Today, December 5, is celebrated International Ninja Day, a day when fans of these characters – a mix of mercenaries, assassins and guerrillas – dress like them and practice ninjutsu, their martial art par excellence. Why was this date chosen?
It all started as an initiative of the comic website Ninja Burger, a name that parodies that of a fast food chain that promises (falsely) deliveries with the speed and efficiency associated with these warriors. The day was not chosen at random, but corresponds to the release date of the film The Last Samurai in 2003. In the already popular film starring Tom Cruise, these “shadow warriors”, or shinobis, have a prominent role in one of the main action scenes.
Curiously, in Japan they have another date to remember these warriors: February 22. In the country’s language, the number 2 is read the same as the syllable with which the word ninja begins. It was an initiative of the populations of Iga and Koka, traditionally linked to the mythical shinobi and which host tourist attractions related to them.
There are other products in popular culture – various films, mangas, video games… – in which ninjas still have a more prominent role than in Tom Cruise’s film. After all, we are looking at one of the best-known icons of Japan, whose origins go back centuries, to the time of the samurai.
Historical belief, perpetuated from some areas of popularization, places them in the Sengoku period (1467-1615), a time of continuous wars in Japan, where daimyos (feudal lords) fought to proclaim themselves shogun and govern the entire country.
In this environment of continuous conflict, ninjas acted under the orders of the lords of feudal Japan as spies, assassins, guerrillas…, demonstrating an almost superhuman ability to accomplish their missions with all kinds of subterfuges: moving in the dark, disguising themselves. , annihilate enemies in a thousand possible ways…
Tradition also tells us that ninjas stood out for their particular equipment to carry out these missions. Shuriken – star-shaped throwing weapons – are the most famous because they have earned their reputation as deadly killers in the shadows, but they also, according to folklore, had other tricks up their sleeves, such as gadgets for walking on water or bombs. of smoke to disappear.
Assassins, mercenaries or spies, members of an ancient secret society, with extraordinary skills and equipment. With this basis it is difficult not to become a successful product for popular culture, but what facts are based on his alleged actions during the Sengoku wars?
Many experts differ on the beliefs that have spread regarding shinobi. “There is no historical reality, it is all myth,” Jonathan López-Vera, doctor in Japanese History and author of the book History of the Samurai (Alianza, 2021), is so emphatic in statements to Historia y Vida.
This expert in Japanese history has already defended this position on more occasions, such as in this video about the ninja myth on his YouTube channel. In it he also explains that the spies and assassins who operated in feudal Japan were the same as those of any other army in history, without having the extraordinary capabilities or weapons attributed to them.
Another expert on the aforementioned Japanese era, the British historian Stephen Turnbull, also believes that there is a lot of legend behind the ninjas, although in his first works he disseminated the most popular vision of these warriors. In 2015, he changed his mind with the academic article “The Ninja: An Invented Tradition?”, and shortly after expanded his position with the book Ninja: Unmasking the myth (Open Road, 2017).
In the conclusions of his academic work, Turnbull considers that there has never been a secret society of martial arts practitioners as the myth says, and adds that “covert operations were carried out throughout Japanese history, but they were carried out by warriors. experts who did not belong to any hereditary tradition.”
To know where the myth comes from, you have to go to the Sengoku period itself. Some territories were not in the hands of these nobles or the monasteries, but were controlled by groups of peasants, local nobles, monks, low-ranking samurai… These groups were called ikki, and they tried to maintain their independence from the large factions that aspired to dominate Japan since the end of the 15th century.
Two of the ikki that stood out for their independence from the influence of the daimyo were those of the provinces of Koka and Iga, in the center of the island of Honshu, which coincide with those that have promoted the ninja myth in more recent times.
The great daimyos frequently attacked these ikki, because they considered them a challenge to their authority (Koka and Iga came to form a kind of federation) and because they were interested in controlling their territories.
In 1579, Iga province was attacked by Oda Nobukatsu, son of Oda Nobunaga, one of the great samurai leaders and a prominent figure in Sengoku. Thus began the Tensho Iga war. In the first assault, the invading troops – some 11,000 soldiers – were defeated by the defenders of Iga, who took advantage of their knowledge of the region’s rugged terrain to apply effective guerrilla warfare.
