Kawakami Kazuko

Spoiler

Formerly known as Okamoto Kazuko.

Second daughter of the Kawakami family. Kazuko was actually adopted by the Kawakami family, and learned martial arts under them. Instead of kenpo, she specialized in the use of the naginata.

In contrast to Momoyo, Kazuko is naturally competitive and bears a never-give-up attitude towards everything. While being weaker than her older sister in martial arts, she is still very athletic, and quite eager to challenge others for fun. It is because of this that Kazuko develops something of a rivalry with the German transfer student Christiane. More than anything, she hopes to grow strong enough in order to one day look at Momoyo as an equal.

While she seems to have suitors of her own (Kuki Hideo and her childhood friend Gen-san), Kazuko is very inexperienced when it comes to romance, and prefers to put her energies into training. The rest of the characters see her more as the class "mascot".

The members of the Kazama family call her Wanko (this is a pun, since the kanji used for Kazu is "Ichi", which means 1. Wan is also the japanese equivalent to "woof", which is the sound a dog makes. Since 1 and Wan have the same pronunciation, Kazuko is almost always compared to a dog. Incidentally, Chris simply calls Kazuko "Inu", the Japanese word for "Dog".)

Kazuko's virtue of Bushido is Yuu (Courage, or 勇).