Japanese literary, historical, and visual traditions feature female characters and figures endowed with remarkable strength, courage, and strategic ability. Their portrayals operated at the intersection of history, legend, and popular imagination, forming a major theme in Edo culture. Depicted as participants of military campaigns, they were often characterised by unique intelligence, determination, and an unbending moral stance. An important place in the description of their special status is played by the concept of onna bugeisha, referring to women trained in martial arts.

The image of the woman warrior was not confined to demonstrating physical prowess. Other important qualities included composure, loyalty, wisdom, leadership skills, and a readiness to act in critical situations. The heroines often stemmed from aristocratic or samurai families, and their portrayals combined motifs of heroism with the ideal of feminine beauty. In literature and art alike, they were characterised as strong figures who were also graceful, with subtle facial features, long hair and fair complexion. This tension between delicacy of form and power of action became one of the most characteristic elements of their iconography.

Depictions of onna bugeisha also make us aware of the singular quality of the ukiyo-e print as a medium combining visual depiction, literature, and popular theatre. A great number of prints make references to historical episodes, war novels, kabuki plays, and oral tradition. The image does not, therefore, function as an autonomous illustration of an event but as a component of a wider narrative culture. An Edo period viewer grasped literary allusions and recognised characters, gestures, and attributes that endowed depicted scenes with additional meanings. The woodblock print thus became a medium of collective memory, popular historical education, and emotional participation in narration.

An important role in these depictions is the relationship between text and image. Special-occasion prints, known as surimono, and multi-plate series portraying famous women often combined sophisticated pictorial composition with poetry, calligraphy, and technical effects, such as embossing and application of gold or silver pigments. The female figure could be shown against a decorative backdrop or inside an ornamental border around the image, with a kyōka poem thrown in. The text was more than merely additional information: it served as an interpretive commentary that deepened the meaning of the depiction, bringing out character traits, emotions, or the symbolic significance of a gesture. Depictions of women warriors in Japanese prints thus reveal a complex mode of representing feminine strength. It is more than mere physical agility or a simple reversal of the masculine model of heroism. It involves intelligence, strategy, loyalty, historical memory, and social imagination. The heroines function as borderline figures – between history and legend, between beauty and violence, between the decorative quality of an image and narration of actual agency.

From an art historian’s perspective, the onna bugeisha theme allows us to look at the Japanese woodblock print not only as an aesthetic medium but also as a tool for constructing cultural models. The prints perpetuated the memory of women who were strong, brave, and exceptional, while also embedding their figures into the elaborate system of signs characteristic of the Edo period.

This is why portrayals of such heroines as Jingū Kōgō, Tomoe Gozen, Hangaku Gozen, and Takeko Nakano remain a significant testament to how Japanese culture depicted feminine courage, agency, and heroism.

Our 21st-century point of view adds the herstory perspective. The female warriors who occupied an important place in Japan’s history and culture are unique heroines, transcending women’s customary social roles while being present in the canon of historical and legendary narratives.

This is the second exhibition focusing on women at the Manggha Museum. The first one was The Tale of Genji, centred on female poets in the Heian period, shown in 2024.

The present exhibition features works from the collection of the Manggha Museum alongside objects from several private collections, notably that of Raymond Milewski.