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October 11, 2024 38 mins

In this classic, Cristen and Caroline look at the history of Japanese Women Warriors and the legend they created. 

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Samantha. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You,
a production of iHeartRadio, and y'all, I am taking over
choosing classics today. And since we've already been kind of
talking about samurai warriors and whether women were involved during

(00:28):
that time, I thought it would be a good time
to revisit this classic that Kristin and Caroline did title
Samurai Warriors.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
So enjoy Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from
howstufforks dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin, and.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Today's episode is inspired by social media basically. Yeah, yeah,
we were talking about the warrior women of Japan, women
who were in Japan's samurai class, and I have seen
a lot of things being posted both on Tumblr and
on Pinterest, these beautiful images of Japanese warrior women and

(01:18):
even women dressed as samurai warriors in photographs.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Yeah, there's one photo in particular that a lot of
our listeners have probably seen, because, like you said, Caroline,
it's everywhere on Tumblr, pin dress, It's been shared on
Twitter at nauseum, and the reception is usually, this is
so cool, here's a female samurai look.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Women were warriors too, so neat, and.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
It depicts a Japanese woman wearing armor and she's holding
a helmet, and she does look like she's ready for battle,
including her very impressive hairstyle with what looks like little
flowers tucked in it, because you know what, even though
you're going to battle, done, man, you have to look
a mess. But as Tracy and Holly are our pals

(02:08):
at our Sister podcast, Stuffy Miss and History Class have
also noted, this is not a female samurai unfortunately, you know,
and it's it's kind of disappointing to have to reign
on what is such a fun parade.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Yeah, but no, that the photo that a lot.

Speaker 5 (02:26):
Of people have probably seen is a kabuki performer. Yeah,
she's an actress.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
She's she's dressed up incredibly for whatever play she's about
to act in. But she is not, in fact a samurai,
nor is she an ona bugaisha or an ona musha,
which are the names for women warriors in Japanese culture.
The onna bugaisha is also known as the female samurai.

(02:54):
But as we'll talk about, samurai is a gendered term,
and it is gendered male.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
It does not apply to ladies.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
So in that case, So Caroline, does that mean that
calling this episode samurai women is misleading?

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Misleading but so deliciously click baby, Okay, look at us
being so transparent with our audience right now. Well that's
the thing. So when I did see not the photograph
of the woman in her armor, but I did see
beautiful Japanese paintings of lady warriors, I was like, oh

(03:29):
my god, this is an amazing piece of history that
I've somehow missed out on. And yes, I definitely have
missed out on the history of women of the samurai
class in Japan. But as I started to dig around
and I even reblogged some stuff on Tumblr, was just like,
should Sminty do this? This is definitely a topic that
we should cover. I realized upon further digging that oh, well,

(03:54):
it's not that there were like armies of women going
into battle. It's just more that there were a lot
of women of the samurai class who did train with weapons,
but it was more about defending the homestead, defending the castle,
helping their husbands defend the lord of the manor basically.

Speaker 5 (04:15):
It was reminiscent to me as a far more intense
version of me taking self defense class as my pe
in college. It's like learning those kinds of tactics to
protect myself rather than dash out onto the streets and sucker.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
Punch a lot of dudes. I mean, I hope you're
not sucker punching anyone in general. But yeah, so I
wanted to know, like, who were these women? How many
of them were there? Were? They literally just housewives who
had like a knife in the drawer to protect themselves,
they had knives in their aprons.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, so what's going on and what's the true story?

Speaker 4 (04:57):
And I was really interested to find out that the
truth is somewhere between those things. A lot of people
are like, yeah, Japanese women warriors, they're all over.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
The place killing dudes.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
And then there's this other side of the internet that's like, no,
they didn't. They weren't active at all. They were just housewives.
And so where are we going to be in the internet?
Are we in the middle saying? You know what?

Speaker 3 (05:18):
There were some.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
Housewives with daggers and not a lot of them.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, there were some, and there were some who did
some neck chopping, as we'll talk about.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
But yeah, I wanted to.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Kind of get to the bottom of who these women
really were, and a part of understanding who they were
and where they came from is understanding how women were
viewed and treated in Japanese society.

