Warrior Women: Japanese Herstories

Women endowed with remarkable strength, courage and strategic ability recur in Japanese literary, historical and visual tradition as a distinct, recognisable theme. The exhibition at the Manggha Museum approaches them through the ukiyo-e woodblock print, where the concept of onna bugeisha - a woman trained in martial arts - binds together history, legend and the popular imagination of the Edo period.

The Manggha Museum on the exhibition:

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.

What to expect

The exhibition sets out a complex account of female strength: not physical prowess alone, nor a simple inversion of the male heroic pattern, but a weave of intelligence, strategy, loyalty and historical memory. The heroines of the prints occupy a threshold position - between history and legend, between beauty and violence, between the decorative surface of an image and a story about real agency. The display is accompanied by a painting installation by Kaja Mucha, sound direction by Michał Kuźniak (Nihil) and animation by Marcin Stypka.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Manggha Museum website.

Museum profile: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology.