Nakano Takeko had trained since childhood in naginata-jutsu, the martial art centered on a long-bladed polearm, and by her twenties she was skilled enough to have taught the art to other women of the Aizu domain. When the domain came under direct attack in the autumn of 1868, she did not accept a role as a passive bystander. Along with her mother, sister, and a group of other women — some accounts put the number at around twenty — she formed an improvised unit that came to be known as the Joshitai, or women’s army.

The Joshitai fought at the Battle of Yanagibashi on the outskirts of Aizuwakamatsu, engaging advancing imperial troops with naginata against a force equipped with modern rifles. Nakano Takeko was shot and mortally wounded during the fighting; asking that her head not be taken as a trophy by the enemy, she had her sister complete the act and bury it beneath a pine tree at Hokai-ji temple, where a monument to her stands today.

The Joshitai’s stand was militarily inconsequential against the overwhelming force arrayed against Aizu, but it became one of the most frequently retold episodes of the domain’s final defense. Alongside the story of the Byakkotai, it helped shape a regional memory of the Boshin War centered on individual sacrifice, and Nakano Takeko in particular is still honored each autumn at the Aizu Festival, where a procession reenacts the Joshitai’s role in the city’s defense.