Speaker 5 (05:42):
Yeah, so we're gonna have to give you, wait for it,
some history. Uh oh, but this we need to lay
this foundation for how the warrior class developed and also
how religion played a role and also developed being governments,
because I mean, this is we're looking.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
At a lot of a lot of time here, Yeah,
and so we're going to do our best to condense it,
but still try to give you perspective on how women's
roles developed through ancient, medieval, and then early modern Japanese society.
So get ready, put your samurai helmet on, and let's
go for a little red well I ride.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
Caroline starts in the good old days aka ancient history. Now,
the very first documented evidence of attitudes toward women are
in these eighth century records called Kojiki and Nahungi, and
it illustrates that women actually enjoyed fairly high status, and
this was partially thanks to Shintoism, whose birth was related

(06:47):
to the story of a Sun goddess named Amaturasu who
exemplified perfection, intelligence, beauty, fertility, and purity.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Just like Caroline, stuff mom never told you that's right,
And just like stuff Mom never told you. Her feminine
qualities culturally were really embraced and admired.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Especially on Facebook. Especially on Facebook.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Yeah, nobody was telling her to stop using up speak
or vocal fry. You mean vocal fry, Yeah, oh my god.
But yeah, it's just interesting to see how religion, the
influence and development of religion, also affects the development of

(07:32):
the way that women are viewed and treated. So in
the wake of the development of Shintoism, we get this
pro lady mythology that fosters pretty generally pro lady views
in a relatively matriarchal culture. Chinese records from the time,
because those Chinese had their nose in everything, being the

(07:53):
smarty pants world power that they were, and their records
show that not only were women like cool fine with women,
but they were actually encouraged to rule and it was
thought that they would be peacekeepers, that they were chased
and not given to jealousy, which is definitely different from
how I don't know a lot of people the stereotypes

(08:13):
of women just being jealous and gossipers. But back then
people were like, yeah, women, great, they're going to keep
the peace and rule within even hand. And these Chinese
records also discussed the beloved rulers Pimmico aka Himiko.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
She's the first known ruler.

Speaker 4 (08:30):
Of Japan, who was thought to be a descendant of
that Sun goddess and her daughter Eo. But so we
talked about how religion affected government and affected society, and
women were considered as the go between for deities and
humanity in this religion, and men were thought to be

(08:51):
able to take those messages and put them into action.
And this is coming from a. Kana Haruko's paper in
the Japan Christian Review from nineteen ninety three. She writes
that you've got men and women working together. Men and
women both could be rulers, and at the time the
rulers were also priests, so power ended up being pretty

(09:11):
evenly distributed relatively until the dawn of the imperial system,
which consolidated power away from women. And Kristen, all of
this conversation about religion and women being empowered through religion
reminded me of our conversation with Karakuti the Egyptologists talking
about hot Schepsit and how she used her background in

(09:32):
religion to sort of gain power and become queen.

Speaker 5 (09:34):
Well, and you just mentioned that with the dawn of imperialism,
power was consolidated away from women. But there's also this
instance of Empress Jingu in the third or fourth century
heading up an army. Possibly this might also be a myth,
but weapons and armor were found in fourth century female

(09:56):
rulers tombs, so it's not clear whether it's because they
actually fought or whether the weapons were symbolics. So even
though maybe their their power actual power was slipping away,
they would still get in on the warfare action from
time to time.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
But then we see a shift in the sixth century
away from Shintoism as Buddhism is introduced, and it really
affected attitudes toward women. We get these anti feminine views
imported from China. Suddenly women go from being intelligent and
symbolizing purity and fertility and they can rule and we
love them their peacekeepers, to being seductresses with an evil nature.

(10:36):
And so this ends up fostering a chauvinistic society and
kind of shuttles women off to a subordinate place.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
So basically, under this structure, only men.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Can attain enlightenment, and if you're a woman, you can
attain enlightenment if you're reincarnated as a man, so good
for you.

Speaker 5 (10:54):
And women's worth lay in political alliances created through father
arranged marriages switched tones a lot like old style Western
marriages as well. And when we move forward to the
Haynd period from seven ninety four to eleven eighty five AD,
things don't get much better.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
Women's activities are.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
Super restricted, they have less access to education, there's a
belief that they shouldn't be seen by men, which is
interesting that during this period this is happening because there
was an explosion and aristocratic women's writing.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
But maybe it's just because they didn't have much.

