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Tag Archives: Onna bugeisha

onna bugeisha, my daughter [1]

28 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Prose

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Tags

fiction, Japanese mythology, Onna bugeisha, prose, short story

 

I.
Once, on a bright morning in the month of March, with branches of blooming cherry trees framing the world, Kumori, a girl of some fifteen-years, sat on a low gunmetal-gray wall, watching party after party of armed men, retainers, their robes showing the crests of a dozen different local lords, riding up to the castle of the recently widowed Lady Kobayashi.

“I would love to know,” the girl mused to herself, lazily waving a sprig of cherry blossoms in the warm air, “just what ill-wind blows those rough-looking bastards here.”

She wasn’t sure what a ‘rough-looking bastard’ actually was, but she had overheard the phrase used in the wine-house that her mother worked in and was dying to try it out. Sunshine, dappled by the swaying branches above her, dazzled her eyes. The girl frowned, staring up at the white wisps of clouds set against the deep blue silk of a sky.

“Or is this about the sacred pledge, I wonder, that my lady made concerning settling, once and for all, her quarrel with Lord Watanabe? Or could she be intending to sweep the woods clean?”

It was hard being only fifteen and having a mother who worked in a wine-house. Most of her friends were already engaged in the Lady’s service. Soon they would be married off to the sons of local lords who remained faithful to the House of Kobayashi. Kumori, though, was considered too rambunctious a girl to learn the tea ceremony and calligraphy and powder her face each morning before the sun rose. However, just because she excelled on horse-back and could hit anything in the air with a bow and arrow didn’t mean that many of the girls who wore fancy kimonos didn’t have secret crushes on Kumori.

“Ah! here comes lovely Fuyu,” Kumori thought to herself, spotting a jovial-looking girl coming down from the direction of the castle. “She might be able to tell me the meaning of this gathering.”

Leaping to her feet, the girl started off at a brisk walk across the field.

“Ah, Mistress Kumori,” Fuyu said as Kumori stopped in front of her. The hand-maiden couldn’t help blush every time the ragamuffin girl was around, despite the expertly applied white powder, “what brings you so near to the castle? It is not often that you favor us with your presence anymore.”

There was reproach in the girl’s voice, though Kumori pretended not to hear.

“I am happier in the woods, as you well know, and was on my way there but now, when I paused at the sight of all these ruffians flocking in to Kobayashi Castle. What undertaking has Lady Kobayashi started upon now?”

“My lady keeps her own counsel,” said girl, “but I think a shrewd guess might be made at the purpose of a gathering. It was but three days since that her grangers were beaten back by all those rude, ruthless, landless men who call you kin; they caught in the very act of cutting up a juicy, fat buck, or so I am told. As you know, my lady, though easy and well-disposed to every girl who comes into her service, is not fond of vagabonds abusing their forest privileges on her land. Just three days ago she swore that she would clear the forest of these poachers. Or, I do not know, it may be, that this gathering of retainers is for the purpose of falling upon that robber and tyrant, Lord Toshio of Watanabe, who has already begun to harass some of our outlying lands. It is a quarrel which will have to be fought out sooner or later, and for my lady it seems the sooner the better.”

“Arigato, Fuyu-chan,” said Kumori. “I must not stand here gossiping with you. The news you have told me, as you know, touches me deeply, for I would make sure that no harm should befall my kin.”

“I plead with you, Kumori-chan, tell no one that the news came from me, for mild as Lady Kobayashi to those who attend on her at her bath, she would, I think, let me starve in the woods if she knew that I might have given a warning through which the brigands might slip through her fingers.”

“Do not worry, Fuyu-chan; I can be as silent as the rot on a tree when the need arises. Can you tell me when her lady’s forces are likely to set out?”

“Soon,” Fuyu replied. “Those who first arrived I left swilling Kobayashi Castle’s rare sake, devouring rice cake upon rice cake. The cooks of the castle have been hard pressed all day, and from what I hear, this band of ruffians will set forth as soon as dusk falls upon the walls of my lady’s keep.”

