July 30, 2024 • 43 mins
In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the history, science and legend of the ninja or shinobi. Feudal Japan’s espionage specialists might not have resembled the characters in your favorite action movie, but they’ve become fictionalized staples of global popular culture while keeping to the shadows of history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And we are back with our second episode on the Ninja.
If you didn't listen to part one, go back and
start with that one. We talked about the modern pop
culture idea of the ninja a bit we didn't cover everything.
We're going to continue to throw in some mentions here
and there. And we've been getting some great listener mail
from folks writing in about their own first exposure to
(00:40):
ninja media, either you know, Japanese media or international media,
and so just keep that kind of stuff rolling in.
And when we get around to doing another listener mail episode,
which we're currently experimenting with a return to the old
format of having our listener mail episodes occur on a
Tuesday or Thursday, when we get around to that will
(01:01):
definitely dive into the ninja portion of the mail bag.
We talked about how the idea of the ninja entered
the global mainstream. We discussed a little bit the scarcity
of historical accounts of the ninja, basic ideas concerning the
reality of what we refer to as a ninja, the
origin of the word, other colloquial names for the ninja,
(01:22):
and what sorts of activities they engaged in and are
said to have engaged in. And we also discussed how
the pop culture transformation of the ninja was not a
Western or even a modern thing, but began in Japan
centuries ago. And so we're going to jump back in
here talking about some more ninja history and sort of
(01:42):
like continuing to sort of tease apart, like what is history,
what is probably accurate from a historical standpoint, and then
then what are the additional layers of legend and fiction
that also lead to this modern idea of what the
ninja is.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Right Before we get into more individual anecdotes and investigations,
I wanted to start with a brief way of looking
at the historical basis of the ninja myth. As we
mentioned in the last episode, this is a really complicated subject.
There are serious questions among scholars about to what extent
(02:19):
the historical ninja actually existed at all. It certainly is
the case that there are lots of historical records of
activities during warfare that were referred to as shinobi. This
is a synonym for ninja shenoby no mono shinoby activities
during warfare, especially during a particular historical period that we're
(02:40):
going to talk about in a bit. So it's not
like a scarcity of historical sources referring to ninja type
activities or shnobi activities. Instead, it seems to me the
historicity question is more about how accurate these sources are,
how to understand what they're talking about within its historical context,
(03:01):
and whether what they're talking about matches the idea of
the ninja that has come down to us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That's right. Like in the last episode we talked about
how the basic idea, the image that instantly infiltrates your
mind concerning the ninja, of the black clad individual with
swords and so forth. This is largely a fiction. This
is largely are a creation of fiction and legend making.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
But there is something lying underneath it, and we're going
to try to take a look at what that might be.
Right now, I want to mention again a major source
that I brought up in the last episode. This is
a book by Stephen Turnbull, who is a British historian
who's written a lot on the history of the ninja
and on Japanese history. The book is called Ninja Unmasking
the Myth from twenty seventeen, and specifically, in this section
(03:50):
we're about to do, I'm sort of relying on a
chapter of his book that's trying to trace the elusive,
underlying nature of what the ninja was and how that
relates to the ninja lore that came down. So to
refresh from last time, ninja or shinobi no mono are
two different ways of expressing the same idea. The core
(04:12):
idea is a person who sneaks, one who practices stealth, secrecy,
or hiddenness, or also, in one alternate reading of the word,
one who practices endurance or patience, which is an interesting
double loading of meaning on the term. While this term
can apply to a number of different activities in warfare,
(04:33):
a commonly cited equivalent in English would be something like
spy or secret agent. Now, as classically understood, ninja or
shinobi would be engaged in activities like spying across enemy lines,
infiltrating enemy strongholds, engaging in trickery and deception, sneak attacks
(04:54):
by night. Psychological warfare attempts to sew division within enemy
ranks like that. So it's actually a rather diverse set
of activities or duties that would fall to the ninja
or shnobi. But they're all in some way related to
some kind of hiddenness or deception or surprise.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, not all of them translate into the pop cultural
idea of the ninja. Like, I've never seen a ninja
movie where the ninja's main mission is to infiltrate the
enemy barracks and start bad talking the rice rations, you know,
being like, man, they really don't give us good rice,
and they'd give us a little of it. I can't
believe these guys. We should probably, you know, think twice
about fighting for them.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Oh but this, actually, yeah, this is perfectly in line
with what some historical uses of shnobi would refer to. Yeah,
the use of trying to sew division within enemy ranks
by using a double agent or a secret agent. Now,
one really important point is that when looking to our
earliest sources on the real shnobi of history, there is
(05:56):
a linguistic complication, which is that, as Steven Turnbull talks
about in his book in Historical Documents, Shinobi is not
only used as a noun, it can also be and
very often is, an adverb, meaning it's describing an action,
not a type of person, and the adverb form means
(06:18):
that a person, maybe anyone, not just a specialist, can
carry out an activity in a shinobi manner. So we
often understand ninja or its equivalent shinobi shinobi nomono as
a person who is specialized by training. It's a type
of person. But you do have lots of records of
(06:39):
groups of regular soldiers or other people carrying out a
shinobi attack on a castle or fortress, usually meaning a
sneak attack by night, or some of their secretive approach,
and this creates issues for historians. When you see a
story of somebody doing some kind of shinobi attack in
the adverb sense, do you count that as a story
(07:01):
of a shnoby as a noun as like a did
a ninja necessarily do that? Or is this the case
where we're using the equivalent of ninja to describe just
a way of doing something in secret, even if they're
not a specialist.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a moment in
the recent adaptation of Showgun the excellent FX adaptation that
I have to recommend. In the pivotal scene where these
shanoby attack, if memory serves and I've only seen it once,
I believe the characters just exclaim like shnoby, and it's
maybe left a little vague that like they're just saying
(07:35):
like something shinoby is occurring, like sound the alarm shnobi
actions in progress.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Oh yeah, that's interesting, And so that could refer to
any kind of like deception or surprise or hiddenness. Yeah,
But to come back to the idea of shinobi nomono,
the people who practice shinoby or hiddenness, we can again
just call them shinoby for short. To the extent that
they were historical specialists in spying and undercover warfare, when
(08:03):
did they flourish. There's a bit of complication here also
because you get some claims of earlier precedents. We're going
to talk about some of these later in this episode.
But the classical ninja, the classical shinobi are primarily associated
with the Singoku period, also known as the Warring States
period of Japanese history. This was a turbulent age of
(08:24):
roughly one hundred years, with fuzzy boundaries from the mid
fifteenth to the mid to late sixteenth century, characterized by
civil wars, rebellions, and revolts throughout Japan, and this time
came to a close as the country fell under the
central control of the Tokugawa Shogunate beginning around the seventeenth century.
(08:46):
So this time the Singoku period, the time of civil
wars in the fourteen hundreds to the fifteen hundreds, this
was the heyday of the historical ninja, and it's in
records of this time period that we'll find the history
basis of the ninja myth, if there is one. Now.
Turnbull raises a few very interesting questions about the historical
(09:08):
ninja from the Singoku period and how they relate to
received facts about the ninja that we've sort of gotten
from the tradition and lore that emerged over time. One
question that comes up is are the ninja uniquely Japanese?
Ninja are sometimes represented as a totally unique Japanese innovation
(09:31):
in secret warfare, but Turnbull disputes this, saying that if
you look at the types of activities that are attributed
to them in the sources that have some chance of
being historically accurate. They're similar to activities we see recorded
in all kinds of societies, in all large war fighting societies.
