Talk:Onna-musha

Martial art?

I have a small problem translating bugeisha as martial artist - the term donates something a little bit more professional.Peter Rehse 10:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Important discussion

This paragraph "During the earlier Heian and Kamakura periods, women who were prominent on the battlefield were the exception rather than the rule. Japanese ideals of femininity predisposed most women to powerlessness, in conflict with a female warrior role.[2] Women warriors were nonetheless" is incomplete. Perhaps someone could look over the edit history and restore what was said? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Missed the Action (talk • contribs) 00:30, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I am a bit concerned about this article. The one source no longer works and I have been unable to find information on the internet. Yes, there were "women warriors" in Japan, but is this term more the view of one academic?

I'm hesitating over nominating for deletion. Although I won't state this is a completely "false" term, I'd like to see it being widely used to deserve an entire article on it. John Smith's (talk) 11:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The following three sites came up in Google searches for governmental and academic sites:

• 時代小説の冒頭表現　野浪正隆
• 2005 年度図書館だより
• 近代語データベース ファイル名一覧

All three are related to Ikenami Shōtarō's Kenkaku Shōbai.

Fg2 (talk) 11:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you give some more detail? Is this a term conned by one person, or something academics use widely? John Smith's (talk) 11:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have any more detail. The links I found all come back to one fiction writer. Fg2 (talk) 05:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I see a problem, in that case. If there is to be an article on a single term it needs a decent amount of academic use. Maybe it should be deleted? John Smith's (talk) 10:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't matter much to me; I didn't start the article. I'd suggest merging into the article Shōtarō Ikenami and keeping a redirect. The value of a redirect is that it keeps a record of this discussion right here so that if a future editor wants to create the article again, they can see why we don't have one (without having to search for a deletion discussion or to read Shōtarō Ikenami, which they wouldn't do prior to starting an article). Better than deleting the whole thing and repeating the whole discussion later. Fg2 (talk) 20:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

So he's the guy that coined the term? John Smith's (talk) 21:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't know. However, he did use the term, and the academic and government sites that come up point to him. There might be a better place to redirect, for example, Jidaigeki. Any thoughts? Fg2 (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The Japanese Wikipedia has categories for "women in war" (ja:戦争における女性) and as a subcategory of that, "female soldiers" (ja:女性軍人). In their introductions two of the Heian-era figures (Tomoe-gozen and Hangaku-gozen) are described as "women who were made military leaders" (武将とされる女性). The corps of Aizu women that defended Tsuruga castle were called the Women's Corps (婦女隊 or 娘子軍).

Other than these exceptions, there don't appear to be any buke women that engaged in fighting, and since they were separated not only by 650 years of history but also in their purposes and modes of fighting, it seems silly to try to force connections between them. There probably ought to be an article on the life, status, and role of women in samurai families, and it ought to refer to these exceptional figures, but "female warriors in feudal japan", whichever ersatz Japanese word you want to call it, simply does not hold water as a historical concept. I'll support a deletion of this article since I don't have the expertise to make a proper one about upper class women during the feudal period.

As an aside, the picture is incorrectly labeled, to boot. It a print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicting the wife of Oboshi Yoshio from the story of the 47 ronin. She does not actually fight anybody in any version of the story I've seen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.89.183 (talk) 09:24, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

You guys got to be kidding me. If the title is incorrect (I have no idea about this), just change it. Like, move the article to an other name. Or in the worst case, merge. Not delete. --Asperchu (talk) 16:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

gozen as personal name

isn't gozen just japanese for 'dame'? 79.220.92.196 (talk) 17:03, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Another example

There is a wiki article about Hangaku Gozen as well. Should it be added to the list of notable female warriors? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.71.204.79 (talk) 07:49, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

comments moved from article space

• Needs revision/clarification Masako Hojo was not a warrior or onna bugeisha but a political figure
• The preceding passage reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles. "Fearless devotion and selflessness are often directly related to quiet and passive obedience. Nor is this limited to women warriors, this has to do with interpretation of Confucian principle laid out in didactic texts used at the time. Also needs revision. It also bears mentioning that political marriages had been the norm much farther back than the Edo period.
• Women were not allowed to be samurai. Samurai are a male only hereditary position passed from father to sons, typically on sons of his primary wife should he have multiple. Noblewomen, like those of the samurai/bushi, were not to leave the home unaccompanied or risk sullying the reputation of their house. Also, it was forbidden by law for anyone, male, female, commoner, or noble to travel between domains of different daimyo without the consent of the shogun/the proper travel documents. This whole section is misleading in implying that female samurai existed during the Edo or Tokugawa period. For reading discussing women with martial training the book "Women of the Mito Domain" discusses noblewomen being trained with naginata but they were not samurai or soldiers.

