Women warriors have been a feature of Japanese films for decades, from Meiko Kaji's revenge-bent heroine in "Shurayuki Hime" (Lady Snowblood, 1973) — a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" — to Haruka Ayase's sword-wielding shamisen player in "Ichi" (2008).
Hardly any of their exploits, however, have been based on any sort of reality. Also, their fans have been mostly men who, for whatever reason, like watching glinty-eyed beauties slice up bad guys.
Tomoyuki Furumaya's "Bushido Sixteen" is the rare Japanese film about female martial artists based on real-life models and targeted mainly at women. But it's also less an action film, despite all the on- screen swordplay, than a perfectly cast, sensitively made seishun eiga (youth drama).
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