You might find similar records of activities in China, Mesopotamia,
(09:54):
and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that the author's hero Yoda
and Matt All talk about in Ninja Attack True Tales
of Assassin Samuraian Outlaws, which is a book that I've
been turning to in research for this episode, and they
point out that you see shnobi like activities in such
cases as the Odyssey, you know, which of course is
(10:18):
a is a literary work, but still like the most
one of the more believable aspects of the Odyssey is,
say the example of Odysseus dresses as a beggar to
sneak into the walls of Troy.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Oh, yeah, you include the Iliad. I would also say,
like the Trojan Horse seems like a very ninja or
Shanobi type ploy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Absolutely. They also point to the episode in the Bible
where Joshuason's a pair of secret agents into the walled
city of Jericho, and you know, just looking around, there
are also accounts of espionage under King Hammurabi of the
Second millennium BCE Babylon. They're apparently accounts from ancient Egypt.
And we've already mentioned the art of war, but the third,
(10:59):
the ancient third century BCE to third century CE Sanskrit
text the Arastra, also speaks of it. So again, yeah,
the Japanese didn't invent secrecy, assassination, espionage, and all these
other related activities. It just emerges universally as just part
of human conflict.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
But there are some i think cultural details that will
attach themselves to the Ninja myth as it develops that
are more unique, and we'll talk about those as we
go on. Another thing Turnbull points out is that there
are references to spying during warfare in Japanese texts from
before the Singoku period. One example is a text called
(11:42):
the Shomunkey, which is from the tenth century, and it
tells the story of a rebel named Taira Masakato, and
in this record, his enemy hires a spy named Koha Rumaru,
who infiltrates Masakado's stronghold with one companion, makes notes of
its layout and defensive capabilities, and then sends the companion
(12:05):
back to their employer with the information. But in this
story the dangers of spying are made clear because the
spy's employer uses the information, the information acquired by the
spy to launch a night attack, which fails. Masakado and
his rebels fight off the attack, and this leads to
the spy being exposed and executed. And there are plenty
(12:27):
of other early examples of stories of people who go
into enemy terrain or inside an enemy castle or fortification,
make a note of the layout, and then report back
to outside conspirators. So this is a common form of spying,
a very important thing in warfare. That's a little bit
less what you imagine if you know, you're thinking of
(12:48):
the ninja as like a martial artist, someone who goes
in and sort of does daring individual violence. A lot
of spying is just making note of information and getting
it back outside.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, in this reminds me of one thing we talked
about in the last episode about the different classifications according
to sun Zoo of the spy and how there are
different things you dare ask of your different level of
espionage operative. And so it's a much I mean, it's
still highly dangerous, but it's one thing to say, I
need you to make a small map and report back,
(13:22):
as opposed to I need you to switch out a
drink or stab someone in the back with a dag
or that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, So, spying both within and outside Japan predates any
concept of specialized ninja training, and it would have been
influenced by literature such as the Chinese classic The Art
(13:49):
of War, which you just brought up. I mentioned The
Art of War in the previous episode because of this
section about the five different kinds of secret agents. But
there is plenty of evidence that Japanese political and military leaders,
including the Samurai aristocracy, were widely familiar with this work
and others like it. Just one interesting example that stood
(14:10):
out to me that Turnbull sites there's a story about
an eleventh century Samurai hero named Minimoto Yoshi who used
a clue he had learned from reading the Art of
War to anticipate in ambush. The clue was that he
noticed birds rising startled from a thicket of forest, and
he knew that this meant his enemies were settling into
(14:32):
hiding there to launch a trap. So, therefore, Turnbull says,
there's ample evidence that Japan's long history of spying and
undercover warfare techniques are not uniquely Japanese, as some sources
have claimed, but was in part at least influenced by
Chinese military wisdom already in print for centuries, and the
(14:53):
fact that it goes back so far means that of
course people were spying before there was a concept of
the new ninja that emerges in the Singoku period. Now
there's another thing this chapter addresses that I think is interesting,
and that's the idea of ninja or shanobi as a
hereditary elite. Part of the received ninja mythology is about
(15:14):
specialization and lineage. It's the idea that undercover warfare techniques
in Japan were practiced exclusively by quote a highly skilled,
hereditary core of elite warriors called shinobi, and that ninjutsu,
the practices of the ninja, were the exclusive domain of
(15:34):
these warrior elites. They were sort of medieval commandos with
a hereditary component. And this vision of shinobi also implies
that they may have had some kind of social elite
status as well, that they were a kind of super samurai,
surpassing ordinary samurai warrior elites in the techniques of covert warfare,
(15:57):
like infiltrating secure locations and causing disruption inside enemy ranks,
and all the other stuff we've already mentioned. But as
we brought up in the last episode, there are some
serious reasons for doubting the idea of shinobi as these
hereditary elites. The accounts of shnobi activities taking place during
the Japanese Civil Wars generally do not make any reference
(16:18):
to the idea of specialized elite warriors, certainly not from
a social elite, and so shnobi activities may be carried
out by regular samurai or by soldiers, but in other
cases by people who are quite clearly associated with the
lower classes. There is good reason to believe that the
(16:39):
historical ninja were more likely from the lower classes, and
in some cases even thought of as criminals, and this
does raise a different kind of elite status that Turnbull
goes into depth about the idea of ninja as a
criminal elite, but this gets complicated too. Many accounts describing
covert military activity of the Singoku period use terms that
(17:02):
are also used to describe common crime. One example is
the Japanese term seto, which normally means thieves. Turnbull cites
a sixteen fifty three military manual called the Gunpo Geoshu,
which says quote, if a daimyo does not have a
seto serving under him, then no matter how good he is,
(17:23):
he will know nothing of his enemy's dispositions. So this
appears to be describing the work of a ninja as
a spy, but uses a common word for thief. Does
this indicate some kind of historical overlap. Perhaps, and there
are some good reasons for thinking that there is actual
direct overlap between ninja in warfare and criminal gangs. But
(17:47):
another possibility is that the idea of a thief or
a bandit is in the eye of the beholder, and
that designation is class related. So to illustrate that turnbul
inclincludes a text from the fourteenth century. This is the Minaiki,
compiled in thirteen forty eight, and this is a longer section,
(18:08):
but it reads as follows. Various kinds of disturbing events
occurred around the eras of Choan and Kingen, with rebellions,
coastal piracy, raids, robbery, mountain banditree pillaging, and so on
happening all over the place. They disguised themselves in an
unusual way by wearing yellowish brown clothes and a ropagassa
(18:29):
hat like a woman's instead of an aboshie, which is
a type of cap or hat, and not showing their faces.
Individuals who congregated in groups of between ten and twenty
men wore swords that had no ornamentation, with rough quivers
on their backs and bamboo poles for spears, and neither
helmet nor armor. They withdrew to castles and took on
(18:51):
their enemies there, or they won over an enemy but
then betrayed him, committing themselves to nothing. They were fond
of gaming and gambling, and the behaved like shinobi canusu,
meaning sneak thieves.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
This reminds me of something we talked about in the
last episode, the idea that you have less historical accounts
of shanobi in part because you wanted your stories to
be about the aristocratic samurai, the brave exploits of the samurai,
not in the upper class samurai, as opposed to the
(19:27):
potentially shameful but necessary activities of essentially sneak thieves, as
we're saying here, bandits and pirates exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And this could also give rise to the idea of
ninja as a kind of super samurai.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
You know. Having mentioned piracy now in that quote you read,
this does make me see some strong similarities to what
has occurred with pirates as well in popular culture. Like
the modern pop culture idea of a pirate is rather
far removed from the reality of the pirate in many ways.
It is a romantic size them to a degree that
(20:02):
would not have matched up with the reality of living
during their heyday.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Oh yeah, certainly. But then I want to raise a question,
because this applies somewhat to piracy as well. What is
the difference between a pirate or a privateer and a
naval vessel that seizes other ships from an enemy country
and takes on their goods and takes prisoners and so forth.
(20:29):
Sometimes these boundaries might be a little blurrier than you
would think, And the same applies here. So in contemporary records,
these groups that I was just talking about in that
passage I read a second ago, they are referred to
with terms meaning thieves or bandits. You know, they're disreputable,
they're sneak thieves. But twenty years after the passage I
(20:49):
just read, Turnbull says that these gangs are described quite
differently as horsemen, wearing finely decorated armor and weapons inlaid
with gold or silk, organized and loyal to their leader.
So sounds a lot more like the way that local
warriors who are simply in rebellion against a distant feudal
authority would be described let more like warriors and an
(21:13):
organized political authority, and less just like a criminal gang.
And so Turnbull concludes that there is some blurring of
the lines between warriors and criminals depending on who is
writing the account. Higher class authors would look down on
warriors of a lower level local uprising and classify them
(21:34):
not as worthy warriors. You know, this is not a
political conflict. These are bandits or pirates, and so a
similar thing could be going on with later records from
the Singoku period, which sometimes refer to people who by
description are functioning as spies and secret agents, but are
referred to as thieves or criminals. So it's possible that
(21:58):
in some cases Shenoby warriors were perceived or described as
bandits by a contemptuous higher class authority. However, it's also
possible that in many cases actual bandits were recruited to
warfare and served as shnobi. So This also brings up
the question of shinobi as mercenaries. So a mercenary is
(22:20):
generally understood as a soldier who is hired to fight
for a land that is not their own, and records
of the use of mercenaries in this sense in the
Sengoku warfare are mostly limited to shnobi type activities. We
don't really read of hired mercenaries doing the work of
the samurai, you know, like supposedly honorable face to face warfare,
(22:44):
leading cavalry charges and so forth. Instead, it seems that
mercenaries were used for sneak attacks and dirty tricks. So
you might have a daimyo who has his own regular
soldiers that are fighting on the battlefield and defending fortresses,
but in addition to that, the daimyo might pay local
criminals to do high risk activities, including shnobi activities like spying,
(23:09):
sneak attacks, false flags, and psychological warfare, as well as
less shnoby coated high risk maneuvers like covering the retreat
of regular troops and Turnbull suggests that this also militates
against the super samurai interpretation of ninja, since records indicate
that these warriors were often seen as crude, low class,
(23:32):
and expendable, and these warriors were also implicated in very
sordid types of activities like slave harvesting, raiding villages, and
kidnapping people into slavery. And so from all this Turnbull
concludes that the sort of super samurai hereditary elite interpretation
of ninja's is not based in history. That they were
(23:53):
not from a social elite to the extent that they existed,
but there clearly were people carrying out these activities at
the time, and that if we're trying to figure out
what their identity was, it may very well be that
there was significant overlap with crime, or at least that
many of them were lower class warriors who were looked
(24:15):
down upon by the social elites and in some cases
had some criminal experience or criminal skills such as piracy
or burglary or banditry. Now another important note on the
changing meaning of shinobi after the Singoku period. Again, remember
so after this you get the Unification period under the
(24:35):
Tokugawa Shogunate. This is also known as the Edo period.
During this time, there are lots of references to contemporary
people called shinobi, but in this time period they are
not at all the ninja you have in mind, and
they're also not the ninja we were just thinking we
were just talking about that are engaging in secrecy during warfare. Instead,
(24:57):
the shanobi of the Tokugawa period were a official agents
of the central government, which ruled the country by martial law,
and the duties of these agents included rooting out dissent
and disloyalty among the people. So in reality, their function
at this time was more like a secret police than
a class of secret agents turnbull rights quote. They were
(25:20):
engaged instead in sordid tasks such as listening to gossip
through keyholes, ready to denounce their victims and give them
over to torture and confession. So that's a very different
take on the idea of shenoby that the same term
is being used here to describe this very different orientation.
But strangely, this is also when this subsequent literature mythologizing
(25:44):
the ninja from the earlier period.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Sort of emerges fascinating and this ties into I mentioned
in the last episode that when I recently traveled to Japan,
I got to see some historic sites associated with the
shanobi with Ani, and one of them bears mentioned right
here because when I was visiting the grounds of the
(26:07):
Imperial Palace in Tokyo, there is a place known as
the hyakunen Bansho Guard House. It's located in the East
gardens and it was the headquarters of the Hyakun and
Gumi teams that protected Edo. This would have housed samurai
but also ninja and it served as a checkpoint in
(26:27):
guard house. So the historical situation here is that in
fifteen ninety, when the warlord Tokugawa Ayasu began fortifying the
fishing village that would become Edo modern day Tokyo, he
had already integrated shanobi into his personal army, allegedly in
(26:48):
special forces roles, and we had the caveat there based
on everything we've been discussing here. But then during the
Edo period they took on new roles, so he formed
them into one hundred man platoons or Hayakun and gumi
and charge they were charged not with espionage, not with
again what we would think of is ninja activities or
(27:09):
even these more like sort of criminal mercenary activities. Uh,
but they were discharged with roles involved in protecting the
city using modern flintlock rifles and using them potentially at
fortified positions. So Yoda and all compare them to like
a kind of like homeland Security and Secret Service rolled
into one. So, like you said earlier, kind of like
(27:32):
a secret police manning checkpoints, checking papers, and you know,
also keeping keeping an ear open for anything they need
to pass up the chain.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So it's interesting to uh to really trace the evolution
of the concept here and to dig through these sources
to try to find the foundation of it in real history.
But despite all of these caveats about like what the
real ninja were to the extent that they really existed,
and where these stories come from, I think we would
really be remiss if we denied ourselves just delving headfirst
(28:14):
into the ninja legend and just exploring some of the anecdotes,
whatever their basis in real history.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah. Yeah, so we should probably begin with the what
is in some accounts, the first ninja of Japanese traditions. Again,
this is impossible to define from a realistic standpoint, Like again,
like nobody invented espionage, per se, no one invented assassination
(28:42):
and so forth. But according to Japanese traditions. There was
an individual named a Tomo who would have served the
semi legendary regent by the name of Prince Shotaku, who
was also known by various other names, and he would
have lived five seventy four through six two. See he now,
given his era and his status, he's attributed with a
(29:06):
vast number of things. We've encountered situations like this before
in various cultures where you have a significantly old and
semi legendary leader, they're going to be associated with various
you know, it can be things even straight up magical
and mythological acts or culture bearing acts, or you get
the idea in many cases where it's like somebody who
worked for them invented something or something was invented in
(29:28):
their era, and therefore they are now the inventor. Ah yes,
and so Shataku is. He's been attributed as promoting the
spread of Buddhism. Okay, fair enough, It'd said that he
was an excellent multitasker, which I've read nobody is maybe,
I mean, I guess maybe maybe he was an okay multitasker.
