Mylo’s Pick of the Week!
While I posted a different image yesterday I have to highlight Toshimana (とし真菜) of Komaya (駒屋) in Miyagawa Cho as Tomoe Gozen in the Jidai Matsuri. Not just because Toshimana is an awesome geiko, but because of Tomoe Gozen herself.
If anyone ever tells you that there weren’t female samurai, this is where you tell them to sit down, grab some popcorn, and then act out The Life of Tomoe Gozen in all its beautiful glory.
She was a BADASS. Like, seriously, there is no better term to use. She lived in the 12th century, a time at which, surprisingly, there were many female fighters. This is something that Japanese Imperialism tried to scrub clean when they were re-inventing their image for the West in the 19th century. The West has had a long history of not letting women fight in battles, yet this is untrue for almost every other part of the world. As long as you were skilled with a sword you could serve in the army of whatever clan you belonged to. Most noble women were proficient in the naginata all the way up until the Meiji Period as it would be the wives who would protect the estate if their husband was off fighting.
Most of what we know about Tomoe Gozen are from accounts of what happened on the battlefield. Her early life is a bit of a mystery, but her awesomeness continues to be legendary. She was an exceptionally skilled fighter at almost every weapon imaginable, with proficiency in both the naginata and bow being her “top” weapons.
She fought in what we now call The Genpei War, which saw the defeat of the Taira clan at the hand of the Minamoto clan and established The Kamakura Shogunate. This is the war that ended the “dream” of the Heian Period and ushered in the first of many shogun rulers (and the aptly titled Kamakura Period). From this war came the first of Japan’s legendary heroes who would be remembered in songs and plays for over a millennia in a story known as the Heikei Monogatari. The biggest of all was Yoshitsune, still a very popular character in kabuki, who was one of the Minamoto Clean’s masterminds. The other was Tomoe Gozen.
Besides being an incredibly skilled fighter there exist written accounts of how incredibly beautiful she was too. She held the Heian aesthetic of the perfect beauty yet she was not a woman to sit around and read poetry. She killed many top warlords and was one of the most valuable fighters on the Minamoto side. However, she was not on the Minamoto side that would eventually rule Japan. She fought for Yoshinaka Minamoto who would later be defeated by his cousins Yoritomo, Yoshitsune, and Noriyori. So, even though she was technically on the losing side of the war her opponents respected her so much that her story has continued to live on today. Oddly enough, we don’t know what happened to her at the end of the war. She apparently escaped capture, but written accounts of her stopped there. It’s most likely that she retired to a convent to become a nun under a new name, but we will never know for sure. There are a few sites that claim to be her final resting place, but, again, no one will ever know for sure.
If you want to know more about Tomoe Gozen this website is excellent and gives better detailed accounts of her life.
