The women warriors

Last week, someone on FB posted this interesting photograph of a "woman warrior."  She is weaing what I believe is late Edo period armor, and is holding a jutte in her right hand, and a kabuto in her left.  She is young, rather pretty, and as serious-looking as many Japanese people in old photo portraits tend to look.  She is also  wearing her hair simply, but with a hair ornament, and she appears to have a chrysanthemum pinned on the left side of her chest.  It being FB, people speculated, oohed and ahhed and, inevitably, snarked.  I was ignoring the whole thing, until one of my colleagues called me out directly and asked me what I thought of it.  This is an expanded version of what I thought.  To begin with, this is what I said in FB:
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Women were members of the samurai class. They did, as far as we know, train with a variety of weapons. A samurai woman, when she got married, would have someone in the wedding procession (assuming she was high-enough ranked to have one) carry her naginata for her as she went to her new husband's home. There are many true stories about incidents of women fighting to avenge their parents or husband or to defend their mistress in case of danger. In kabuki, there are many stories of this type that made their way to the stage, and were based on real incidents. We should try to remember that the Western idea of Japanese women represents more of our Victorian sensibilities, followed by everyone's current cultural and political ideas. While women were apparently taught to fight, the idea that any of them would lead troops into battle is not likely. We have some legends, and they may have some facts behind them (we don't know) but simply looking at the historical military records in Japan shows that it was not a normal thing. There is a famous passage in Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura about Shizuka, Yoshitsune's lover, having a maid strap on her armor, taking her naginata from its place and running out into the night to stop a fight between Yoshitsune's retainers and those of his brother Yoritomo, before things got serious. No one thought this idea was ridiculous, so it suggests it was not an impossible thing to have happen. Obviously this photo has to be late Edo (or even newer than that) because photos were not around much before 1850. The technology was developed around 1826 but was not practical for a long time. There was also a tradition in Japan for people in later times to put on their father's or grandfather's armor and pose for a portrait, though it was usually guys who did so. This woman is wearing a chrysanthemum, and that suggests to me that she was taking part in some ceremony. It is possible she is wearing a male relative's armor as part of some ceremony honoring him, if there was no son or other male relative to take part in it. It's also possible, of course, that the ceremony was honoring HER in some way. Still, it's an interesting photo and I would love to know more about it.
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I could have added in some other true incidents, like the story of the two women who avenged their father's death at the hands of a corrupt official.  This vendetta has been said to be the first time someone used a kusarigama as a weapon (her sister is generally depicted in woodblock prints with a naginata.  The corrupt official is depicted as someone who doesn't stand a chance).  There is also the play Kagamiyama, which depicts another true story of a maid of the samurai class who avenged her mistress' death by killing an evil lady-in-waiting in a fight.  I have seen this play, and there are only fight scenes by women in it, as I recall.

Of course, kabuki actors were, and are, men.  But in the writings of early women role-players, they note that fighting while appearing feminine for the audience was difficult, but all the same, a female role player must show she can wield her weapon, "better than a man can."  They are not talking about comedies, they are talking about dramas depicting actual incidents.  And that women characters needed verisimilitude in their handling of weapons, just like the male role-players did.

I was looking for the above photo (since things get buried quickly on FB) so I put "woman warrior images" in bing, because I thought it would save some time.  I got things like this:

Cute, yes?  I almost don't know where to start, but let's just say that this is much more the image of a 12-year-old boy's fantasy than any serious warrior, like the ones I am talking about.  To be honest, in the raft of similar images, one could also find a chaste depiction of Joan of Arc, and one or two photos of female budoka - out of hundreds (thousands?) of images available.  A search for "Images of Warriors" brings up mostly men (and some women who look like our friend here).  The guys are mostly in the same goofy mode, but fully-clothed, and of course, showing some sense that they might actually be capable of doing something, even if only in action hero style (there were also a lot of film stills from the 70's film "The Warriors," but I digress).

A few weeks ago, also on FB, one of my male friends found a young woman's blog in which she wrote about her daily harrassment by men as she went virtually everywhere.  He and some of my other male FB friends expressed shock - shock, I tell you.  My reaction was, well, duh.  We don't talk about it because it never does us any good.  One of the good things about being slightly older is that the harrassment becomes more like being discounted, or ignored, or minimized, rather than being threatened with, say, sexual violence on a daily basis.  Still irritating, but I can get past it more easily.

One of my martial arts colleagues, years ago, remarked, sort of off-handedly, "I don't know any other women who do what you do."  If you ever wonder why you can't get more women into your budo practice, take a good look at the above image.  Maybe they're just mad.