Speaker 5 (11:31):
Else to do while they were locked away, which explains
why I have so many diaries from my homeschool years.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
A dear diary.

Speaker 4 (11:41):
Today is century century three of us being locked away
from society. We used to be impresses. Maybe tomorrow will
be a better day xoxo.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, and it did. Tomorrow was a better day relatively.
When we enter the feudal period of feudalism, is the
better day? Is that what you're saying about to say, yeah, Well,
I mean for ladies.

Speaker 5 (12:04):
Oh man, talk about it real hard glass half fall.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
It puts it in stark relief.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
Yeah. So from eleven eighty five to sixteen oh three,
that's the feudal period in Japan, and this is when
we see the rise of the samurai warrior class, and
samurai means those who serve, so they're basically like nights
if you want to think of an equivalent in Western culture,
Nights without the whole chivalry aspect.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
There was no like, hey, we need.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
To treat our ladies with respect, and like put our
capes down in puddles and save damsels and things like that.
They didn't give a hoot for courtly love. There was
no damsel in distress, worries or anything like that. So
it's interesting now that as we get feudalism, we also
get less restrictive Buddhist sex emerging, and that's sects groups

(12:53):
of Buddhists, not Buddhist sex as in sexy times, although
who knows, maybe you never know.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
During this glass Apfal feudal period, things were really loosen enough.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Well, women's freedom did expand they were allowed rights to
inheritance and to will property to their children. They were
relatively more active in society. They managed their household staffs,
they oversaw household finances, and some of them trained in
the Samurai way of life, and this entails both training
with weapons, training in martial arts and fighting, but also

(13:29):
just training in that way of life that involved duty
and loyalty.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
And the dnahs that were performed not too long ago
on recently excavated bodies dating back to a battle in
fifteen eighty found that thirty five of those dead bodies
were women. And had these been siege situations, it's possible
the women's remains were there because they'd kill them killed

(14:05):
themselves to protect their honor, and that because that happened.

Speaker 4 (14:08):
A lot the whole I mean, I don't know that
you would.

Speaker 5 (14:10):
Classify that specifically as harcurry, but there was a whole
like honorable suicide thing going on. But instead it seems
more likely in this situation that they were actually fighting.
So there's evidence, you know that they are at least
thirty five of them out there, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
There are at least thirty five. And this is just
part of the interesting thing about lost history. I mean,
we just.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Don't know how many warrior women there.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Were, how they were really viewed. It's entirely possible that
they were more common than we understand them to be,
but that they were just not written about in the
history books. And so anyway, this expanded role for women, it.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Just did not stay this way forever.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
Husband and wife relationships be gan to resemble that whole
feudal lord subject relationship, which just means total and utter
submission to the husband as the lord. And so when
we move into the Tokugawa era from sixteen o three
to eighteen sixty seven, marriage and pleasing the husband is

(15:18):
really the only role that women were fit for. Nobody
had a great opinion of ladies at this time. Samurai
husbands were no longer out there fighting. They were more
like bureaucrats. Women, however, were still expected during this time
to raise the kids with a proper samurai education, because there.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
Wasn't much else they could do.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
What was a proper samurai education. This would still be
in terms of loyalty, serving the home, serving the family,
serving the lord, learning to fight and use weapons properly.

Speaker 5 (15:52):
When I hear serving the Lord, Caroline, it does just
take me right back to evangelical church.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, this definitely means like the Lord and master in
terms of your feudal lord.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Not so much Jesus.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
I don't know if Japan was down with Jesus.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yet at the time.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
I don't think Jesus had gotten.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
To Japan yet.

Speaker 5 (16:12):
But what does all of this really say about women
warriors and samurai? With all of this up and down
and women being hidden away for these different periods, was
there really an opportunity for them to even be warriors?
Because some sources out there say women of a samurai
achieved prominence, but others claimed they were just fulfilling their

(16:35):
duties as housewives, which we noted earlier.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
There's kind of that.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Spectrum of like, yeah, they were totally there and other.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
People being like, no, they were just at home.