(29:49):
But I've also read that it might have to do
with like, just like how many different streams of information
were coming to him or something. But also the idea
that he invented sushi coo, which I I think is
quite questionable. I how many culinary inventions can truly be
attributed to rulers, you know, in kings and emperors and
(30:10):
so forth. Generally it's more of a bottom up sort
of situation with culinary invention. Yeah, but anyway, a Tomo
was a regent, He served Empress Suiko, and he was
an early Japanese proponent of Sun Zu's The Art of War,
which we know we've been talking about as being a
(30:32):
text that definitely values and quantifies the and defines the
different forms of espionage that are important for any kind
of like military operation.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah, and places a lot of importance on spies. Doesn't
just say like, here are the types of spies to use,
but it's like, make sure you use your spies. You
should never fight a battle until you have adequately discovered
all of your enemy's secrets.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah. Again, it's like, you know, you may
not like thieves, but you need thieves. You know, you're
not going to win this battle or this war via
bravery and nobility alone. So Prince Chautaku is said to
have dubbed O Tomo, this shnobi individual as Shenobi along
with his operatives, and they aided him in surviving against
(31:18):
a vast enemy army that outnumbered them seemingly via some
specific shanobi tricks. I don't know that we really have
an idea what those tricks were, but Yoda and all
point out that their suspicion that they might have involved
tricking the enemy into thinking their forces were more numerous
than they actually were. Like, they point to some other
(31:39):
examples of this that may be connected, such as dressing
civilians up in armor or making them look more or
less like soldiers, sort of putting extras in place so
that your forces look greater than they are. So yeah,
total Shanobi move, and so in ninja traditions. In ninja
culture and pop culture, a tomo would come to be
described as the first ninja. The info maybe scant, but
(32:02):
yet it sounds like a tomo was more in line
with what we think of is kind of like a
master of spies, a misinformation manager, and so forth. I
should also point out that a Tomo is apparently also
the name of one of the android ninjas in RoboCop three,
Ninja culture, you know, spreads far and wide. It's irresistible.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Did these ninjas have rocket boots or something? Were they
rocket ninjas?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I don't know. They had swords? I think they you know,
it's been a very long time since I watched RoboCop three.
I think maybe RoboCop had rocket boots or some sort
of rocket system that he used to fly.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Oh no, do we have to watch RoboCop three for
weird house? I don't know, investigations for another time.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah. So in this book, Ninja Attack True Tales of
assassin Samurai Outlaws. As the title suggests, it's not all
just about ninjas. It kind of spreads out to ninja
adjacent characters and roles. So it looks at historical and
legendary figures that have, through one way or another, become
(33:08):
associated with ninja tradition. Many of them are only vaguely shinobi,
and they may fit the mold of the latter day
met ninja myth one way or the other, but not directly. So,
you know, you have some characters in there that are
just great warriors. You have some that are definite assassins
or would be assassins. Spymasters and also wizards and magic users.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Oh and I don't recall if we've brought this up
yet in the series or not, but one thing to
absolutely understand is that a lot of early ninja legend
and references to ninjutsu the practice of a ninja are
clearly magical in nature.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yes, And one of the best examples of that is
the fictional character who had go on to become just
a staple of ninja pop culture, especially in Japan, is Jerai.
So Juriah was the protagonist of an eighteen oh six
book by kanwate Onataki. But modern ninja fans probably wouldn't
(34:10):
have even recognized Jeria as a ninja because, on one hand,
the all black ninja garb had not been invented yet,
that wasn't a part of the of the genre yet.
And at this point in Ninja Lord, they were, as
we've been discussing, far more associated with dark magic. They
were more likely to use some sort of a spell
against you than to bust out, you know, some sort
(34:32):
of martial arts attack. And so Juriah was a just
a kimono wearing like he's just describes wearing kimono's just
wearing like regular clothes. Robin hood like character. He was
a robber with a heart of gold and the magical
ability to summon a giant, mighty phantom toad that served
as his steed.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
That is so much cooler than the now cliche idea
of someone riding a dragon, writing a dragon. I've seen
it a million times. Dragon's already sort of like a
horse anyway. I don't know why, don't ask me why.
It just is dragon's kind of like a horse riding
a toad. That's different.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, not only this, he had a sidekick who was
a female master of slug magic, and they battled an
evil master of snake magic and so Yoda an alt
stress that there's kind of like a rock paper scissors
scenario here in this magic system. Brandon Sanderson may get
a lot of credit for his complex magical systems and
his novels, but does he have snake toad slug level
(35:33):
of magic here? Because basically the way it works is
that snakes beat toads, Slugs beat snakes, and toads beat slugs,
and that's the way the magic system works.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
What yeah, how do the slugs beat snakes?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
They just do Okay, they just do. It's just it's
just how reality works. I don't know, that's just science.
But Juriah has remained a strong part of Japanese pop culture,
enjoying multiple retellings and apparently factors into the popular anime Naruto,
which I think I've only watched one episode of, so
I didn't get in deep enough to see all of
(36:10):
the threads. But so many of these characters in Japanese
ninja pop culture, they end up emerging and re emerging,
you know, people keep diving back in and re exploring
them and reinventing them. But yeah, Jiiah seems to have
been a very pivotal figure in ninja fiction, igniting a
(36:30):
huge ninja fad around eighteen thirty nine. This is when
an illustrated publication of the text in question came out,
and you ended up with like thirty years of sequels
following that, along with various imitators, theater adaptations, and there
was eventually a nineteen twenty one film version. A film
adaptation of this story called Juria the Hero sometimes cited
(36:54):
is the first tokusatsu or special effects movie, and Joe
I have not seen it myself, but I include a
still from it here where you can see a giant
phantom toe jumping into battle.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I believe, my god, that's so good. And I just
looked at it. I think I have found a stream
of this online, so we could watch it. We could
watch it for Weird House.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, I believe it's a twenty one minute film. So yeah,
it looks like there are some streams.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Okay, that's that's going on the list.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
They mentioned that they so the book goes into a
lot of the other ways that the fictional world of
the ninja grew and spread. You know, later on during
the early nineteen tens, the novel Sorrow Toobe Saske was
a big ninja hit, still leaning more heavily on the
magical aspects of the ninja, and then you would just
get an additional ninja revivals that would occur in like
(37:44):
the fifties and sixties. And I think those those waves
will continue and you still see it continuing today. Like
ninjas have not gone away. It's not like everyone's like, hey,
do you remember ninja movies? Like, no, they're still around.
This ninja video game is still around, but they'll still
be an occasional like big hit that comes out and
it reminds everyone just how awesome ninja fiction really is.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
So the way I understand it, it's this revival of
interest in the ninja through these like novels and stories
and movies in roughly the fifties and the sixties that
give way to the international, especially in English speaking markets,
obsession with the ninja.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, it does make me wonder, like, outside of Japan
an international level, what would happen if you had like
a true, like sort of revitalization of the black magic
aspect of ninja. You know, that might be interesting, But again,
that seems to have never completely gone away in Japanese
(38:44):
media itself.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I think it's halfway there in some American ninja media,
Like it's not fully the case that we're seeing ninja
as like sorcerers doing spells and writing spectral toads, but
there's more a kind of vague mysticism to them, you know,
like that they're portrayed in a way where you wonder
if they are capable of magic.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah. Yeah, And I guess one has to acknowledge Mortal
Kombat ninjas, though I think in some cases I'm always
a little foggy on how everything works in Mortal k
I think some of those characters are supposed to be
Chinese as opposed to Japanese, but then they're clearly embracing
like Japanese ninja pop culture. But yeah, you have characters
(39:25):
that are clearly ninjas that are also doing things like
throwing fireballs or freeze balls or whatever the heck.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Are like Scorpion and sub Zero interpreted. I never even
thought about the nationality of those characters. Are they implied
to be Japanese? I thought it was like Lu Kang
is a Shalan warrior, isn't he right?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Right? And I believe at least originally sub Zero was
supposed to be Chinese. But this is Mortal Kombat. It
plays very fast and loose with its source materials here
to create its own strange universe, which I love. But again,
you have to sort of take everything with a grain
of salt and follow it through to, like, you know,
(40:07):
the the the original inspirations to get maybe an idea
of where things come from. And even then there's a
lot of overlap.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Johnny Cage is American, Sonia Blade is American, right, I
think so?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah? American Duell until he was played by an Australian man.
