王女戦士 ōjo senshi Warrior Princess
Abstract
王女戦士, ōjo senshi, is two old Japanese words, 王女, a king's daughter, and 戦士, one who fights, set for the English warrior princess in the reverse of its order, so that it reads as a warrior who is a princess. It is rare and in no dictionary consulted: the earliest known Japanese print is of 1988, where a translator rendered an American novel's one-eyed warrior princess, and a handful of times more to 2000, once in a Japanese writer's own prose of 1994. The English phrase is far older: in Matthew Lewis's melodrama Timour the Tartar, first staged in London in 1811 and read here in a printing of 1830, a princess said to head her father's armies is this "warrior princess," as they call her, and it was a dime-novel title by 1873. The 1995 television series that took it as its subtitle was named in the Japanese print found in several ways, none of them this compound.
A reading
The words are old and real, the order is the reverse of the English, which makes her a warrior first, and the compound reads as a warrior who is a princess to anyone who reads Japanese, as the translator of 1988 and the writer of 1994 both used it.
Overview
The sense. Two dictionary words, a king's daughter and one who fights, set the other way round from the English phrase; no dictionary consulted carries the compound, and it is rare in print. It reads all the same: a Japanese reader parses it on sight with 戦士 as the head, the last word naming what the thing is, as in 企業戦士, and so takes it as a warrior who is a princess; the word's second sense already lets 戦士 stand last in such compounds. The few writers who have printed it used it that way.
The words. 王女 is a king's daughter. The 日国's first citation is the 今昔物語集 of about 1120, and it notes the convention that an emperor's daughter is 皇女 and a king's is 王女; the 大辞泉 gives it in three characters, 王の娘, with 王子, prince, as its pair [1]. 戦士 is one who fights, a soldier on the field, cited from the 平治物語 of about 1220 and the 史記, and it has a second sense the 日国 dates to 島崎藤村 in 1906: one who fights on the front line for a cause, the sense in 企業戦士, corporate warrior [2]. Here 戦士 is the first sense with the second in reach.
The text in English. Warrior princess is far older than the series. In M. G. Lewis's Timour the Tartar, read in a New York printing of 1830, a girl waits for her brother's intended bride, this "warrior princess," as they call her, who heads her father's armies, rides the great horse, fights battles, swims rivers [3]; the play was first staged at Covent Garden in 1811 [4]. By 1823 a review could name the part by the phrase alone [5], and The Warrior Princess; or, The Pride of the Everglades was a dime novel of 1873 [6]. From 1995 it is the subtitle of Xena: Warrior Princess, and the Internet Archive's English full text returns tens of thousands of hits on it; the oldest dated among its first hundred are books about the series of 1997 and 1998 [7]. The house's title is the phrase itself. Both languages put the head of such a compound last, and here the two choose different heads: in the English it is princess, a princess who is a warrior; 王女戦士 turns the words round and makes 戦士 the head, a warrior who is a princess. The word-for-word order, 戦士王女, would have kept the English head.
The historical record
1811, the English phrase. Timour the Tartar, a melodrama written for horses by Matthew Gregory Lewis, opened at Covent Garden on 29 April 1811, by the theatrical register of The Gentleman's Magazine, and in New York in 1812 [4]. In the play as printed in New York in 1830, the oldest copy read here, Liska, the conqueror's sister, says: I'm quite dying for the arrival of my brother's intended bride, of this "warrior princess," as they call her.—They say, she's an absolute amazon; heads her father's armies, rides the great horse, fights battles, swims rivers, and shoots flying (p. 8; in this copy a hand has struck her and she's, and the print stands legible under the strokes); the conqueror calls her this warrior-princess two pages on [3]. The quotation marks show the phrase as a name others give her.
1823, the part. Reviewing a revival at Covent Garden, The Literary Gazette of 29 November 1823 wrote that Mrs. Vining, with a brazen helmet, a steel breast plate, naked arms, and a delicate pair of white kid gloves, rides down stairs as the "Warrior Princess," with the greatest intrepidity [5].
1873, the English title. The Warrior Princess; or, The Pride of the Everglades, by W. J. Hamilton, the pen name of Charles Dunning Clark, came out in New York on 23 September 1873 as no. 291 of Beadle's Dime Novels, and again in 1878 [6].
1988, the compound's earliest known print. William L. DeAndrea's novel Snark (New York, 1985) describes a woman with a gun: She looked beautiful—a wild, one-eyed warrior princess [8]. Its Japanese translation, 『スナーク狩り』 of 1988, renders the phrase 野性的な片眼の王女戦士, the compound in the scroll's order [9].
1994, a Japanese writer's own. 井辻朱美, writing on fantasy in 『夢の仕掛け : 私のファンタジーめぐり』, names a pattern of young-adult fantasy in which an ordinary person was, in a past life, 偉大な王女戦士、魔法使いなど, a great warrior princess, a wizard and the like [10].
1995 to 2001, Xena: Warrior Princess. The series was not broadcast in Japan, by Japanese Wikipedia's account [11], and the Japanese press named it for itself: 『ジーナ/戦う王女』 in the film magazine スクリーン of June 1996 [12], 「ゼナ-プリンセス戦士」 in the Japanese Newsweek of May 1997 [13], and 「勇者ヘラクレスVS女戦士ジーナ」 for its crossover with Hercules in SFマガジン of June 1999 [14]. A DVD of its last two episodes, which are set in Japan, went out for rental on 2 November 2002 under the heroine's name alone, 『ジーナ』 [15].
