In ancient China, women once weren’t taught to read and write. But in one particular section of the country, Jiangyong County in Hunan province, some women were able to learn and master the 600 to 700 characters of a phonetic script made to reflect the local dialect and now called Nüshu (女书), or “women’s writing.”
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Preceding the all-male samurai class depicted by James Clavell and Akira Kurosawa, the onna bugeisha learned to use naginata, kaiken, and the art of tanto Jutso in battle. Rather than pay mercenaries to defend them, as the terrified townsfolk do in Seven Samurai, these women trained in battle to protect “communities that lacked male fighters.”