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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1155104" data-attributes="member: 812">Actually, there are a number of well-known Japanese women who took part in battles or fought notable contests with male samurai. The quintessential woman's weapon in Japan is the naginata, something like a European glaive -- in the tradition I studied, after you completed the first round of katana forms you then moved either to the bo staff if you were a man, or the naginata if you were a woman.It's interesting that the school evolved a separate tradition for each gender -- it implies that both were reasonably common. When that tradition evolved I can't say but certainly training women in the naginata goes back to medieval times in Japan. There's any number of illustrations and stories dating to those times.As Zander says, archery is taken up by pretty much equal numbers of men and women (if anything, women outnumber men these days).I recall a National Geographic article on the Sudan recently that spent some time among a group of people living in the southern part of that country where the women were substantially larger and stronger than the men -- made me wonder to what degree the gender-based size distinctions in homo sapiens is "natural" -- have we been unconsciously selecting for smaller women?Of course females are smaller amongst all primates that I'm aware of, and indeed among most mammals, but you know, I wonder.</blockquote>