Speaker 5 (16:44):
So what gives though, Caroline, Let's pull some more meat
from this timeline that we just trotted through. So before
we get into some of these fighting women and talk
about what they fought with, which is pretty neat some
dis claimers. Like we said at the top of the podcast,
these are not those pinterest friendly images from the late

(17:06):
nineteenth century depicting women probably kabookie performers, dressed as samurai,
and like you said, Caroline, even calling them samurai women
is a little bit misleading because of how samurai is
a gendered term.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
So can you talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
Yeah, well, so the women warriors of this period are
referred to as onnabu geisha or so called female samurai
like you said, but that more literally means women practicing
the art of war. You've got the term geisha in there,
like geishas who are performing artists, and then you've got
the term onamusha, which more literally means women warriors. So

(17:45):
they definitely would not have been referred to as samurais
back then, and they technically shouldn't be referred to as
samurais now. But the terms exist, and so did these women.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
But it is.

Speaker 5 (17:55):
True that they existed within the context of their individual
households because typically women in the warrior class could be
characterized by their role as castle slash homestead defenders.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
So when the king or the lord not to be
confused with Jesus.

Speaker 5 (18:14):
Christ was away, protection of the home fell to the wife.
Her front was the home while her husband was on
the battlefield, and there was deep, deep loyalty to the clan.
This is part of that samurai education that we mentioned
a few minutes ago. And what did they use to

(18:34):
defend their homestead. Not just any old sword, not a
sling shot, not nunchucks, but rather something called a naginata.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
Yeah. It's basically a sort of spear sword hybrid, so
it looks like a long pole.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
With a curved blade at the end.

Speaker 5 (18:56):
And it was really cute because they're all pink for
the girls, Caroline.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
You know, that's how you know that it was. Yeah,
that's how you know it's for women.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
They're real light.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, And girls would learn to use it from a
relatively young age, and when they reached adulthood, they were
also given kaiken or small knives for both self defense
and also suicide if their virtue was threatened. So basically,
you had to be prepared to die to protect your
own honor as well as your family's honor. And a

(19:27):
little bit of context to that is that a short
life was really not viewed as a tragedy. It was admirable,
especially if you died in the name of protecting your
family or your honor. But also when rumors of raping
and pillaging preceded an invading army, it was not uncommon
for women of that village or clan to participate in

(19:50):
a mass suicide, and we saw a couple interesting examples
of basically ancient suicide notes left by women who were
in this very situation that illustrate I don't want to
insinuate that suicide is interesting, but I think they illustrate
how women's role in this samurai class, and that the

(20:10):
way they fulfilled the way they were supposed to fulfill
their duty as part of the samurai class. So one
from the nineteenth century says, each time I die and
am reborn in the world, I wish to return as
a stalwart warrior. And another woman wrote, I have heard
that this is the way of the warrior, and so
I set out on the journey to the land of

(20:32):
the dead. So I think that says a lot about Yeah,
their front, as you said, might not be on the battlefield,
but they certainly felt that they had a duty to
perform during times of.

Speaker 5 (20:44):
War, and that nagnata was a tool to guard one's
personal sanctity unless it was actually used for battle, because
this did happen from time to time. Martial arts historian
Ellis Amber cites a sixteenth century chronicle of a warrior
wife who led more than eighty soldiers against the enemy

(21:05):
after finding women and children in her husband's castle had
committed mass suicide.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
Yeah, so obviously there were some women who were like,
uh no, not all the women in my clan get
to kill themselves and just have that go by as
a normal thing. And then author Stephen Turnbull describes the
nineteenth century wife of a magistrate who, fearing the Imperial
army would slaughter her family, ended up cutting off her
hair preemptively killing her mother in law and daughter, and

(21:33):
then charging out into the fighting with her naganata in hand.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Intense, very intense.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
So we really get this image of the naganata wielding
warrior woman emerging during the Warring States period, which is
it falls under that feudal period in the mid fifteenth
to the early seventeenth centuries, and we start to get
these accounts of warlord's wives wearing armor and leading women
into fights with those naganata.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
But historical accounts of women in action deal more often
with samurai class women defending the home rather than specifically
going out onto the battlefield. So basically the deal was
that if you were a samurai dude, which is kind
of redundant to even say, you'd be part of the
warrior class and you had to accept that your whole