The affront to the Oda clan was not going to stop here, and two years later, Nobunaga himself led an army four times his size to subdue Iga. The great daimyo attacked from all directions to give the defenders no respite.
Despite the ikki’s defeat, many local warriors escaped, and their success in resisting the powerful daimyo’s first attack earned them fame throughout Japan. The ninja myth had not yet been born, but the first stone had been laid.
Thanks to this prestige, many rivals and allies of Nobunaga turned to the services of the ikki survivors to advise them on issues related to espionage and irregular warfare tactics. That is, specialized combatants or agents, like those that can be found in other places and historical moments.
One of the strongest relationships between lords and Ikki guerrillas was that established by Tokugawa Ieyasu, another great daimyo and the final winner of the struggles during the Sengoku. His general Hattori Hanzo was responsible for organizing these agents into an efficient espionage network, also specialized in other irregular warfare actions.
The Sengoku culminated in the triumph of the Tokugawa clan and the definitive unification of Japan, giving rise to the Edo period (1603-1868), a long period of peace. Around 1620, highly embellished stories began to proliferate about the capabilities of these ikki agents during clashes between daimyos.
In parallel, adventure novels also appeared where samurai were presented as great virtuous warriors. These protagonists needed antagonists who were the complete opposite of what they embodied, and the authors of these stories created hired assassins who killed treacherously.
These novels were usually set in the Sengoku era, since the Tokugawa shogunate prohibited setting fiction in its current times. Even some real characters were adapted to better fit fiction. For example, General Hattori Hanzo came to be depicted as a powerful ninja leader.
Additionally, the illustrators of these books began to depict these assassins dressed in black, as a symbol of ninja skills to avoid detection. The reason for choosing this color is that they were inspired by the Japanese theater stagehands (the kuroko) who dressed like this to go unnoticed on stage.
With this basis of popular culture, the myth has seen its popularity perpetuated to this day. “In Japan, fiction has never stopped making about it since its appearance in novels and plays of the 18th century,” López-Vera explains to Historia y Vida.
As the specialist refers in the aforementioned video, novels about ninjas also fueled the myth of ninjutsu, the martial art linked to these warriors. It all began in 1745. Then, the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune dispensed with the agents who descended from the Iga guerrillas and other ikki (it was tradition that a profession was passed from father to son).
These unemployed agents decided to make a living teaching martial arts, and as a promotional campaign, according to the doctor in Japanese History, “they took advantage of the popular image that the novels had created about the Iga warriors.” This is how ninjutsu was born, and “ninja are only practitioners of a martial art after the period that popular belief attributes to them.”
López-Vera reinforces his arguments by remembering that “no weapon or other ninja object that has been found is prior to this Edo period”, that is, they are all after the 17th century, when the myth begins to be forged. Likewise, the expert recalls that there is no debate in the academic world about the historical veracity of shinobi.
Over time, the mythical image of ninjas also established itself in the West. Cinema and other audiovisual products have been a powerful dissemination tool, such as the film You Only Live Twice (1967), from the James Bond saga, where the famous British agent faces these dangerous murderers.
The 007 film was only the beginning of a whole series of products made beyond Japan with ninjas as protagonists. “We have many examples, in the West, such as the famous Ninja Turtles or the American Ninja movie saga and others similar,” López-Vera details to Historia y Vida. The expert also highlights Japanese products that have become very popular in Europe and the US, such as Naruto or Hattori, the ninja.
When López-Vera is asked about the image of ninjas in today’s Japan, he explains that “most people believe that they existed, but they don’t give it much importance, they see it as just another element of popular culture and entertainment.” ”.
In the current Iga and Koka, as we said at the beginning, the global interest in the myth is exploited. In the first town there is a museum dedicated to these warriors, while in the second you can visit a ninja village.
Despite being so critical of the ninja myth, López-Vera clearly separates two areas, as he explained in his statements for this article, and considers that historical rigor “cannot be required of a fiction or entertainment product.” On the other hand, “with articles or books supposedly about History, I am much more critical.”