Too often, history leaves out the Japanese women who left their mark on the world around them. Meet Lady Onami, who led her clan in defiance
"But religious orders were not to be the limit of Onami’s career. Yukichika died suddenly in 1582; With no other heirs left, and the fate of her late husband’s family hanging in the balance, Onami did the incredible: she took command, and sources that chronicle the history of that part of Mutsu Province regularly mention her, though not always by name.
“Nikaidō Tōtōmi-no-kami Moriyoshi, too, died on the 23rd of the seventh month. His wife defended the castle at Iwase county. She was the younger sister of Date sakyō-dayū Terumune…”
With Masamune inheriting Date headship from Terumune only two years later, Lady Onami actually led a samurai clan earlier than her more famous nephew. From 1582 to 1589, she ruled Sukagawa Castle as master of the Nikaidō clan. Together with women like Ii Naotora and Tachibana Ginchiyo, she became one of only a handful of women in Japanese history, all of them in the 16th century, to hold that rare distinction of being head of a clan.
Onami is just one among many women at war in Japanese history. While period sources do talk of women, they talk around them; or in the case of people of her rank, speak of them in titles or by the name of a husband, or parent, or brother.
But they are there regardless.
And our picture of those conflicts and the political and societal issues that surround them is incomplete without taking them into account."
