Warrior Women: Japanese Herstories

Until 11 November 2026, the Manggha Museum’s main building tells the story of Japan’s women warriors, whom the museum calls onna bugeisha, chiefly through ukiyo-e woodblock prints: from the semi-legendary Empress Jingū to Nakano Takeko, killed in battle in 1868.

The Manggha Museum on the exhibition:

Japanese literary, historical, and visual traditions feature female characters and figures endowed with remarkable strength, courage, and strategic ability. Their portrayals operated at the intersection of history, legend, and popular imagination, forming a major theme in Edo culture. Depicted as participants of military campaigns, they were often characterised by unique intelligence, determination, and an unbending moral stance. An important place in the description of their special status is played by the concept of onna bugeisha, referring to women trained in martial arts.

The image of the woman warrior was not confined to demonstrating physical prowess. Other important qualities included composure, loyalty, wisdom, leadership skills, and a readiness to act in critical situations. The heroines often stemmed from aristocratic or samurai families, and their portrayals combined motifs of heroism with the ideal of feminine beauty. In literature and art alike, they were characterised as strong figures who were also graceful, with subtle facial features, long hair and fair complexion. This tension between delicacy of form and power of action became one of the most characteristic elements of their iconography.

What to expect

The museum’s Polish page describes three parts; the English page leaves them out. The first is about women who, as mothers, wives and companions, helped men survive. The second shows the four most famous women warriors; the name of one of them is still unknown. The third, which the museum calls tragic, is devoted to Nakano Takeko, the last bugeisha, and the women’s unit she led in the last battle of the samurai at Aizu.

Dr Habil Anna Król, who conceived and designed the show, calls it an essay in prints and painting. The woodblock prints are accompanied by a painting installation by Kaja Mucha, sound design by Michał Kuźniak (Nihil) and animation by Marcin Stypka.

The show occupies the museum’s main building at ul. Konopnickiej 26, across the Vistula from Wawel Castle. The works come from the Manggha collection and from several private collections, of which the museum names that of Raymond Milewski. It does not publish a count of works on display.

The museum’s text names Empress Jingū (Jingū Kōgō), Tomoe Gozen, Hangaku Gozen and Takeko Nakano. Its Polish page also cites archaeological digs at the sites of major battles in Japan, in which 30 per cent of the remains found were those of women. This is the museum’s second exhibition devoted to women, after “The Tale of Genji” in 2024, which dealt with the women poets of the Heian period.

Come if you are interested in the ukiyo-e print as a storytelling medium, in Japanese history, or in how a visual culture manufactures role models. Skip it if what you mainly want is armour and weaponry - that is next door, in the companion show “Akitsushima. The Island of Dragonflies”, covered by the same ticket. Allow about 45 minutes for “Warrior Women” alone and 2 hours for both exhibitions.

The museum’s press materials (in Polish) list, among others:

• Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, “Jingū Kōgō (Empress Jingū)”, 1894 - a colour woodblock frontispiece (kuchi-e) from the magazine “Bijutsu Sekai”, from the Manggha collection.
• Mizuno Toshikata, “Empress Jingū”, 1885 - a colour triptych about 75 cm wide from Raymond Milewski’s collection.
• Ogata Gekkō, “Tomoe Gozen Setting Out for Battle”, 1904 - a frontispiece for the magazine “Bungei kurabu”, also from the Milewski collection.
• Chikanobu Yōshū, “Lady Osumi, Wife of Sanada Nobuyuki”, 1886 - a print from the series “Azumanishiki chuya kurabe”, from a private collection.
• Takeda ningyō doll “Tomoe Gozen”, mid-19th century - according to the museum’s caption, a male kabuki actor in the role of Tomoe Gozen; from the Manggha collection.

(Titles in English are our translations of the museum’s Polish captions.)

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Manggha Museum website .

Context

Women of the warrior households trained to fight, above all with the naginata, a polearm with a curved blade, appear in the English Wikipedia under the name onna-musha; the museum uses the term onna bugeisha. The best-known figures come from very different periods. Empress Jingū is a legendary ruler known from the chronicles rather than from records.

