Nakano Takeko was a Japanese female warrior of the Aizu domain, who fought and died during the Boshin War.
Nakano, born in Edo, was the daughter of
Nakano Heinai, an Aizu official. She was thoroughly trained in the
martial and literary arts, and was adopted by her teacher Akaoka
Daisuke.
After
working with her adoptive father as a martial arts instructor during
the 1860s, Nakano entered Aizu for the first time in 1868. During the
Battle of Aizu, she fought with a naginata (a Japanese polearm) and was
the leader of an ad hoc corps of female combatants who fought in the
battle independently, as the senior Aizu retainers did not allow them to
fight as an official part of the domain's army. This unit was later retroactively called the Women's Army or Jōshitai.
Whilst
leading a charge against Imperial Japanese Army troops of the Ōgaki
Domain, she received a bullet to the chest. Rather than let the enemy
capture her head as a trophy, she asked her sister, Yūko, to cut it off
and have it buried. It was taken to Hōkai-ji Temple (in modern-day
Aizubange, Fukushima) and buried under a pine tree.
A
monument to her was erected beside her grave at Hōkai-ji; Aizu native
and Imperial Japanese Navy admiral Dewa Shigetō was involved in its
construction.
During
the annual Aizu Autumn Festival, a group of young girls wearing hakama
and white headbands take part in the procession, commemorating the
actions of Nakano and her band of women fighters of the Joshigun.
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