Haori jacket and kimono slipped under armor, katana to face your enemies during bloody fights. This is the image of the samurai which inhabits many fictions where the aesthetics of these Japanese warriors of yesteryear are used, sometimes by exaggerating certain aspects. During 2025, several video games (Assassin’s Creed Shadowspublished by Ubisoft, and Ghost of Yōteiby Sony) will immerse players in this kind of universe.
Small detail far from trivial: the main characters of these works are warrior women. Other fighters of the same caliber have already appeared in popular culture with the series Shōgunthe manga The Snow Tiger or the cartoon Miraculous. This is not a pure screenwriter’s fantasy: women have actually walked the battlefields during more than seven centuries of Japanese history.
Let’s go back several hundred years. If the creation of the samurai status dates from thee century, it is the medieval period, covering part of the 12the until the 16th centuryewhich is marked by the importance of the warrior class. During this period of four centuries, samurai regularly clashed.
Matthias Hayek, historian of Japanese beliefs and representations at the Practical School of Advanced Studies, indicates that the term “samurai” is “generic”. The word designates “specialists in war and the use of weapons, organized according to a vassalic system: they have a lord who guarantees their property, their titles and their rights in exchange for a service”.
This feudalism established between the end of the 11th centurye and the beginning of the 12the century becomes “a structuring element of society for the following centuries, until the mid-19th centurye». Peace is becoming rare: we must wait until the 17the century so that the samurai, under the aegis of the Tokugawa shogun dynasty, put away their weapons for a certain time and “just administer the country”explains the researcher.
Legendary warrior prints
Although the term “samurai” is reserved for men, who are the only ones to receive compensation for their combat prowess, women warriors have indeed existed, historically and culturally. They are most often known under the name ofon-new; the weapon with which they are associated is the naginataa sort of long handle decorated with a blade.
Among the reference works relating clashes between samurai, one work is widely cited: The Tale of the Heiké. It is in this epic literature that most images of armed women are born. Within this series of poetic stories and prints the myth of Tomoe Gozen stands out. This is described as being “of rare strength and skill with the bow, both on horseback and on foot”. It was “a valiant warrior, capable of facing demons or gods, and who, alone, was worth a thousand men”.
“He is a character who is very valued at certain key moments in Japanese history, as a symbol of outward expansion.”
Transmitted orally by blind monks and declined over time, The Tale of the Heiké is above all a literary source. Matthias Hayek, also co-author ofStories of samurai womenemphasizes that Tomoe Gozen is certainly inspired by Hangaku Gozen, a very real warrior from the beginning of the 13th century.e century. But the figure of Tomoe Gozen continues to cross the ages, staged in the theater or celebrated during the Jidai Matsurithe “Festival of the Ages”. During this event organized in Kyoto, different groups representing periods of Japanese history parade.
Another legend about a woman who looks like a warrior is that of Empress Jingū. This is a mythical figure whose existence is not confirmed, but who this time represents a political authority. After the death of her husband king, she takes over the kingship for herself. So she “accomplished feats of arms with the help of the gods”explains the researcher. “Here, it is about conquering a territory, considered to be Korea. “He is a character who is highly valued at certain key moments in Japanese history, as a symbol of outward expansion.”
Women of Aizu and “taiga dramas”
Beyond the myths, Japanese national television has been reusing its history since the 1960s, with every year the broadcast of a taiga dramaand “weekly soap opera which takes a historical period as its setting”as the historian describes it.
In 2013, it is a woman who took up arms who is in the foreground: Niijima Yae. Also called Yamamoto Yaeko, she is from the Aizu region (today Fukushima) and fought during the Boshin War (Edo period). Coming from a warrior family which even claims to have a very ancient ancestral lineage of samurai, she is relatively educated and knows how to use weapons.
In this taiga drama titled Yae no Sakurawe also discover Nakano Takeko, also from Aizu, coming from a samurai family. More famous than her sister, she leads a battalion of women into combat, despite the refusals of a commander who sees it as a demonstration of weakness.
Highly educated, she masters weapons like many women from warrior families in the region. For her, “it is essential to hold your rank and defend the stronghold”adds Matthias Hayek. Nakano Takeko died in combat at the age of 21, hit by a bullet. Before dying, she asked her sister to cut off her head so that her enemies would not take it – a gesture worthy of the samurai code.
According to Erin Tumble, a doctoral student in history and an expert on gender in modern Japan, it is imperative to study events like the Boshin War to bring complexity to depictions of Japanese women in the past.
“Without such cases, there would likely be a lack of awareness of women’s martial arts training and there would not be the same understanding of the effectiveness of this training. Thus, war is not only a means for women to take a greater role in history, but also a means for historians to understand the level of preparedness of women to take on these roles.she notes in her thesis entitled Women warriors: defending Aizu during the Boshin war (1868-1869).
A changing vision
The producers of Yae no Sakurabroadcast two years after the earthquake that struck the Fukushima region in 2011, did not choose Yamamoto Yaeko at random. Erin Trumble notes that she “not only served as a heroine of her time, but was chosen to present an “inspiring story of loss and recovery” to help encourage those living in the present”while being the incarnation of a “changing view of the importance of women’s stories in Japan”.
Because if the women of the Edo period did not all receive the education of those from samurai families, they are far from being reduced to the single image of submissive beings that sticks to their skin. The cliché will perhaps fade over time. taiga dramaswhich increasingly put women forward. In 2024, it is for example Murasaki Shikibu, author of the great classic Your Genjiwhich was in the spotlight.
Through women warriors, Japan has female figures who defy stereotypes, but it would be simplistic to believe that they are the only personalities who can serve as feminist inspirations. After the Boshin War, the period of shogunats ends and the arrival of the Meiji era leads to the fall of the privileged social status of the samurai class.
Subsequently, gender equality was not necessarily more important, but Japanese women like Kishida Toshiko and, later, those of the feminist magazine Seitōwill fight to make their voices heard. The history of Japan is therefore still full of profiles of women to discover and others to make known, particularly within the framework of the current Japanese feminist movement.
Source: www.slate.fr