Tomoe Gozen and Hangaku Gozen fought in the Genpei War of 1180-1185 on opposite sides, Tomoe for the Minamoto clan and Hangaku for the Taira. Nakano Takeko was killed in 1868 at Aizu, in the Boshin War, leading a unit of about 20 women. The museum’s 30 per cent has a documented counterpart in a study of the dead of the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru of 1580: of 105 bodies excavated, 35 were women.

Keep the chronology in mind while looking at the prints. During the Edo period (1600-1868), under the influence of neo-Confucianism, the standing of warrior-class women declined sharply and their duties were narrowed to the household. In the same period, as the museum writes, women warriors became a major theme of Edo culture, and the woodblock print carried their stories through war novels, kabuki plays and oral tradition.

Yet every print named in the press materials was made after the Edo period, between 1883 and 1908, often as a magazine frontispiece. The prints are therefore a record of how Japanese culture told stories about female strength, not a record of the fighting itself.

Tickets and time

Regular admission is 30 PLN and discounted 20 PLN; the discount applies to students, visitors over 65 and teachers, among others. A family ticket costs 50 PLN (up to four people, including at least one child under 18), and a group ticket for up to 20 people costs 120 PLN. Children under 7 go in free.

There is no separate ticket for this exhibition: the museum states that a ticket covers all current exhibitions. Its current list also includes “Akitsushima. The Island of Dragonflies” and, until 25 October 2026, “Tokyo Story” and “Now Everything Will Be Different” in the Europe - Far East Gallery. On Tuesdays, admission to all temporary exhibitions is free, as the museum’s ticket page states (Polish-language page).

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-18:00, and closed on Mondays; the last recommended entry is 30 minutes before closing. During the run it will be closed on Sunday 1 November (All Saints’ Day). On Wednesday 11 November, Poland’s Independence Day and the last day of the show, it will be open 10:00-18:00.

Tickets can be bought online in advance or at the box office; the museum says nothing about timed entry. Online tickets for the next calendar month are released in the last week of the month before, says the museum’s English ticket page . November tickets therefore go on sale in the last week of October.

A guided tour must be booked at least 10 days ahead. The nearest bus and tram stops are both called Rondo Grunwaldzkie.

English on site: the museum publishes an English version of its website and of this exhibition’s description. It says nothing about English labels in the galleries, an audio guide or English-language tours, so ask at the ticket desk before you plan on them.

Events

• 26 Sep 2026, 16:00 - “Kokon tōzai: from antiquity to today, everywhere”, a demonstration linked to the exhibition. The Arakimunisairyu Ogawa Dojo school, led by sōke Masanori Ogawa and Anna Ogawa, will show iai and kenjutsu with the katana and naginata technique. The programme also includes kenbu sword choreography, shigin chanted poetry, waka poems and live suibokuga ink painting by the Japanese artist Matsumura Ryuka from Kumamoto. Event page (Polish-language page).

  Tickets 20 PLN, 15 PLN discounted, online or at the box office on the day only; online buyers collect a wristband at the box office. An event ticket also brings exhibition admission down to 20 PLN, 15 PLN discounted.

What the press says

dzieje.pl / PAP (17 Jul 2026, bylined juka/dki): the Polish news-agency preview of both openings describes “Warrior Women” as a story about women who stepped outside the social roles assigned to them, and passes no judgment on the display itself - link (Polish-language source).

As of 23 Sep 2026, nothing beyond that agency preview has appeared - no review in the cultural press or in the Krakow media, in Polish or in English. When one appears, it will be listed here.

See also

• Akitsushima. The Island of Dragonflies - the companion show in the main building, on the same dates and the same ticket: Japanese armour from the collection of Wiktoria and Adam Jurgilewicz, on which the dragonfly motif keeps returning.
• Tokyo Story - present-day Tokyo in the work of the duo Studio 2 (Beata Kotnowska and Dariusz Vasina), in the Europe - Far East Gallery , until 25 Oct 2026; for anyone who wants today’s Japan after the Edo-period prints.
• Now Everything Will Be Different: Karolina Breguła - her work from Taiwan on demolitions, evictions and the loss of home, also in the Europe - Far East Gallery, until 25 Oct 2026.

Museum profile: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology .