On a chaotic 12th-century battlefield, a warrior beheads a rival clan leader and presents the head to her master. That warrior was Tomoe Gozen, an onna-musha, or female samurai, and one of the most famous figures of Japan's Genpei War. The catch: historians aren't entirely sure she existed. This episode digs into her legendary battlefield exploits, her survival, and why her story blurs the line between myth and recorded history.

We clarify that Gozen is an honorific title meaning lady, not a surname, and set the stage in late Heian Japan during the conflict that birthed the Kamakura Shogunate. From commanding a 300-strong vanguard against 2,000 Taira warriors, to the doomed ambition of her master Minamoto no Yoshinaka, to the tragic Battle of Awazu where he ordered her to flee, we examine how she became a Buddhist nun and lived into her lat ...