Ninja Girl Power!

Believe it or not, Japan has a history of some pretty outspoken women. Westerners tend to get caught up in the image of a docile female attending her stern and dominant husband. But some of Japan’s most influential people were women. They have been artists, writers, dancers, athletes, religious leaders, and even ninja.

Enter Chiyome-san and her deadly flowers.

In the 1500s, Chiyome was the wife of a Japanese feudal warlord, a shogun. He lived a dangerous life full of violence and power with terrifying footsoldiers like the samurai and ninja. But where samurai were honor-bound men sworn to protect their lord, ninja were assassins, hit men of the shadows and the plot points of many a B-movie and television series.

You had to be serious to be a ninja. Your job description involved causing dissention among the ranks, fomenting insurrection, spying on someone’s battle plans, betraying, poisoning, and dying a painful death if you were caught. You were society’s outcast but for all the heavy lifting and bloody nights, ninja were not paid very well. 

When Chiyome’s husband died, Chiyome had few options. Most widows shaved their heads and became monks and lived in seclusion. But that wasn’t Chiyome’s style. Looking for some cash flow and a little honor, she opened her house to orphans and runaways. Her neighbors may have thought she was just being a great philanthropist…until a knife came whizzing through the shoji and stuck in the wall. 

Chiyome opened a secret ninja school. She took children without families or pasts, gave them new identities and turned them into her kunoichi, her “deadly flowers.” She taught them how to use knives, swords, and poisons. The kunoichi also carried fans sharpened at the edges, powders laced with toxins, and hairpins dipped in poison. Armed to the teeth, the women most beautifully slaughtered their fair share of men. And if they were caught, Chiyome had taught them how to hold their breath for minutes at a time under water and even how to dislocate their own joints if they’d been tied up! 

You don’t see that kind of lesson in vocational schools.

I have to credit some of this to Vicki Leon's book, "4000 Years of Uppity Women." She glances briefly over Chiyome is her book, the rest is from my own research.