[to be cont.]

onna bugeisha: daughter mine

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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Tags

art, daughter of love, Onna bugeisha, poem, Poetry, sonnet

March 19, 2014 (12)

March 19, 2014 (11)

March 19, 2014 (13)

Around the body, puddled, as you breathe,
I feel your heart beating softer, slower,

drying begins from heated bodies. We
play in puddles, this sweet-scented moisture

that glows, cools, as the friction-induced beads
of sweat evaporates. Sunlight slavers

upon hard muscles, what falls, slashed through, bleeds
through these dappled down drapes —- gypsum lovers,

soft, lithe —- our aftermath. The story we’re
leaving for new generations. Daughter,

learn the sword, battle plans, the dialect
of war, for then you’ll protect the queer,

daft and fabulous. A godling savior
no man has ever been: divine, perfect.

Image

rain in my heart

27 Friday Dec 2013

Tags

art, female samurai, Japanese mythology, Onna bugeisha, rain in my heart

Dec 27, 2013 (1)

an onna-bugeisha on a muddy road …

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Illustration and art

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Image

this is what a feminist looks like

24 Tuesday Dec 2013

Tags

art, grrl power, katana, Onna bugeisha, this is what a feminist looks like

Dec 24, 2013 (7)

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Feminism, Illustration and art

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reaching for our ancestors

06 Friday Dec 2013

Tags

art, black and white, killer grandmothers, Onna bugeisha, our ancestors, woman warrior

Dec 06, 2013 (1)

reaching for our ancestors: everyone has a killer grandmother in their family; the sort who would burn down empires just for fun.

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Illustration and art

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onna-bugeisha in fox mask holding a naginata

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Uncategorized

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Tags

art, female warrior, fox mask, Japanese mythology, naginata, Onna bugeisha

Dec 05, 2013 (6)

note:

There is some debate with Japanese historians whether or not the female warrior class of feudal Japan, the Onna-bugeisha, functioned in the way today’s popular culture currently portrays them. The more conservative view is that there might be two or three of isolated occasions when high-born women trained for and participated in warfare, but to say anything more would be pure poppycock dreamed up by wishful thinkers. I don’t personally buy that. The Onna-bugeisha were a real social class, much like their male counterpoint, the samurai, and as such to simply write them off speaks much more about the embedded sexism that is still found in those who call themselves historians than anything else. The Onna-bugeisha in this picture wears a mask of a fox (a trickster) and holds the long blade known as a naginata. Behind her is a folding screen depicting two of her ancestors practicing (or fighting, hard to know) using similar weapons.

Image

death in the keta taisha forest

18 Sunday Aug 2013

Tags

art, blue of night, female warrior, historic heroine, katana, Keta Taisha Forest, Onna bugeisha, the last one standing

Death in the Keta Taisha Forest

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Feminism, Illustration and art

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the way of the sword [in color]

18 Sunday Aug 2013

Tags

art, female samurai, female warrior, lovely colors, Onna bugeisha, psychedelic

female samurai in colors (except when they’re not) …

gold

rainbow

rays

black and white

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Feminism, Illustration and art

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onna-bugeisha

16 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Feminism, Illustration and art

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Tags

art, Bushido, Empress Jingu, female samurai, Japanese mythology, kimono, nude, Onna bugeisha, woman warrior

Onna-bugeisha 2

“Any woman can be a hero, but few heroes can be an Onna-bugeisha. To be a true warrior you must follow the qualities Empress Jingu dictated: loyalty to one’s lord or lady, honor unto death and unselfishness, a readiness to sacrifice one’s own for that of others. What samurai is courteous to all? What lord is kind to those weaker than himself? Men are raised at birth to be vainglorious and as a result they will never know the Way, Bushido. Remember that these qualities are the signs of a true Onna-bugeisha as our lady wrote down, a warrior and a hero.”

— from Angelique Ange’s history, “Onna-bugeisha: les mères de bushido.” (translated from French, out of print, Paris, 1977)

Onna-bugeisha 3

Onna-bugeisha 5

 

 

Onna-bugeisha 1

Image

tsukiko, the moon child at midnight

17 Monday Jun 2013

Tags

art, katana, Onna bugeisha, the moon child, Tsukiko, woman warrior

Tsukiko, the moon child

Tsukiko, the moon child, at midnight

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Feminism, Illustration and art

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