Why are female Ninja called "Kunoichi"?

Fascinating question, and a topic I've often questioned.

There are two things that should be noted examining "Kunoichi" (くノ一):

– First, it's written with one character from each of the three writing systems in Japan:

–– Ku (く) is written in Hiragana

–– No (ノ) is written in Katakana

–– Ichi (一) is written in Kanji

At first blush we can say that this is literally an ideogrammatic representation of the kanji for woman (女) being largely the strokes broken up. We can ascribe meaning to this by saying that it's a count, that it deals with numbers, whether of orifices or people ( "ku no ichi" would better be translated as one of nine, and given the ninja's propensity toward turning women against powerful men, it might be in reference to the number of women a powerful man could trust).

The second thing to consider is that the ninja would create codes, and it's likely that Kunoichi is simply one of those codes, literally meaning "woman" – One code in Iga history was the combining of particles to create characters with different meanings. What looked like gibberish scrawled on a wall to one, might have a distinct meaning to a ninja. In some cases, breaking apart a character (kanji) into its strokes could conceal the meaning.

I would like to find the origin of the term in some text – Bansenshukai, Ninpiden, or the like to get a better feel. If we know the habits of the region of origin better, we might have better insight into the reasoning behind the word.

Edit:

To expand upon PBJ – 忍者 are the characters "shinobi" and "mono" in native kun'yomi reading. In the Sino-Japanese (on'yomi) they are "nin" and "jya". In historical documents (Bansenshukai, Ninpiden, Shoninki, etc.) it's usually accepted to read 忍者 as "Shinobi no mono", or otherwise interpret 忍 as shino(bi).

More often than not, the terms used to refer to those people we commonly now call Ninja were colloquialisms – "Grass" (Kusa), or "One from Iga" (Iga-mono) were common for referring to Iga 忍者 as a whole. Groups such as the Fuuma were also known as "ruffians" (rappa). A common misconception is that the term Nokizaru (Macaque on the roof) was a general reference to the ninja, but this is not true. Rather, they were a particular group led by Uesugi Kenshin, Daimyou of Echigo Province.

Female Ninja

I am from China, but I lived in Japan and learned that language as well as my own Mandarin. Japanese Kanji copies our Chinese symbols and is used for nouns mainly. Hiragana is a cursive phonetic script that is used largely for verbs and pronouns in Japan. Katakana is an angular phonetic script that is used largely for foreign words. I have not seen the symbols for Kunoichi, but I have heard several theories about it. The usual one concerns bodily orifices of which a man has nine (or ten if we count the navel), and a woman has an extra one. Ninja were warriors of the Hinin class that is a low social class, and they did not have the honor code of Bushido that the Bushi warriors called Samurai practiced. Japanese do not have the attitude of the Mosaic religions that the body is evil, anyhow, so even higher class people are frank about the body. I doubt that outsiders will ever know the full story, because Ninja were secretive and had codes. There are surely several levels of meaning for "Kunoichi" that only Ninja would know.

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RE:

Why are female Ninja called "Kunoichi"?

I recently ordered eight DVDs from Amazon.com, CDJapan and YesAsia. Last Thursday, "Ninjaken The Naked Sword" arrived. It stars Kaede Matsushima as Murasame a Kunoichi whose assignment is to kill the ...

Yes, kunoichi is a female ninja or a female practitioner of ninjitsu.

A popular etymology would derive the term from 九能一 (能 "nō" : talent) with Japanese numbers "ku" (九) for "nine", the particle "no" (の) for "and" and "ichi" (一) for "one", literally translated to "nine and one". The meaning for this name is derived from the number of orifices on a female body. A male has nine, a female has one more (vaginal opening) and possesses the skills to make use of this orifice as well. Another theory asserts that the term is apocryphal and coined in the writings of Ninpōchō novelist Futaro Yamada.[4]

Four theories cited in Japanese wiki article about Kunoichi.

1. As stated by others, breakdown of the kanji for "woman"; 女=く＋ノ＋一

2. Also stated by others, numbers of orifices; men having 9 and women having 9+1

3. Theory proposed by an author saying the origin is from 九一ノ道 in Onmyōdō. The 九 being pronounced "ku; く", and since when combined with the other characters creates the kanji for "woman", became a popular colloquial term for female ninjas

4. The term was fabricated by Futaro Yamada, who was a famous author of ninja novels.

The article states that none of the theories are very well founded. It also states that both the terms "kunoichi" and "ninja" became popular in works of fiction after WWII. In other words, both of these terms are fairly new words, and people who lived in the era when ninjas were around never used these terms.

FYI, this question was probably more suited for the "Languages" section than "Martial Arts".

It could be that the kanji for "woman" (女) can be separated into the kana ku (く) no (ノ) ichi (一).

Was asking myself the same thing