- The Seductress, who preoccupies the warrior leader, diverting him from
his task with her feminine wiles.
Only in passing does one hear about women in the mass: slaughtered, or
“given” to the warriors as “spoils of war.” That they were surely raped and
often murdered was apparently considered too trivial a fact to even mention
in later warrior tales, once the conventions of the genre had been codified.
Still, unless one is willing to imagine a conspiracy of silence in which
women’s roles on the battlefield were suppressed in both historical records
and battle tales, it is a fair assumption that onna-musha(women warriors)
were unusual. This is borne out by the prominence given to the few women
about whom accounts are written. Interestingly, in the cases of both of the
most famous of these women, the naginata(a halberd associated with
women’s martial arts today) was not their weapon of choice.
Japan’s most famous women warriors are Tomoe Gozen and Han-
gaku, also called Itagaki. In the Heike Monogatari,Tomoe Gozen was a
general in the troops of Kiso Yoshinaka, Yoritomo’s first attack force. She
was described as exceptionally strong and hauntingly beautiful, with pale
white skin like that of a court lady. Her last act, on the verge of Yoshinaka’s
defeat, is the subject of many plays and poems. She was ordered to retreat.
Rather than simply leave, however, she instead rode directly into a group
of the enemy, singling out the strongest. She matched his horse’s stride,
reached over, sliced off his head with her sword, and cast it aside. Tomoe,
has not, however, ever been proven as a historical figure, although not for
lack of trying. Although Tomoe is claimed by more than a few naginata tra-
ditions as being either their founder or one of their primordial teachers,
there is no factual justification for such a claim. It is, instead, merely an at-
tempt to associate their tradition with a powerful, romantic figure who
lived long before their system was even dreamed of.
Hangaku, daughter of the Jo, a warrior (bushi) family of Echigo
province, was known for her strength and accuracy with the bow and ar-
row. During an uprising of Echigo against the central government, she held
off the enemy from the roof of a storehouse. After being wounded in both
legs by spears and arrows, she was captured, then released in the custody
of a famous warrior. There is an account of her later defending the Toriza-
kayama Castle with 3,000 soldiers. The enemy numbered 10,000, and she
was defeated and killed.
Thus, at least in the earlier periods of the Heian and Kamakura peri-
ods, women who became prominent or even present on the field of battle
were exceptional. This does not mean, however, that Japanese women were
powerless. There is a common image of Japanese femininity based on the
accounts we have of those women of the Imperial court, swaddled in lay-
Women in the Martial Arts: Japan 693