Renondeau, G. 1957. “Histoire des Moines Guerriers du Japon” (History of
the Warrior Monks of Japan). In Mélanges Publiés par l’Institut des
Haute Études Chinoises.Vol. 11 of mixed publications from the Institute
of Advanced Chinese Studies, Paris.
Tsuji Zennosuke. 1944. Nihon bukkyô shi (The history of Japanese
Buddhism). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Tucci, William. 1994–1995. Shi: The Way of the Warrior. New York:
Crusade Comics.Wing Chun Ch’uan
See Yongchun/Wing ChunWomen in the Martial Arts:
479 B.C.–A.D. 1896
Martial arts do not exist in a vacuum and issues of gender and violence are
never unambiguous. As Britain’s Jennifer Hargreaves has written regarding
women’s boxing:Although strength and muscularity in boxing have symbolically been a source
of physical capital for men, the diversity and complexity found in representa-
tions of the female body in boxing make it difficult to assess the extent to
which the sport is a subversive activity for women or an essentially assimila-
tive process with a radical facade. For now, female boxing remains riddled
with contradictory cultural values. (1996, 131)Therefore, beyond demonstrating female participation in martial activities
such as boxing prior to the twentieth century, the following also attempts
to place that behavior in cultural context. While the result may please nei-
ther moralists nor advocates of gender parity, that too is nothing more than
a reminder of the contradictory nature of the study.
479 B.C. A Greek woman named Hydne becomes a Hellenic hero by
helping her father Skyllis pull up the anchors of some Iranian ships during
a storm, thus causing the ships to founder and their crews to drown. While
most modern authorities suggest that Hydne and her father were probably
sponge-fishers, it is possible that they were upper-class athletes whose
training for Dionysian swimming meets had been interrupted by war. Two
circumstances support this hypothesis: first, Hydne’s and Skyllis’s subse-
quent fame (Greek sponge-fishers rarely became Athenian heroes), and sec-
ond, the paucity of detail and mass of conjecture surrounding the original
sources.
About 460 B.C. The Greek historian Herodotus describes the practices
and culture of some female warriors he called the Amazons. Who the Ama-
zons were is not known, and in practice there were female warriors and664 Wing Chun Ch’uan