“Watanabe’s wife with a child on her back and two severed heads at her feet” from Taiso Yoshitoshi’s Biographies of Valiant Drunken Tigers (1874).
The weapon in her capable hands is a naginata.
More Japanese woodblock art here.
And female use of the naginata here
Further, do not pick a fight with a wife of Watanabe.
click to big up
Tomoe Gozen , lady Samurai (onna bugeisha) during the 12th Century Genpei War. The above woodblock illustration print by Yōshū Chikanobu, done in 1899, is of her decapitating the Samurai Honda no Moroshige of Musashi during the Battle of Awazu.
According to an account, the English translation of Heike,
Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized sword, and a mighty bow; and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors.
No you drooling fops, this is not a chick dressed up as a samurai, or even a female-samurai, it is a onna-bugeisha. The onna-bugeisha were a class of female warriors that belonged to the Japanese upper class pre-Meji era. These warriors reached their peak around the Kamakura Period (1180-1185AD) in medieval Japan. They predated the samurai themselves and led their own clans of fighters.
They were masters of the naginata, a pole weapon with a 15-30-inch long swordlike blade on the striking edge. These weapons became standard for Japanese foot soldiers for centuries but in the hands of a straight up and down female death dealer like the onna-bugeisha, they were an art.
Enter the naginata. Nothing like a seven foot long ginsu knife. it slices, it dices, it even makes julienne fries!
From the 1600s onward their ranks were fewer and fewer to where by the 1868 Battle of Aizu, in which 20,000 modern Imperial Japanese troops trained in the ways of American and European warfare with rifles crushed 5000 martial warriors with ancient weapons, there were but 30 female onna-bugeisha in the ranks.
So goes the evolution of arms.
Hail to the onna-bugeisha, we salute you.