'100 of the Most Common Kanji Characters. Newspapers give a great representation of the best and most useful kanji to learn because you are more likely to come across these characters in day-to-day use. Iga FC Kunoichi, a women's football club which is based in the city of Iga, takes its name from the term. Here are 100 of the most frequently used kanji in Japanese newspapers. A symbol that could be spoken of as synonymous to discipline, and mastery over one’s soul. 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. The Japanese definitely pay heed to this form a lot. A disputed historical example is Mochizuki Chiyome, a 16th-century noble descendant who was commissioned by warlord Takeda Shingen to recruit women to create a secret network of hundreds of spies. According to this document, the main function of the Kunoichi was espionage, finding functions in enemy house services, to gather knowledge, gain trust or listen to conversations. The Bansenshukai compiles the knowledge of the ninja clans in the regions of Iga and Kōka. This can be translated as 'a technique to use a female' Yoshimaru : p170 and was employed for infiltration purposes. The eighth volume of the ninja handbook Bansenshukai written in the late 17th century describes Kunoichi-no-jutsu (くノ一の術, the ninjutsu of female ninja). This is probably because in this era, the kanji letter '女' was not written in regular script but usually in cursive script, and the cursive script of '女' cannot be decomposed into 'く', 'ノ', and '一'.

The word 'kunoichi' was not used frequently in the Edo period.

' 一' is a kanji character pronounced 'ichi' (and meaning ' one').

' ノ' is a katakana character pronounced ' no'.

' く' is a hiragana character pronounced ' ku'.

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

Japanese symbol for female