“Tomoe Gozen”
Kitao Masayoshi (Kuwagata Keisai)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [11.14997]
A FAMOUS JAPANESE WOMAN WARRIOR
The most celebrated woman warrior in Japanese history was the
beautiful and redoubtable Tomoe Gozen, who became famous in the late-12th-century battles that ushered in the age of the samurai. The
fictionalized illustration of Anne Noble in Kaigai Shinwa Shūi essentially places her in the same tradition, as suggested by these
contemporaneous 19th-century woodblock prints of the legendary Tomoe
in battle.
Kuniyoshi's print, published just a few years before Kaigai Shinwa Shūi, depicts Tomoe surrounded by enemy warriors in a famous battle in 1183—much as Anne Noble is imagined surrounded by hostile Chinese.
“Woman Warrior Putting Up a Valiant Fight” (detail)
from Kaigai Shinwa Shūi (1849)
[kss_v2-4]
“The Battle Of Kurikaradani,” ca. 1845
Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [00.1089-91]
“Woman Warrior Putting Up a Valiant Fight”
from Kaigai Shinwa Shūi (1849)
[kss_v2-4]
Keisei's exuberant early-19th-century print celebrates Tomoe's horsemanship and prodigious strength, as she tosses an enemy samurai over her
head. With similar strength, Anne Noble sends the enemy sprawling
underfoot.