(22:23):
family was obliged to serve the Lord and master. Would
that also be like the Showgun with the you know,
because the showgun is a general, so they would all
essentially be loyal to the Showgun. And it wasn't uncommon
for the womenfolk to have to perform the menfolks duties
if they were away, which might include everything from just

(22:44):
working on house repairs to defending the castle or home,
to you know, taking care of heads once they've been
chopped off of bodies, because there is a very ceremonial
presentation of decapitated heads that would happen after the fighting

(23:04):
had chilled out for a minute.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yeah, women's role during war if they were holed up
in the castle, it was really interesting. So they'd be
doing everything from casing bullets, to caring for the wounded,
to throwing wet blankets on cannon balls before they could explode.
Can you imagine I would not sign up for that job.
I'll be like, I'll be over here casing the bullets
because there's no blood involved in that and no.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Potential dismemberment from cannonballs.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
But yeah, like Christin said, they would also prepare enemy
heads for head viewing ceremonies. And I read this and
was like, what this sounds awful? What is a head
viewing ceremony? And it's literally that it's like cleaning up
the head, washing it, blackening the teeth, and presenting it
to the victor or the victorious family or clan to

(23:53):
be like, hey, hey, look at what we did. Very
game of thronesy back then, very well. So in the
midst seventeenth century, though after the Warring States period, we
hit a little bit of a more peaceful time. Women
are still being trained to use the naganata because by
this point it's pretty much a ladies tool and it's
only associated with them. But instead of all of this

(24:16):
protecting the castle from the enemy thing, they basically became,
as one source said, kind of like a neighborhood watch
type of things. So even though their rights were more
restricted they were expected to stay in the home, they
would still if a stranger entered the area, grab the
old naganata and run outside to protect their hood from strangers.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
It's like housewives today who buy tasers, you know, they're
actually like taser shows instead of tupperware parties.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Really, there are taser parties.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
Yes, I know this firsthand from someone who has been
to one and purchased one.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
I would there are pink washed tasers.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
I had no idea.

Speaker 5 (24:57):
Yeah, naganada, Wait cool, I'm just saying no, I'm not
advocating four Day's person the home. But let's talk though
about some of the specific women, because one thing that
definitely emerged as we were researching this topic was that

(25:18):
A the numbers are low, and B there are just
a handful of actual individual women with names that you
hear about who are repeated over and over again in
any kind of female samurai roundup or history that you
might read. And again, I keep catching myself saying female
samurai because I feel like I'm just shorthand.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Okay, okay, sure, I forgive you.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
Some of our listeners might write in, but hey, we
get it. We understand at least.

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Yeah, may I acknowledge the imprecision of my language.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
Well, So, in addition to the countless women that we've
been talking about who defended their homes and avenge the
deaths of family and lords, we wanted to name a
few that stand out.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
In the history books.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
But the first two that we're going to talk about
should be taken with a slight grain of salt because
mainly they may not have really existed. Oh no, Yeah,
So Tomo Gozen is one of the most famous, most
often cited examples of a woman warrior. But she might
have been a legend. It's not sure why. If she

(26:36):
was a legend, she was created. It's possible that she
was created to shame a certain male warrior, to make
him seem like he needed a woman to help him.
But regardless, it is a great story, and so let's
take it as that and talk about the legendary Tuma Gozen.
First of all, Gozen is not her last name. It's

(26:56):
not like how I'm Caroline Irvin. Gozen is a title,
and it's basically young lady, and it was sometimes applied
to women warriors specifically, so you could be goes In Caroline. Yeah,
young lady Caroline. Well, it just reminds me of Gozer
from Ghostbusters. Then and then I just go on a
tangent in my brain, and then he goes in on
a tangent. Well, so, during the Genpei War from eleven

(27:21):
eighty to eighty five, Toma supposedly fought alongside male Samurai warriors.
And there's an account, a historical account that's possibly made up,
that says many times she had taken the field armed
at all points and won matchless renown and encounters with
the bravest captains. And so in this last fight, when
all the others had been slain or fled, among the

(27:43):
last seven, there road Tomo. And she's the only woman.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Warrior to be described in any detail in any war account.
And so it's this, it's this detail and this focus.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
On her and her accomplishments and her badass that makes
people go, well, are.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
We sure that she actually existed?