In the in the the Mortal Kombat movie in the
nineties and after that, and part of it I believe
is like a dedication to him because he died young.
They were like, Okay, Kano is Australian from now on,
so you know, you have changes like that that.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Occur raidings from out world.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, so he's generally maybe French gentleman depicted as French. Yeah,
he's French scorpion. On the other hand, I think has
always been depicted as Japanese. But I'm not one sure
on that either.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Okay, all right, well, I think maybe we're out of
time for today's episode, but next time we will be
back with more stories of ninjas throughout history, legendary ninjas,
ninja anecdotes and techniques and technologies and just we're going
to find a lot of little corners to look into.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, and there will be a little bit of ninja
science in there. I can't promise lots of ninja science,
but I know there will be at least a little bit.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
The physics of toad riding.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yes, all right, we're going to go and close it
out there, but let's see what to mention here. Hey,
I'll just give throughout this once more, if you were
on Instagram, why don't you follow the Stuff to Blow
your Mind Instagram account. It is STBYM podcast. That's our handle.
We had to reset it a while back because we
(41:42):
lost access to the old one and then we were
eventually able to send in some shinobi to destroy the
old one from the inside. But we need to get
the followers up on that Instagram. So if you use Instagram,
follow us there. I can promise you it won't be
completely boring. It'll be some you'll get an update on
what we're talking about sometimes some fun videos in there.
(42:03):
So give us a follow. STBYM Podcast reminder that Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture
podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays,
we do a short form episode. On Fridays, we set
aside most serious concerns, all just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema, and then we have some
vault episodes that occur. We have a vault episode of
our core episodes on Saturdays and on Mondays. Our current
(42:26):
format is to do a Weird House rewind that's a
vault episode, a rerun of a past Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Episode, Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer
JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And we are back with our second episode on the Ninja.
If you didn't listen to part one, go back and
start with that one. We talked about the modern pop
culture idea of the ninja a bit we didn't cover everything.
We're going to continue to throw in some mentions here
and there. And we've been getting some great listener mail
from folks writing in about their own first exposure to
(00:40):
ninja media, either you know, Japanese media or international media,
and so just keep that kind of stuff rolling in.
And when we get around to doing another listener mail episode,
which we're currently experimenting with a return to the old
format of having our listener mail episodes occur on a
Tuesday or Thursday, when we get around to that will
(01:01):
definitely dive into the ninja portion of the mail bag.
We talked about how the idea of the ninja entered
the global mainstream. We discussed a little bit the scarcity
of historical accounts of the ninja, basic ideas concerning the
reality of what we refer to as a ninja, the
origin of the word, other colloquial names for the ninja,
(01:22):
and what sorts of activities they engaged in and are
said to have engaged in. And we also discussed how
the pop culture transformation of the ninja was not a
Western or even a modern thing, but began in Japan
centuries ago. And so we're going to jump back in
here talking about some more ninja history and sort of
(01:42):
like continuing to sort of tease apart, like what is history,
what is probably accurate from a historical standpoint, and then
then what are the additional layers of legend and fiction
that also lead to this modern idea of what the
ninja is.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Right Before we get into more individual anecdotes and investigations,
I wanted to start with a brief way of looking
at the historical basis of the ninja myth. As we
mentioned in the last episode, this is a really complicated subject.
There are serious questions among scholars about to what extent
(02:19):
the historical ninja actually existed at all. It certainly is
the case that there are lots of historical records of
activities during warfare that were referred to as shinobi. This
is a synonym for ninja shenoby no mono shinoby activities
during warfare, especially during a particular historical period that we're
(02:40):
going to talk about in a bit. So it's not
like a scarcity of historical sources referring to ninja type
activities or shnobi activities. Instead, it seems to me the
historicity question is more about how accurate these sources are,
how to understand what they're talking about within its historical context,
(03:01):
and whether what they're talking about matches the idea of
the ninja that has come down to us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That's right. Like in the last episode we talked about
how the basic idea, the image that instantly infiltrates your
mind concerning the ninja, of the black clad individual with
swords and so forth. This is largely a fiction. This
is largely are a creation of fiction and legend making.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
But there is something lying underneath it, and we're going
to try to take a look at what that might be.
Right now, I want to mention again a major source
that I brought up in the last episode. This is
a book by Stephen Turnbull, who is a British historian
who's written a lot on the history of the ninja
and on Japanese history. The book is called Ninja Unmasking
the Myth from twenty seventeen, and specifically, in this section
(03:50):
we're about to do, I'm sort of relying on a
chapter of his book that's trying to trace the elusive,
underlying nature of what the ninja was and how that
relates to the ninja lore that came down. So to
refresh from last time, ninja or shinobi no mono are
two different ways of expressing the same idea. The core
(04:12):
idea is a person who sneaks, one who practices stealth, secrecy,
or hiddenness, or also, in one alternate reading of the word,
one who practices endurance or patience, which is an interesting
double loading of meaning on the term. While this term
can apply to a number of different activities in warfare,
(04:33):
a commonly cited equivalent in English would be something like
spy or secret agent. Now, as classically understood, ninja or
shinobi would be engaged in activities like spying across enemy lines,
infiltrating enemy strongholds, engaging in trickery and deception, sneak attacks
(04:54):
by night. Psychological warfare attempts to sew division within enemy
ranks like that. So it's actually a rather diverse set
of activities or duties that would fall to the ninja
or shnobi. But they're all in some way related to
some kind of hiddenness or deception or surprise.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, not all of them translate into the pop cultural
idea of the ninja. Like, I've never seen a ninja
movie where the ninja's main mission is to infiltrate the
enemy barracks and start bad talking the rice rations, you know,
being like, man, they really don't give us good rice,
and they'd give us a little of it. I can't
believe these guys. We should probably, you know, think twice
about fighting for them.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Oh but this, actually, yeah, this is perfectly in line
with what some historical uses of shnobi would refer to. Yeah,
the use of trying to sew division within enemy ranks
by using a double agent or a secret agent. Now,
one really important point is that when looking to our
earliest sources on the real shnobi of history, there is
(05:56):
a linguistic complication, which is that, as Steven Turnbull talks
about in his book in Historical Documents, Shinobi is not
only used as a noun, it can also be and
very often is, an adverb, meaning it's describing an action,
not a type of person, and the adverb form means
(06:18):
that a person, maybe anyone, not just a specialist, can
carry out an activity in a shinobi manner. So we
often understand ninja or its equivalent shinobi shinobi nomono as
a person who is specialized by training. It's a type
of person. But you do have lots of records of
(06:39):
groups of regular soldiers or other people carrying out a
shinobi attack on a castle or fortress, usually meaning a
sneak attack by night, or some of their secretive approach,
and this creates issues for historians. When you see a
story of somebody doing some kind of shinobi attack in
the adverb sense, do you count that as a story
(07:01):
of a shnoby as a noun as like a did
a ninja necessarily do that? Or is this the case
where we're using the equivalent of ninja to describe just
a way of doing something in secret, even if they're
not a specialist.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a moment in
the recent adaptation of Showgun the excellent FX adaptation that
I have to recommend. In the pivotal scene where these
shanoby attack, if memory serves and I've only seen it once,
I believe the characters just exclaim like shnoby, and it's
maybe left a little vague that like they're just saying
(07:35):
like something shinoby is occurring, like sound the alarm shnobi
actions in progress.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Oh yeah, that's interesting, And so that could refer to
any kind of like deception or surprise or hiddenness. Yeah,
But to come back to the idea of shinobi nomono,
the people who practice shinoby or hiddenness, we can again
just call them shinoby for short. To the extent that
they were historical specialists in spying and undercover warfare, when
(08:03):
did they flourish. There's a bit of complication here also
because you get some claims of earlier precedents. We're going
to talk about some of these later in this episode.
