Nushu-Chinese Women's Script-and Its Present Situation

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This is a report of how much "women's characters" -Endo calls it Onna Moji 'Women's Script' whereas it is generally called 'Nushen in that area-are still alive in existence in Human Province of China.The field work was conducted six times between April of 1997 and March of 2000. We confirmed that there are three transmitters of Women's Script. By 1997, only two transmitters were found, Ms. Yan Huan-yi (born in 1909) and Ms. He Yan-xin (born in 1940), but in 1998 we located a third transmitter, Ms He Jing-hua (born in 1940). Ms. He Jin-huna managed to restore the ability of writing Women's Script in 1998 after studying on her own, which was motivated by her involvement in Endo's fieldwork in 1997. Our investigation made it possible that an informant has become a transmitter.We came to a conclusion that there are only three transmitters mentioned above after three years of our fieldwork where we investigated more than 100 villages.However, we confirmed that there are a few original documents such as San chao shun. We also found out that one of the transmitters, Ms. He Yan-xin, received an education in Kanji 'Chinese character' until junior high school, therefore, was influenced by it. Moreover, women in that area had high technology in such areas as embroidery, textile fabrics, and cloth shoes. It became clear that these dexterous manual work has a close relationship to the creation of Women's Script and its transmission.