Speaker 4 (28:05):
And even if she didn't, it's a great myth and
it's a great story. The same way that you might
be inspired by the story of like Athena and think
Athena is a great character in history, I think Tomo
is too.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
She's described as.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
Beautiful, fearless, and a masters swordsman and archer who led
men into battle. And legend has it that she escaped
her enemies during a battle and gave up fighting to
marry or become a concubine, whichever, and when her husband died,
she ended up becoming a nun, and.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
She's depicted a lot in art, right, A lot of
times those female warrior paintings or even embroidery that you
might see could be depicting Tomo goes In, or they
could be depicting Hongaku goes In also, who apparently rode
into battle when her clan rebelled against the shogunate or

(28:56):
the military leadership in eleven eighty nine. She ended up
getting wounded and captured, and an enemy soldier who wanted
her as a bride kept her from committing sepaku.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
However, other accounts do say she remained in the castle the.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
Whole time until being felled by an arrow, and sepuku
would have been an honorable suicide, correct a Mundo?

Speaker 5 (29:17):
Well, and then we have a third and is she
more verified historically verified and Twitter verified?

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Our next, our next three are Twitter verified.

Speaker 5 (29:29):
So in fifteen seventy seven, Oweno Serahimi led a group
of more than thirty women in a charge against besieging troops,
and when the samurai wouldn't engage and kill the women,
the frustrated women warriors returned to the castle, and you
guessed it committed mass suicide well just imagine.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
Okay, So here are these women who are like, we're
going to do our duty.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
We're going to do our honor. We're going to be
honorable women warriors, we are going to go to war
with these men. And they go outside, and the guys
were like, whoa, whoa. We might we might not understand
the concept of chivalry or practice it, but we're not
going to kill ladies. And the women are like, so.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Seriously, but I've got my armor, am i Naganada.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Like, well, I wonder if they were like, we're not
going to kill you, because we could just capture you
and make you are concubines.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
True story probably accurate, and another figure who's often cited
is Nakano Takiko, who fought during the Botionan Civil War
from eighteen sixty eight to sixty nine.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
During the Battle of Azu.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
She led other women warriors known as the Women's Army,
and of course they weren't recognized as an official part
of the army, but they went up against the Imperial Army,
who were horrified to see that they were facing women,
and so again similarly, they decided to stop fighting and
take the women alive, and of course women were like,

(30:53):
oh wait, so you guys you're not like fighting right now?

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Oh well, we're just going to kill a.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
Whole bunch of you.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
Then and when she was shot in the chest, she
asked her sister to behead her so the enemy wouldn't again.
It's all about honor and death. It's like no, no, no,
no one else is going to kill me. Yeah, I
will go down the way. It's like, you can't fire me.
I quit.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, And so her sister did it.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
Which I also can't imagine. Her sister beheaded her and
then buried her head. And now there's like a there's
a memorial statue that you can go visit.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Oh yeah, wasn't that the one where schoolgirls will.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
Often go and visit this monument to her because she's
such a heroine.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
Yeah, it's pretty neat.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
Any Japanese listeners, if you've been there and have a photo,
please send it to us.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, or just any more details. We want to hear
details about all of this stuff.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
And another woman we want to tell you about is
Yamamoto Yaeiko, who in eighteen sixty eight, during that same
Battle of Azu, replaced her gunnery instructor father who'd been
killed during the fighting, and using her repeating rifle, she
fought alongside the men. And she's a really fascinating character,
Like we could have done an entire episode just on

(32:07):
her alone. But she went on to teach at the
Kyoto Women's School, where she met and married This guy
sounds pretty awesome. He's a pro women's rights former samurai
who had spent a lot of time in the US,
and together as a pair, they founded the Doshisha University
in Kyoto. So after her husband died, she ends up

(32:29):
joining the Japanese Red Cross, leading a team of forty
nurses during the war between China and Japan, and becomes
one of the first women in Japan to be decorated
for her service to the country. Wow.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Yeah, I mean, she's an incredible figure, as are all
of these women, even Tomo Goozen, who's potentially a mythological character.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
Well. I love the story too of Yamamoto though, because.