But the classical ninja, the classical shinobi are primarily associated
with the Singoku period, also known as the Warring States
period of Japanese history. This was a turbulent age of
(08:24):
roughly one hundred years, with fuzzy boundaries from the mid
fifteenth to the mid to late sixteenth century, characterized by
civil wars, rebellions, and revolts throughout Japan, and this time
came to a close as the country fell under the
central control of the Tokugawa Shogunate beginning around the seventeenth century.
(08:46):
So this time the Singoku period, the time of civil
wars in the fourteen hundreds to the fifteen hundreds, this
was the heyday of the historical ninja, and it's in
records of this time period that we'll find the history
basis of the ninja myth, if there is one. Now.
Turnbull raises a few very interesting questions about the historical
(09:08):
ninja from the Singoku period and how they relate to
received facts about the ninja that we've sort of gotten
from the tradition and lore that emerged over time. One
question that comes up is are the ninja uniquely Japanese?
Ninja are sometimes represented as a totally unique Japanese innovation
(09:31):
in secret warfare, but Turnbull disputes this, saying that if
you look at the types of activities that are attributed
to them in the sources that have some chance of
being historically accurate. They're similar to activities we see recorded
in all kinds of societies, in all large war fighting societies.
You might find similar records of activities in China, Mesopotamia,
(09:54):
and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that the author's hero Yoda
and Matt All talk about in Ninja Attack True Tales
of Assassin Samuraian Outlaws, which is a book that I've
been turning to in research for this episode, and they
point out that you see shnobi like activities in such
cases as the Odyssey, you know, which of course is
(10:18):
a is a literary work, but still like the most
one of the more believable aspects of the Odyssey is,
say the example of Odysseus dresses as a beggar to
sneak into the walls of Troy.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Oh, yeah, you include the Iliad. I would also say,
like the Trojan Horse seems like a very ninja or
Shanobi type ploy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Absolutely. They also point to the episode in the Bible
where Joshuason's a pair of secret agents into the walled
city of Jericho, and you know, just looking around, there
are also accounts of espionage under King Hammurabi of the
Second millennium BCE Babylon. They're apparently accounts from ancient Egypt.
And we've already mentioned the art of war, but the third,
(10:59):
the ancient third century BCE to third century CE Sanskrit
text the Arastra, also speaks of it. So again, yeah,
the Japanese didn't invent secrecy, assassination, espionage, and all these
other related activities. It just emerges universally as just part
of human conflict.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
But there are some i think cultural details that will
attach themselves to the Ninja myth as it develops that
are more unique, and we'll talk about those as we
go on. Another thing Turnbull points out is that there
are references to spying during warfare in Japanese texts from
before the Singoku period. One example is a text called
(11:42):
the Shomunkey, which is from the tenth century, and it
tells the story of a rebel named Taira Masakato, and
in this record, his enemy hires a spy named Koha Rumaru,
who infiltrates Masakado's stronghold with one companion, makes notes of
its layout and defensive capabilities, and then sends the companion
(12:05):
back to their employer with the information. But in this
story the dangers of spying are made clear because the
spy's employer uses the information, the information acquired by the
spy to launch a night attack, which fails. Masakado and
his rebels fight off the attack, and this leads to
the spy being exposed and executed. And there are plenty
(12:27):
of other early examples of stories of people who go
into enemy terrain or inside an enemy castle or fortification,
make a note of the layout, and then report back
to outside conspirators. So this is a common form of spying,
a very important thing in warfare. That's a little bit
less what you imagine if you know, you're thinking of
(12:48):
the ninja as like a martial artist, someone who goes
in and sort of does daring individual violence. A lot
of spying is just making note of information and getting
it back outside.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, in this reminds me of one thing we talked
about in the last episode about the different classifications according
to sun Zoo of the spy and how there are
different things you dare ask of your different level of
espionage operative. And so it's a much I mean, it's
still highly dangerous, but it's one thing to say, I
need you to make a small map and report back,
(13:22):
as opposed to I need you to switch out a
drink or stab someone in the back with a dag
or that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, So, spying both within and outside Japan predates any
concept of specialized ninja training, and it would have been
influenced by literature such as the Chinese classic The Art
(13:49):
of War, which you just brought up. I mentioned The
Art of War in the previous episode because of this
section about the five different kinds of secret agents. But
there is plenty of evidence that Japanese political and military leaders,
including the Samurai aristocracy, were widely familiar with this work
and others like it. Just one interesting example that stood
(14:10):
out to me that Turnbull sites there's a story about
an eleventh century Samurai hero named Minimoto Yoshi who used
a clue he had learned from reading the Art of
War to anticipate in ambush. The clue was that he
noticed birds rising startled from a thicket of forest, and
he knew that this meant his enemies were settling into
(14:32):
hiding there to launch a trap. So, therefore, Turnbull says,
there's ample evidence that Japan's long history of spying and
undercover warfare techniques are not uniquely Japanese, as some sources
have claimed, but was in part at least influenced by
Chinese military wisdom already in print for centuries, and the
(14:53):
fact that it goes back so far means that of
course people were spying before there was a concept of
the new ninja that emerges in the Singoku period. Now
there's another thing this chapter addresses that I think is interesting,
and that's the idea of ninja or shanobi as a
hereditary elite. Part of the received ninja mythology is about
(15:14):
specialization and lineage. It's the idea that undercover warfare techniques
in Japan were practiced exclusively by quote a highly skilled,
hereditary core of elite warriors called shinobi, and that ninjutsu,
the practices of the ninja, were the exclusive domain of
(15:34):
these warrior elites. They were sort of medieval commandos with
a hereditary component. And this vision of shinobi also implies
that they may have had some kind of social elite
status as well, that they were a kind of super samurai,
surpassing ordinary samurai warrior elites in the techniques of covert warfare,
(15:57):
like infiltrating secure locations and causing disruption inside enemy ranks,
and all the other stuff we've already mentioned. But as
we brought up in the last episode, there are some
serious reasons for doubting the idea of shinobi as these
hereditary elites. The accounts of shnobi activities taking place during
the Japanese Civil Wars generally do not make any reference
(16:18):
to the idea of specialized elite warriors, certainly not from
a social elite, and so shnobi activities may be carried
out by regular samurai or by soldiers, but in other
cases by people who are quite clearly associated with the
lower classes. There is good reason to believe that the
(16:39):
historical ninja were more likely from the lower classes, and
in some cases even thought of as criminals, and this
does raise a different kind of elite status that Turnbull
goes into depth about the idea of ninja as a
criminal elite, but this gets complicated too. Many accounts describing
covert military activity of the Singoku period use terms that
(17:02):
are also used to describe common crime. One example is
the Japanese term seto, which normally means thieves. Turnbull cites
a sixteen fifty three military manual called the Gunpo Geoshu,
which says quote, if a daimyo does not have a
seto serving under him, then no matter how good he is,
(17:23):
he will know nothing of his enemy's dispositions. So this
appears to be describing the work of a ninja as
a spy, but uses a common word for thief. Does
this indicate some kind of historical overlap. Perhaps, and there
are some good reasons for thinking that there is actual
direct overlap between ninja in warfare and criminal gangs. But
(17:47):
another possibility is that the idea of a thief or
a bandit is in the eye of the beholder, and
that designation is class related. So to illustrate that turnbul
inclincludes a text from the fourteenth century. This is the Minaiki,
compiled in thirteen forty eight, and this is a longer section,
(18:08):
but it reads as follows. Various kinds of disturbing events
occurred around the eras of Choan and Kingen, with rebellions,
coastal piracy, raids, robbery, mountain banditree pillaging, and so on
happening all over the place. They disguised themselves in an
unusual way by wearing yellowish brown clothes and a ropagassa
(18:29):
hat like a woman's instead of an aboshie, which is
a type of cap or hat, and not showing their faces.
