There have been many incredible and powerful women throughout history, yet unfortunately, often their stories go untold. Tomoe Gozen is a celebrated historical and legendary figure in Japan. A female samurai, she wielded a long katana, a bow made of bamboo called a Yumi, and was covered in the finest armor money could buy.
Another thing history doesn't mention; women of the samurai class learned to fight, and often took part in battles. Their skulls and remains fill the burial sites of great battles with a startling regularity. But perhaps what is really startling is that we are surprised about this at all. Women have been fighting to protect their families, their lords, their countries, and their clans for as long as men have in Japan. They took part in many battles, and they trained all their lives in the art of war, wielding long-poled weapons with blades at the end called "Naginatas" that were designed strategically to allow women to keep their distance while fighting samurai with katanas, yet attack swiftly.
Yet, despite the rich and colorful history of women warriors in Japan (which seemingly has yet to be represented in any popular media about samurai); despite the battlefields and graveyards of ancient battles filled with their bones alongside the bones of their clans, Tomoe Gozen was special.
Something about her dances on the line between reality and legend. The old pictures and prints depicting her show a woman with a calm expression, yet something intensely focused in her eyes. Her hair billows around her face like the mane of her horse as she grabs hold of a hapless samurai's throat and drags him onto her saddle through sheer strength. One print depicts her holding an enormous, gnarled tree branch and charging into her foes, knocking them from their horses! Some of the ancient prints even show her throwing down some of the strongest generals of her enemy clan with a single hand, her eyes fierce and piercing as a hawk's.
Most of the prints were believed to have been created a couple hundred years after her death, when her legend and the legend of her clan had grown and become something like the story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table.
This is a woman whose memory is like the lightning that cracked a mountain in two. Once, long ago, the greatest warrior of the Minamoto clan was a woman. She rode into battle with honor, and brought terror and death to all who stood in her way.
Tomoe Gozen was born to the samurai class, as only a woman born to nobility would have been allowed to become a samurai. She enters the pages of the Heike with the same grace she must have inspired in those who knew her:
"Kiso no Yoshinaka had brought with him from Shinano two female attendants…Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features."
This is the only line describing her beauty. The rest describe her fearsome fighting ability, calling her "a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or god."
Whether she was Yoshinaka's wife, consort, or simply a devoted member of his clan's army is not clear. What is certain is that Tomoe served him with greater loyalty and skill than any of his other warriors. Whenever there was a battle, he would send her ahead clad in his best armor and with his best fighters. She severed seven samurai heads in a single battle; they were prized trophies that many samurai died before collecting. They would be cleaned and displayed as a proof of the skill of warrior who had taken the grizzly prizes.
Tomoe fought a long war and many battles with her Morimoto clan. However, during the last and direst of battles, the tide turned upon them, and the Morimoto army, which had numbered several hundred, was gradually reduced…to seven. Seven, including Tomoe and Yoshinaka, the leader of the clan and her lord.
"Again they galloped through enemy bands—here four or five hundred, there two or three hundred, or a hundred and forty or fifty, or a hundred—until only five of them were left. Even then, Tomoe remained alive" (Heike).
However, when even these last seven began to fall, Yoshinaka ordered Tomoe to leave the battlefield and escape with her life.
"Quickly, now," Lord Kiso said to Tomoe. "You are a woman, so be off with you; go wherever you please. I intend to die in battle, or to kill myself if I am wounded. It would be unseemly to let people say 'Lord Kiso kept a woman with him during his last battle" (Heike).
It is hard to know if he was being entirely honest in these words. This was the lord who had valued Tomoe above all his other warriors for her deeds of valor and incredible strength. He had appointed her to lead the charge in all his battles, and she was his right-hand, much in the way the highest and most favored knight would be to a western king or lord. Perhaps his words were meant to hurt, so that he could get her to leave and spare her life. Perhaps he tried to disguise his pain and fear in gruff speech. It is even possible that the ones who later wrote down the account in the Heike changed what was said to match the expectations of the day towards women.
In either case, Tomoe did follow his command; but she did it in the way only Tomoe would. Instead of steering her horse towards safety, Tomoe galloped into a group of thirty enemy samurai. She let herself become surrounded by their horses, and waited to find the strongest among them. She recognized Uchida, a powerful and well-known warrior of the enemy clan. She attacked him and dragged him from his horse with sheer strength, beheading him swiftly with her katana, all within sight of the master who had ordered her away. Only then, after this one last act of defiance towards her defeat, did she leave the battlefield. Yoshinaka was slain was he left her side.
After this account, the story of Tomoe becomes shrouded in mist and legends. There are many accounts that say different things. One legend says she lived on and joined a Buddhist monastery. There are accounts that said she lived in this monastery to be 91 years old. Other accounts assert that she married the first man to defeat her in combat and had a child who turned into a very strong man.
The final legend is just as likely as the others, and probably the most repeated. It tells that Tomoe stayed in hiding for a few days, then rode into the enemy's territory once more and fought until she took back Yoshinaka's severed head to maintain his honor. Holding his head in her arms, covered in heavy scale armor, she walked calmly into the sea, following her lord and her clan into the afterlife.
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