Speaker 5 (32:56):
She just keeps going and going and going, and it
at least is honored And I mean, I guess, I mean,
there's the monument to Nakano, but Yaomosho, you know, was
able to go and lead those those nurses during the
Sino Jezzy.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, she really didn't stop.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
She continued on with the attitude of having duty, of
having honor, wanting to serve others, serve her country, and
leading other women as she did it. And so while
there's not a ton of unfortunately, while there's not a
ton of hard evidence out there about warrior women in Japan,

(33:37):
and even though a bunch of sources do contradict each other,
I think it is interesting just to look at how
culture shaped not only views of women, but what they
were even allowed to do, and that even if a
woman could not be a samurai because a samurai is
a is a dude soldier, she could still pursue that

(33:58):
duty and honor in her own way as part of
the samurai.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
Class well, and their biography is just exemplify that cultural
loyalty that was so instilled.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
Through so many generations too.

Speaker 5 (34:13):
Well.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
So I'm definitely interested in hearing from listeners. I know
we have a bunch of history buffs, and specifically some
Japanese history buffs out there. I know we had a
lot of comments on the Tumblr post about the Onu Bugisha,
and so I mean, if you have any stories, have
you done any research. Have you in fact trained in

(34:33):
any martial arts? Do you own a Naga Nata and
use it?

Speaker 5 (34:37):
Mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast, our
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
To share with you right now.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Well, I have a couple of letters here about our
waste training episode.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
This is from Megan. She says mentioned at one point
that Jessica Alba started wearing a waist trainer after having
a baby helped her uterus go back to its previous size.
While I agree that waiste trainers are dangerous and it's
unlikely that her waiste trainer really had this effect because
it doesn't really go down far enough to fully support
the uterus, there is a history of using belly banding

(35:18):
of some sort to support the uterus postpartum and assisting
it in returning to its pre baby shape, to support
the back during pregnancy, and to assist patients with uterine
prolapse support the muscles of the uterus. As a midwife
and training, this is something that's of great interest to me,
and so Megan recommends looking up information about the use
of fajas in Guatemala, which she says is a traditional

(35:40):
Mayan belly banding device for pregnant women.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
She says these.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
Should definitely be used with caution, as if they are
tied too tightly there can be side effects, but they
have been anecdotally found helpful by women who use them
in South America.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Just another thought on the subject.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
So thanks, Megan.

Speaker 5 (35:56):
I've got a letter here from Susan also about our
waite training at them. And let me just tell you
how many letters we've gotten.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
About this episode.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
I love it, so, she writes.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
Several years ago, I was getting fitted for bridesmaids dresses
and at the time I was the heaviest i'd been,
so I was already a little apprehensive of getting fitted
when I went in. The first thing the sales that
he said to me was, well, I can tell from
your bust you're going to need a much bigger size.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Lovely.

Speaker 5 (36:27):
Anyway, as I was trying the sample size on and
she measured me, she suggested that I think about losing
weight before the wedding. She kindly reminded me that there
was plenty of time before the wedding to lose a
few pounds.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
And maybe I should think about wearing a corset.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
She went on and on about how it will make
me look so much slimmer and leaner and give me
a much better all around look. Feeling completely exposed, offended,
and embarrassed, I just kept saying things like, uh, yeah, great.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
Thanks.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
After she was done explaining all the benefits of a
corset on the day of the event, she suggested I
start wearing one now well to.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Get used to it and to help me lose weight.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Again.

Speaker 5 (37:03):
I said, oh, great, thanks, to which she followed up with, well,
if you can't breathe, you can't eat. I was horrified.
I quickly dressed, paid for my overpriced address, and ran
out of there as fast as I could. I promised
I would never subject my bridesmaids to that kind of
behavior or service if I ever got married. I laugh
about it today because it's just so ridiculous that anyone

(37:26):
would say that in twenty twelve when this happened, But
it was incredibly embarrassing and terribly offensive. Thanks so much
for putting out such a great podcast with such great topics.
I recommend it to so many people I know, women
and men, so thank you so much. Susan and oh
boy to that saleswoman. If you're listening, please never do

(37:48):
that to a human body again, so we will now
want to hear your stories. Mom.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Stuff at houseof works dot com is our email.

Speaker 5 (37:55):
Address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast
pass with this one, including our sources. So you can
learn more firsthand about the warrior women of Japan. Head
on over to stuff Mom Never told.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
You dot com. But more on this and thousands of
other topics does it, How stuffworks dot com

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