Individuals who congregated in groups of between ten and twenty
men wore swords that had no ornamentation, with rough quivers
on their backs and bamboo poles for spears, and neither
helmet nor armor. They withdrew to castles and took on
(18:51):
their enemies there, or they won over an enemy but
then betrayed him, committing themselves to nothing. They were fond
of gaming and gambling, and the behaved like shinobi canusu,
meaning sneak thieves.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
This reminds me of something we talked about in the
last episode, the idea that you have less historical accounts
of shanobi in part because you wanted your stories to
be about the aristocratic samurai, the brave exploits of the samurai,
not in the upper class samurai, as opposed to the
(19:27):
potentially shameful but necessary activities of essentially sneak thieves, as
we're saying here, bandits and pirates exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And this could also give rise to the idea of
ninja as a kind of super samurai.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
You know. Having mentioned piracy now in that quote you read,
this does make me see some strong similarities to what
has occurred with pirates as well in popular culture. Like
the modern pop culture idea of a pirate is rather
far removed from the reality of the pirate in many ways.
It is a romantic size them to a degree that
(20:02):
would not have matched up with the reality of living
during their heyday.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Oh yeah, certainly. But then I want to raise a question,
because this applies somewhat to piracy as well. What is
the difference between a pirate or a privateer and a
naval vessel that seizes other ships from an enemy country
and takes on their goods and takes prisoners and so forth.
(20:29):
Sometimes these boundaries might be a little blurrier than you
would think, And the same applies here. So in contemporary records,
these groups that I was just talking about in that
passage I read a second ago, they are referred to
with terms meaning thieves or bandits. You know, they're disreputable,
they're sneak thieves. But twenty years after the passage I
(20:49):
just read, Turnbull says that these gangs are described quite
differently as horsemen, wearing finely decorated armor and weapons inlaid
with gold or silk, organized and loyal to their leader.
So sounds a lot more like the way that local
warriors who are simply in rebellion against a distant feudal
authority would be described let more like warriors and an
(21:13):
organized political authority, and less just like a criminal gang.
And so Turnbull concludes that there is some blurring of
the lines between warriors and criminals depending on who is
writing the account. Higher class authors would look down on
warriors of a lower level local uprising and classify them
(21:34):
not as worthy warriors. You know, this is not a
political conflict. These are bandits or pirates, and so a
similar thing could be going on with later records from
the Singoku period, which sometimes refer to people who by
description are functioning as spies and secret agents, but are
referred to as thieves or criminals. So it's possible that
(21:58):
in some cases Shenoby warriors were perceived or described as
bandits by a contemptuous higher class authority. However, it's also
possible that in many cases actual bandits were recruited to
warfare and served as shnobi. So This also brings up
the question of shinobi as mercenaries. So a mercenary is
(22:20):
generally understood as a soldier who is hired to fight
for a land that is not their own, and records
of the use of mercenaries in this sense in the
Sengoku warfare are mostly limited to shnobi type activities. We
don't really read of hired mercenaries doing the work of
the samurai, you know, like supposedly honorable face to face warfare,
(22:44):
leading cavalry charges and so forth. Instead, it seems that
mercenaries were used for sneak attacks and dirty tricks. So
you might have a daimyo who has his own regular
soldiers that are fighting on the battlefield and defending fortresses,
but in addition to that, the daimyo might pay local
criminals to do high risk activities, including shnobi activities like spying,
(23:09):
sneak attacks, false flags, and psychological warfare, as well as
less shnoby coated high risk maneuvers like covering the retreat
of regular troops and Turnbull suggests that this also militates
against the super samurai interpretation of ninja, since records indicate
that these warriors were often seen as crude, low class,
(23:32):
and expendable, and these warriors were also implicated in very
sordid types of activities like slave harvesting, raiding villages, and
kidnapping people into slavery. And so from all this Turnbull
concludes that the sort of super samurai hereditary elite interpretation
of ninja's is not based in history. That they were
(23:53):
not from a social elite to the extent that they existed,
but there clearly were people carrying out these activities at
the time, and that if we're trying to figure out
what their identity was, it may very well be that
there was significant overlap with crime, or at least that
many of them were lower class warriors who were looked
(24:15):
down upon by the social elites and in some cases
had some criminal experience or criminal skills such as piracy
or burglary or banditry. Now another important note on the
changing meaning of shinobi after the Singoku period. Again, remember
so after this you get the Unification period under the
(24:35):
Tokugawa Shogunate. This is also known as the Edo period.
During this time, there are lots of references to contemporary
people called shinobi, but in this time period they are
not at all the ninja you have in mind, and
they're also not the ninja we were just thinking we
were just talking about that are engaging in secrecy during warfare. Instead,
(24:57):
the shanobi of the Tokugawa period were a official agents
of the central government, which ruled the country by martial law,
and the duties of these agents included rooting out dissent
and disloyalty among the people. So in reality, their function
at this time was more like a secret police than
a class of secret agents turnbull rights quote. They were
(25:20):
engaged instead in sordid tasks such as listening to gossip
through keyholes, ready to denounce their victims and give them
over to torture and confession. So that's a very different
take on the idea of shenoby that the same term
is being used here to describe this very different orientation.
But strangely, this is also when this subsequent literature mythologizing
(25:44):
the ninja from the earlier period.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Sort of emerges fascinating and this ties into I mentioned
in the last episode that when I recently traveled to Japan,
I got to see some historic sites associated with the
shanobi with Ani, and one of them bears mentioned right
here because when I was visiting the grounds of the
(26:07):
Imperial Palace in Tokyo, there is a place known as
the hyakunen Bansho Guard House. It's located in the East
gardens and it was the headquarters of the Hyakun and
Gumi teams that protected Edo. This would have housed samurai
but also ninja and it served as a checkpoint in
(26:27):
guard house. So the historical situation here is that in
fifteen ninety, when the warlord Tokugawa Ayasu began fortifying the
fishing village that would become Edo modern day Tokyo, he
had already integrated shanobi into his personal army, allegedly in
(26:48):
special forces roles, and we had the caveat there based
on everything we've been discussing here. But then during the
Edo period they took on new roles, so he formed
them into one hundred man platoons or Hayakun and gumi
and charge they were charged not with espionage, not with
again what we would think of is ninja activities or
(27:09):
even these more like sort of criminal mercenary activities. Uh,
but they were discharged with roles involved in protecting the
city using modern flintlock rifles and using them potentially at
fortified positions. So Yoda and all compare them to like
a kind of like homeland Security and Secret Service rolled
into one. So, like you said earlier, kind of like
(27:32):
a secret police manning checkpoints, checking papers, and you know,
also keeping keeping an ear open for anything they need
to pass up the chain.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So it's interesting to uh to really trace the evolution
of the concept here and to dig through these sources
to try to find the foundation of it in real history.
