Kunoichi

A kunoichi (Japanese: くノ一) is a female ninja or practitioner of ninjutsu (ninpo).

Etymology

女 becomes くノ一

The term is thought to derive from the names of characters that resemble the three strokes in the kanji character for "woman" (女, onna) in the following stroke order:

• "く" is a hiragana character pronounced "ku"
• "ノ" is a katakana character pronounced "no"
• "一" is a kanji character pronounced "ichi" (and meaning "one").

The word "kunoichi" was not used frequently in Edo period. This is probably because in this era, kanji letter "女" was not written in regular script but usually in cursive script and the cursive script of "女" can not be decomposed into "く", "ノ", and "一".^{Yoshimaru:p168}

History of use

The eighth volume of the ninja handbook Bansenshukai written in the late 17th century describes Kunoichi-no-jutsu (くノ一の術). This can be translated as "a technique to use a female"^{Yoshimaru:p170} and was employed for infiltration purposes.^[1] The meaning "female ninja" might be a purely modern use, that possibly first appeared in the novel Ninpō Hakkenden (忍法八犬伝) written by Futaro Yamada in 1964 and became popularized in the following years.^{Yoshimaru:p184}

See also

• Mochizuki Chiyome, a legendary Japanese woman claimed to be a kunoichi leader
• Onna-bugeisha, the samurai women

References

Sources

• Yuya Yoshimaru (associate professor of Mie University) (April 2017). "What is Kunoichi? (くのいちとは何か)". Origins of the Ninja (忍者の誕生). ISBN 978-4-585-22151-7.