The woman who took heads. Tomoe Gozen is the great female warrior of Japanese legend — the onna-musha who rode into the Genpei War at the side of the general Kiso Yoshinaka. The Tale of the Heike describes her as beautiful beyond compare and worth a thousand ordinary soldiers: a peerless archer, a fearless rider of wild horses, and a swordswoman who took enemy heads on the battlefield like any man. In an age that pushed women to the margins, she rode at the front.

Her legend is sealed by its ending. At Yoshinaka's doomed last stand, with his army cut to a handful, he ordered Tomoe from the field — some say to spare her, some say because he could not bear to die with a woman still fighting beside him. She refused to leave without a final act worthy of the name: charging one last enemy, dragging him from his horse and taking his head before she rode away. After that she vanishes into legend — a Buddhist nun in some tellings, the wife of the warrior Wada Yoshimori in others (which, if true, ties her by marriage to Wada Tanenaga over in your Warriors). Here Hiroshige — a man far better known for tranquil landscapes — hands the great warrior-woman a place in the poem-matching series, pairing classical verse with Japan's most formidable heroine.

Tomoe Gozen (巴御前), from the series Ogura ni hyakunin isshu (小倉擬百人一首, Ogura Imitations of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets) 1846.

Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重, 1797-1858)