Special:Contributions/167.160.159.178 p.p. -KTo288 (talk) 11:22, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to integrate corrections and references into the body of article, however the operative word is integrate, this is an article not an essay, the discursive style where previously introduced ideas and assertions are examined and repudiated is not how articles are written here. Please use the talkpage for discussion. If you think something is factually wrong, Be bold and rewrite it especially as you seem to be able to reference your edits.--KTo288 (talk) 11:22, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Katana overrated?

The article says:

In contrast to the katana used universally by their male samurai counterparts, the most popular weapon-of-choice of onna-bugeishas are the naginata...

As far as I know, this is a misconception - the katana was never the primary weapon of the samurai; the samurai's primary weapons were the bow and the spear. Is this correct? SpectrumDT (talk) 08:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

You are correct. Samurai fought in battle primarily with ranged weapons (yumi/bows, teppou/arquebuses) and polearms (yari/spears, naginata/glaives), with conventional swords being mere backup weapons. Which is why I deleted that erroneous statement. The misconception (for both samurai and knights) probably derives from swords also being easily worn in peacetime and thus elevated to a symbol of their status. Twincast (talk) 12:49, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Myorin (Yoshioka Myorinni).jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Copyediting & Questions

Hello Wikipedia Community,

I wanted to explain both what I did and ask a few questions.

First, the explanation. I edited a few words and phrases I thought were already had emphasis. One example is a sentence that described a clan "powerful and prominent" I decided to only keep "prominent" because inherently prominence includes power in a specific area. If anyone disagrees, I'm definitely fine with that. I also added hyphens between a few mentions of Onna-bugeisha to keep with the page's consistency. Also, I made all appearances in the beginning of the entry proper by making the "O" capital since it is a title.

Now, my questions. As I scrolled through the entry I noticed there were weapons that were lower-cased. I just want to bring up the question: Are they all' not suppose to be proper? Another thing I noticed is the word shogun often being lower-case even when mentioning a specific shogun. I was not sure so I did not take the liberty to change what I wanted. I saw the same pattern when the word shinobi was mentioned as well. I do not know everything but I am pretty sure being a Shinobi is a title and should be capitalized but I would like someone to co-sign this before assuming.

There is a passage I want to bring attention to as well. It states the following: "The existence of these two prominent female generals confirms that the status of women during this time was still less unequal than future periods." This seems more like someone is making connections and not using a source to validate this assertion. A source would be excellent here. I did not delete this before consulting another Wikipedian.

Hope this explains some of what I changed and addressed some questions. Jalapinata (talk) 05:07, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 15 December 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved, unopposed (non-admin closure) BegbertBiggs (talk) 16:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

---

Onna-bugeisha → Onna-musha – The idea that onna-bugeisha is a term used by Japanologists or anyone else to describe historical/legendary Japanese woman warriors appears to be a WP:HOAX. At the time this article was created, it was almost immediately tagged as unsourced,[1] and since that day it has been drastically expanded with "sourced" content from sources that seem to uniformly fail to use the phrase onna-bugeisha. A quick Googling of the phrase in Japanese brought up a number of popular historical novels (時代小説)[2] and some academic papers that seem to mostly be about such historical novels.[3] At least one uses the phrase to refer to women in the pre-modern popular media of China. As for English (maybe, like with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jigai, the English term had a history separate from its Japanese root?), a blank Google Books search brings up a lot of hits, but limiting it to books predating the creation our article decimates those results.[4][5] Conversely, the term onna-musha (女武者, the less-problematic equivalent term used in both the Asahi Nihon Rekishi Jinbutsu Jiten and the Nihon Jinmei Daijiten to describe Tomoe-gozen[6]) actually does appear to have been used in English-language scholarship prior to 2006,[7] and continues to be used today[8] (though seemingly much less so, perhaps because since this article was created non-specialist sources have come to Wikipedia and thus used the phrase onna-bugeisha rather than consulting specialist sources). Noteworthy books that use it include Ningyo: The Art of the Japanese Doll,[9] Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts,[10] and several works on the Noh and kabuki theatres.[11][12][13] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:01, 15 December 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. BegbertBiggs (talk) 10:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Somewhat tellingly, Japanese Wikipedia doesn't have an article of this title, and, more disturbingly, most of the other foreign-language Wikipedia articles seem to be varying levels of translation of our article, and, even worse, the Google News hit-count comparison for 2006 and 2020 is even worse than that of Google Books.[14][15] Spanish National Geographic is not inherently a reliable source on pre-modern Japanese history and I don't see anything on the author's resume to indicate that he has enough of a specialist knowledge on this topic to debunk Wikipedia, but it is always unsettling to see things like this find their way from Wikipedia into popular magazines that are theoretically reliable sources of information. (Needless to say, I have been unable to find any instance of National Geographic using the phrase prior to 2006.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:00, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• Alternative idea Maybe we could go with what an IP-editor suggested ten years ago a few sections up? There probably ought to be an article on the life, status, and role of women in samurai families, indeed, but onna-musha would not be a good title for such an article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:36, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.