This is the kind of thing we could do with now ...

[robinturner]

In some villages, women maintained an active role in maintaining order. The mother of one of my instructors told how when she was a small girl in a village in Kyushu, the southernmost major island of Japan, men were often gone from the village in certain seasons to join up on labor crews. When there was a disturbance at night or a suspicious character entered the village, the women would grab their naginata, which hung ready on one of the walls of the house, and go running outside to gather and search the town for any danger. Her grandmother was the leader of this "emergency response squad," and they were a naturally autonomous group within the village. Protecting the neighborhood was simply assumed to be one of their functions.