Tomoe Gozen the Legendary Female Samurai Champion

At the beginning of the Battle of Shinohara in late 12th century Japan each side selects their champion for a one-on-one duel, and to the surprise of the vanquished champion his opponent reveals that she is a woman.

Ancient Assassins
SATURDAYS 10/9C

[antoniodellaquila]

I believe onna-bugeishas were celebrated more for the novelty and shock value than for anything else. The main reason why women of the samurai caste were trained to armed combat was to protect the children from untrained bandits and lowlives when the husbands were away from home.

[Papanda]

See, they should add little stories like these in history class to help make it interesting. Whenever talking about wars, pick a particularly interesting warrior to talk about and mix it with both men and women to help contradict the image of women as being weak, since there are other places where women surprised their society and rose up to be total badasses too.

[retepish]

Ummm... There was nothing dishonorable about that. In later Japan, that would be true, but during the warring states female samurai were well represented on the battlefields.

[redrust]

When excavating a pile of skulls from one of the great battles of that time period, about a third were found to be female. My maternal grandmother wa descended from the Minamoto clan. The rest of my grandparents were descended from Taira.

[DfuLT_]

Tell her that *Sensei Ishikawa* wants to see her

[roastingpotato]

That's what you get for not knowing about the weapon triangle.

[nanyafahkinbiznes]

those armors and weapons are pre-Sengoku period and not even from Heian-Kamakura era. Only Tomoe was wearing the traditional Heian-Kamakura armor

[candidob]

These Warriors were not Samurai. The Japanese language is gender-based, like many languages in other cultures. Samurai were male warriors. These women were Onna-Bugeisha, Fearless Women. This is the title of female warriors.

[WoodImp]

Don't think a Japanese master swordsman would use his Katana against a Yari :')

[ewst]

From this period, samurai came to hold power in Japan. Both Taira and Minamoto were branch families of the emperor and were given surnames by the emperor. For this reason, samurai valued honor and held the emperor at the top until World War II.

[BlazinNSoul]

Maybe an idea for The Last Samurai 2 lol. Sounds pretty epic and something we haven't seen before!! Onna-Bugeisha in history, fought in the Genpei War (1180-1185). Having served as principal commander in several battles.

A fierce fighter, Gozen led 300 female samurai into battle against 2, 000 enemies and was one of only five warriors to survive. Two years later, she oversaw 3, 000 men.

The medieval epic Tale of the Heike, one of the seminal texts of Japanese literature spoken of her as a fearless rider whom neither the fiercest horse.

Nor the roughest ground could dismay, and so dexterously did she handle sword and bow that she was a match for a thousand warriors, and fit to meet either god or devil. She wasn't the only midevil female warrior but certainly one of Japan’s most famous. ⚔️💕

[kobra]

Anyone think that sucker punch should make a game Loosley based of tomoe gozen that would be such an insult to naughty dog

[scatterthewinds]

I was interested so I went elsewhere to read more about this and all I found in nearly every article was that this was a mysterious character of which we know little about and whose deeds may have been exaggerated through storytelling - akin to king arthur, merlin, etc. There isn't even confirmation that this person ever existed.

[russelladams]

Jessica Amanda Salmonson's novel series celebrates this heroine. Read it - you won't be disappointed.

[rcbg]

FGO brought me here also cuz I wanna comment
Tomoe is like Mulan

[mikovee]

This video itself seems soo laughably hollywood lol

[peter-laputayung]

One thing to note it that in the times of Tomoe Gozen, samurais wear o-yoroi...so wrong armors here

[syuibnorzaimi]

ngl the samurai armor is the most epic armor i've seen of all the diffrent kind of f armor in the from 100 to 17th century

[antonypowell]

Gempei War armour was nothing like what is shown. It was made of thin scales bound together by silk and shaped like a box.

[Lancista]

_Tomoe Gozen-sama it's believed that she used Katana not Naginata..._