Right off the bat on question three the author mentions that there were women who wore armor that engaged in warfare. I am not taking this as complete fact due to it not really showing references, but it looks like his knowledge on Edo period stuff is pretty good. If he knows Edo, he probably has some knowledge of the other periods we play. I am now thinking a female warrior in armor isn't much of a stretch now. By the way, love the pictures. The picture of the woman in the suikan is very close to how my wife dresses much of the time, and I may make her white nagabakama soon ;D
Post by Please Delete on Nov 2, 2011 6:00:40 GMT -5
My eyebrows were raised at "I am not a Japanese historian..." and his use of Tomoe Gozen as a prime example, without caveats.
I'm also not sure about his arguments vis a vis "samurai" and "bushi" being gender-specific. I think that is probably about as gender specific as the terms "knight" or "soldier" in English--in reading both words (and not talking about modern armies) people are generally going to think of men, but that doesn't mean that they *must* be talking about a person who is male. The issue is that there is nothing to prove that it is otherwise without a classifier, and we don't have any evidence of it being used for an obviously female warrior (though with their make-up, long hair, blackened teeth, and penchant for poetry, could you really tell with some of them? ).
Still, I go back to the idea: Do what you want to do in this regards. Fight where and how you want to fight. That is part of the "Middle Ages as they Should Have Been", to me.
If we want to do accurate historical demos, then that is a different thing; then the onus falls to us to have some proof as we are educating others through our actions.
Oh I'm not worried about people saying that there were no female samurai. I just think the subject is interesting and I just wanted to know more information from you wonderful people. Thank you!
I'd like to get more detail. In my area of An Tir, you take a lot of grief by playing it the way it should have been, at least for our group. Besides, it is a good subject. Thanks for the different perspective on that article, I probably should have looked it over a bit more objectively