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Hiragana was never "only for women". Being phonetic and syllabic, it was much easier to learn than Chinese characters (kanji) or man'yogana (kanji used phoneti
by 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Hiragana was never "only for women". Being phonetic and syllabic, it was much easier to learn than Chinese characters (kanji) or man'yogana (kanji used phonetically), and because women at the time had less education, they usually defaulted to it.
- jhanschoo 7y agoThe article places Nvshu in a very similar social role to Hiragana in its early days. I'm referring more specifically to texts completely written in Nvshu and texts completely written in Hiragana. It's likely that in the milleu of Japan at that time, as when Nvshu flourished, the prevailing thought was that only Classical Chinese deserved to be written, and the local tongue did not deserve to be put to script. The Wikipedia article on Nvshu cites Chiang (1995) that this is the only known script for Xiangnan Tuhua. It's thus "only for women" in the same sense that Nvshu is only for women; many men had access to it, but none wrote literature completely in it.