1999 and 2000. 王女戦士 appears in the children's magazine 小学五年生 of September 1999, in a line the index's text does not make legible [16], and in the 2000 translation of Andrew Vachss's Safe House: ウルフには王女戦士のようなところがある, there is something of the warrior princess about Wolfe [17]. The same year 斎藤環's 『戦闘美少女の精神分析』 calls the series 『プリンセス戦士シーナ』 [18].
2018, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. A later series was titled 『シーラとプリンセス戦士』, a katakana princess set before 戦士 in the same order; it is a translated title, not a Japanese word [19].
Today. No dictionary consulted carries the compound: kotobank, which serves the 大辞泉 and the 日国, has no entry for it [20]. It is in none of the 10,871 books of the local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized books [21], and on no Japanese page a web search returned on 2 November 2026. The National Diet Library's full text finds it in the four places above, the last in 2000, and in none after [22]. The two halves have their own lives: 戦士 is the word for a soldier, a cause's fighter, and the 企業戦士, the corporate warrior, a word in print from 1976 [23].
What is not a source. The compound has not become the word Japanese uses for the idea. For a woman who fights, Japanese print has 女戦士, which a French-Japanese dictionary of 1893 gives for Amazone, and one of 1887 carries where Amazone falls [24], and, far less often, the phrase 戦う王女, a princess who fights, in print from 1969 [25]; those two, with プリンセス戦士, are what Japanese magazines called Xena herself [12][13][14].
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
- 「王女」・「皇女」, 大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/王女
- 「戦士」, 大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/戦士
- Matthew Gregory Lewis, Timour the Tartar, in two acts, Clayton's edition, New York: E. B. Clayton, 1830, pp. 8 and 10, at the Internet Archive (the page images). https://archive.org/details/timourtartaragr00claygoog
- The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 81, May 1811, p. 489, Theatrical Register, Covent Garden Theatre: April 29. Timour the Tartar, a Grand Romantic Melo-Drama: an interesting vehicle for a display of splendid scenery and horsemanship!, read at the page image (leaf 84). https://archive.org/details/sim_gentlemans-magazine_1811-05_81/page/n84 · "Timour the Tartar", English Wikipedia, for the New York staging of 1812. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timour_the_Tartar
- "Drama. Covent Garden", The Literary Gazette, no. 358, 29 November 1823, p. 764, at the Internet Archive (the page image). https://archive.org/details/sim_literary-gazette_1823-11-29_358
- W. J. Hamilton (the pen name of Charles Dunning Clark), The Warrior Princess; or, The Pride of the Everglades, Beadle's Dime Novels no. 291, New York: Beadle and Adams, 23 September 1873; Beadle's New Dime Novels no. 97, 1878. The Dime Novel Bibliography, item 16450, and the Harvard catalogue record at Open Library. https://dimenovels.org/Item/16450 · https://openlibrary.org/works/OL39490126W
- Full-text search, "warrior princess", at the Internet Archive. https://be-api.us.archive.org/fts/v1/search?q=%22warrior+princess%22 · the same, items dated 1500–1984: https://be-api.us.archive.org/fts/v1/search?q=%22warrior+princess%22+AND+meta_year%3A%5B1500+TO+1984%5D
- William L. DeAndrea, Snark, New York: Mysterious Press, 1985, at the Internet Archive (a lending copy; the sentence seen in the search-inside window, the page not seen). https://archive.org/details/snark00dean
- ウィリアム・L.デアンドリア, 『スナーク狩り』, 1988 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13622568
- 井辻朱美, 『夢の仕掛け : 私のファンタジーめぐり』, 1994 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13433229
- 「ジーナ」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ジーナ
- スクリーン, June 1996 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2334035
- Newsweek 日本版, May 1997 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2867067
- SFマガジン, June 1999 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/4411352
- 「ジーナ」, rental DVD, from 2 November 2002, at TSUTAYA. https://store-tsutaya.tsite.jp/search/item/rental_dvd/10025495/081679452
- 小学五年生, September 1999 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1741024
- アンドリュー・ヴァクス, 『セーフハウス』, 2000 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14325610
- 斎藤環, 『戦闘美少女の精神分析』, 2000 (the index's text; open at the library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14311976
- 「シーラとプリンセス戦士」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/シーラとプリンセス戦士
- 「王女戦士」, at kotobank (no entry, 404). https://kotobank.jp/word/王女戦士
- A local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized books, searched on the compound; the count is held in the research record.
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full text, 王女戦士, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=王女戦士&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- 森村誠一, 『森村誠一自選傑作短篇集』, 1976 (the index's text; open at the library only); the full text, 企業戦士, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12539565 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=企業戦士&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- Dictionnaire universel français-japonais, 1887: 女戰士（太古ノ）。勇婦 between the entries for amaurotique and ambassade, where Amazone falls (the index's text; open in Japan only); 中江篤介・野村泰亨 訳, 『仏和字彙』, 1893, p. 34, scan 20, Amazone, s.f. 女戰士(太古ノ)。勇婦. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1700030 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903137/1/20
- セブンティーン, November 1969 (the index's text; open at the library only); the full text, 戦う王女, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1862878 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=戦う王女&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC