How wonderfully badass these young school girls are -- Training women and girls in the martial arts was a big deal, as it was expected that girls and women should be able to protect themselves and fight back against an encroaching enemy. They are practicing here with the naginata, the traditional fighting sword for a woman. They are using practice wooden swords here, but the real swords have a long curved blade at the end which is deadly at cutting off limbs and heads. They also, further down the video practice with the short tanto blades -- also a weapon that traditional Japanese women carried in their obi -- to either kill an intruder, or to kill themselves in the event they were caught by the enemy.