WHO WERE JAPAN’S LADY SAMURAI?

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 () 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