto’s victories over the Taira clan.
Because she does not appear in the Azuma Kagami —the main primary source for the Genpei War—there is reasonable doubt over her existence. As Steven T. Brown observes, “Tomoe’s biography is so enfolded in legend that…it is impossible to say where the historical reality ends and the literary construct begins.”
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However, sources do agree broadly over key points of her military career. She entered into the service of Yoshinaka Minamoto (also called Kiso) in 1181 when both warriors were in their 20s to early 30s.
According to the Genpei Seisuiki, an expanded version of the original Tale of the Heike, she took seven heads in her first battle and rose to become one of Kiso’s top subordinates, leading a thousand of his horsemen in the victory over the Taira at Tonamiyama in 1183.
Her remarkable military career came to an end at Awazu in 1184—not against the Taira but another branch of the Minamoto clan. After Kiso took the capital and burned the palace, his cousin Yoritomo moved against him near the city of Otsu.
Against overwhelming odds, Kiso fought to the bitter end against his cousin’s troops with Tomoe at his side. When Kiso’s followers were cut down to just a handful of warriors, he urged Tomoe to flee, according to accounts in the Tale of Heike. Before casting off her armor for good, she managed one more great feat.
She is said to have met the challenge of a skilled samurai named Moroshige Onda, unhorsed him, and took his head with one clean stroke.
After Yoritomo’s victory, he established the first shogunate in Kamakura and founded the age of samurai. After the defeat of her lord’s forces, Tomoe lived—one source says until the age of 90.
Gozen Hangaku: beautiful and ferocious
Hangaku was still loyal to the vanquished Taira clan after the Genpei War and took part in a failed coup against the Minamoto in 1201. The foiled conspirators fled to the clan’s stronghold in the north knowing the shogun would send an army for their capture, according to accounts in the Azuma Kagami. Hangaku’s nephew rallied the troops outside the family castle at Torisaka, while she organized the castle’s defense.
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Her nephew’s forces were routed, leaving Hangaku to hold off the shogun’s army alone. Torisaka was a rather modest wooden structure that offered limited protection for its small garrison.
Nevertheless, Gozen and her followers managed a spirited defense, holding off the attacks for three months. An archer of supreme skill, she allegedly shot 100 arrows during the siege and each one hit its mark.
When she was shot in the thigh by an arrow, the castle finally fell and Gozen was apprehended and brought back to the capital of Kamakura as a prisoner. Japanese historian and author Kochiro Hamada says her arrival caused quite a stir. One of the shogun’s closest retainers wanted to take her hand in marriage, believing such a gallant warrior would produce worthy heirs.
The shogun was amused by the request, reportedly saying, “Who can love such a woman who is beautiful in looks but ferocious in nature?”
The request was granted but little is known about her later years; she is believed to have spent the rest of her days in Kai, a mountainous region west of Tokyo.
Takeko Nakano: one of the last female samurai
Nakano’s story is one of the last in the age of samurai. After the shogun was overthrown by the emperor’s supporters, Aizu and other pro-shogunate domains in the north continued to resist.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the people of Aizu threw together a patchwork militia to resist the onslaught of imperial forces in 1868. Though a select few had modern weapons imported from the West, most had to make do with more primitive weapons from spears to outdated matchlock muskets. The initial attacks were beaten back with heavy losses but the emperor’s forces could not be resisted for long.
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Some women chose to take their own lives to avoid capture or becoming a burden to the main stronghold. Only a handful chose to fight.
Nakano, just 22, was known for her prowess with the naginata, a blade fixed to a pole having trained in martial arts since childhood. She served as the deputy head instructor of a training school, Hamada says.
Along with roughly two dozen female warriors, she formed a band posthumously called the Joshitai, or “women’s army”.
They were equipped with armor and weapons from a bygone era. With hair cropped short, and unmarried members without blackened teeth, the Joshitai were indistinguishable from male combatants at a distance. At Yanagai Bridge, the initial shock of their appearance allowed them to close the distance and briefly gain the upper hand over imperial forces.
Nakano slew five enemy soldiers before being mortally wounded and dragged from the fray by her 16-year-old sister Masako. She begged Masako to take her head so it would not be taken as a trophy. With the aid of a nearby soldier, an exhausted Masako carried out the grim duty and took her head to a nearby temple for a proper burial.
Nakano’s story marked the end of an era. The last vestiges of resistance against the new regime were snuffed out a few months later in Hokkaido. The Meiji Restoration brought about major reforms that included the abolition of the samurai class. For some women, a new struggle for their place in the new order was just beginning.
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