Charting the History of Japan’s Deadly Women Warriors
Walking the path of the kunoichi
Ninjas are undoubtedly one of the most well-known tropes in Japanese pop culture. As practitioners of ninjutsu, the warriors who followed this path were referred to as shinobi. But it would be incorrect to assume that the role of black-clad assassin was reserved solely for men.
Women could be moulded into the ultimate expression of death as well and they were known as Kunoichi, a term that’s evolved to mean ‘female ninja’ in the modern-day. So, what is the history of these mysterious figures and how did they function within Japanese society?
Meaning
The word ‘Kunoichi’ comes from the names of characters that match the three strokes in the kanji character for ‘woman’ (女, onna) and are split into the following order:
- くis a character that becomes ‘ku’
- ノis a character that becomes ‘no’
- 一 is a character that becomes ‘ichi’ which means ‘one.’
Translated to English, ‘Kunoichi’ becomes ‘nine plus one.’ What this means from a Japanese perspective is that a woman was meant to have ten holes in her body compared to a man, who had nine holes to be found in places like the ears, mouth and eyes. Yet like the origins of so many…
