Tomoe Gozen Took a Commander's Head, Then Vanished

A frozen field. Thirty enemy riders. One woman who charges straight into them and takes their commander's head, as the Tale of the Heike records it. Then the chronicle never says what happened to her. This is Tomoe Gozen's story, and the reason history lost her ending. 00:00 Introduction 01:06 Chapter 1: The world she entered 02:36 Chapter 2: The woman the chronicle remembered 04:56 Chapter 3: The war that made her 06:31 Chapter 4: Awazu 08:29 Chapter 5: The question she left behind 10:53 Chapter 6: What she actually was → Who Tomoe was in the Tale of the Heike, and why it calls her worth a thousand warriors → How the Genpei War and Yoshinaka's rise set the stage → The last stand at Awazu in 1184, and the moment she was ordered to leave → The competing legends of how her story ended → Why women who fought faded from the records after the war Sources: the Tale of the Heike (Kakuichi's 1371 version, in Helen McCullough's English translation), the Genpei Josuiki, the Azuma Kagami and Stephen Turnbull's work on samurai women. #TomoeGozen #FemaleSamurai #GenpeiWar #TaleOfTheHeike #HistoryExplained #WorldHistory