But despite all of these caveats about like what the
real ninja were to the extent that they really existed,
and where these stories come from, I think we would
really be remiss if we denied ourselves just delving headfirst
(28:14):
into the ninja legend and just exploring some of the anecdotes,
whatever their basis in real history.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah. Yeah, so we should probably begin with the what
is in some accounts, the first ninja of Japanese traditions. Again,
this is impossible to define from a realistic standpoint, Like again,
like nobody invented espionage, per se, no one invented assassination
(28:42):
and so forth. But according to Japanese traditions. There was
an individual named a Tomo who would have served the
semi legendary regent by the name of Prince Shotaku, who
was also known by various other names, and he would
have lived five seventy four through six two. See he now,
given his era and his status, he's attributed with a
(29:06):
vast number of things. We've encountered situations like this before
in various cultures where you have a significantly old and
semi legendary leader, they're going to be associated with various
you know, it can be things even straight up magical
and mythological acts or culture bearing acts, or you get
the idea in many cases where it's like somebody who
worked for them invented something or something was invented in
(29:28):
their era, and therefore they are now the inventor. Ah yes,
and so Shataku is. He's been attributed as promoting the
spread of Buddhism. Okay, fair enough, It'd said that he
was an excellent multitasker, which I've read nobody is maybe,
I mean, I guess maybe maybe he was an okay multitasker.
(29:49):
But I've also read that it might have to do
with like, just like how many different streams of information
were coming to him or something. But also the idea
that he invented sushi coo, which I I think is
quite questionable. I how many culinary inventions can truly be
attributed to rulers, you know, in kings and emperors and
(30:10):
so forth. Generally it's more of a bottom up sort
of situation with culinary invention. Yeah, but anyway, a Tomo
was a regent, He served Empress Suiko, and he was
an early Japanese proponent of Sun Zu's The Art of War,
which we know we've been talking about as being a
(30:32):
text that definitely values and quantifies the and defines the
different forms of espionage that are important for any kind
of like military operation.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah, and places a lot of importance on spies. Doesn't
just say like, here are the types of spies to use,
but it's like, make sure you use your spies. You
should never fight a battle until you have adequately discovered
all of your enemy's secrets.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah. Again, it's like, you know, you may
not like thieves, but you need thieves. You know, you're
not going to win this battle or this war via
bravery and nobility alone. So Prince Chautaku is said to
have dubbed O Tomo, this shnobi individual as Shenobi along
with his operatives, and they aided him in surviving against
(31:18):
a vast enemy army that outnumbered them seemingly via some
specific shanobi tricks. I don't know that we really have
an idea what those tricks were, but Yoda and all
point out that their suspicion that they might have involved
tricking the enemy into thinking their forces were more numerous
than they actually were. Like, they point to some other
(31:39):
examples of this that may be connected, such as dressing
civilians up in armor or making them look more or
less like soldiers, sort of putting extras in place so
that your forces look greater than they are. So yeah,
total Shanobi move, and so in ninja traditions. In ninja
culture and pop culture, a tomo would come to be
described as the first ninja. The info maybe scant, but
(32:02):
yet it sounds like a tomo was more in line
with what we think of is kind of like a
master of spies, a misinformation manager, and so forth. I
should also point out that a Tomo is apparently also
the name of one of the android ninjas in RoboCop three,
Ninja culture, you know, spreads far and wide. It's irresistible.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Did these ninjas have rocket boots or something? Were they
rocket ninjas?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I don't know. They had swords? I think they you know,
it's been a very long time since I watched RoboCop three.
I think maybe RoboCop had rocket boots or some sort
of rocket system that he used to fly.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Oh no, do we have to watch RoboCop three for
weird house? I don't know, investigations for another time.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah. So in this book, Ninja Attack True Tales of
assassin Samurai Outlaws. As the title suggests, it's not all
just about ninjas. It kind of spreads out to ninja
adjacent characters and roles. So it looks at historical and
legendary figures that have, through one way or another, become
(33:08):
associated with ninja tradition. Many of them are only vaguely shinobi,
and they may fit the mold of the latter day
met ninja myth one way or the other, but not directly. So,
you know, you have some characters in there that are
just great warriors. You have some that are definite assassins
or would be assassins. Spymasters and also wizards and magic users.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Oh and I don't recall if we've brought this up
yet in the series or not, but one thing to
absolutely understand is that a lot of early ninja legend
and references to ninjutsu the practice of a ninja are
clearly magical in nature.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yes, And one of the best examples of that is
the fictional character who had go on to become just
a staple of ninja pop culture, especially in Japan, is Jerai.
So Juriah was the protagonist of an eighteen oh six
book by kanwate Onataki. But modern ninja fans probably wouldn't
(34:10):
have even recognized Jeria as a ninja because, on one hand,
the all black ninja garb had not been invented yet,
that wasn't a part of the of the genre yet.
And at this point in Ninja Lord, they were, as
we've been discussing, far more associated with dark magic. They
were more likely to use some sort of a spell
against you than to bust out, you know, some sort
(34:32):
of martial arts attack. And so Juriah was a just
a kimono wearing like he's just describes wearing kimono's just
wearing like regular clothes. Robin hood like character. He was
a robber with a heart of gold and the magical
ability to summon a giant, mighty phantom toad that served
as his steed.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
That is so much cooler than the now cliche idea
of someone riding a dragon, writing a dragon. I've seen
it a million times. Dragon's already sort of like a
horse anyway. I don't know why, don't ask me why.
It just is dragon's kind of like a horse riding
a toad. That's different.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, not only this, he had a sidekick who was
a female master of slug magic, and they battled an
evil master of snake magic and so Yoda an alt
stress that there's kind of like a rock paper scissors
scenario here in this magic system. Brandon Sanderson may get
a lot of credit for his complex magical systems and
his novels, but does he have snake toad slug level
(35:33):
of magic here? Because basically the way it works is
that snakes beat toads, Slugs beat snakes, and toads beat slugs,
and that's the way the magic system works.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
What yeah, how do the slugs beat snakes?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
They just do Okay, they just do. It's just it's
just how reality works. I don't know, that's just science.
But Juriah has remained a strong part of Japanese pop culture,
enjoying multiple retellings and apparently factors into the popular anime Naruto,
which I think I've only watched one episode of, so
I didn't get in deep enough to see all of
(36:10):
the threads. But so many of these characters in Japanese
ninja pop culture, they end up emerging and re emerging,
you know, people keep diving back in and re exploring
them and reinventing them. But yeah, Jiiah seems to have
been a very pivotal figure in ninja fiction, igniting a
(36:30):
huge ninja fad around eighteen thirty nine. This is when
an illustrated publication of the text in question came out,
and you ended up with like thirty years of sequels
following that, along with various imitators, theater adaptations, and there
was eventually a nineteen twenty one film version. A film
adaptation of this story called Juria the Hero sometimes cited
(36:54):
is the first tokusatsu or special effects movie, and Joe
I have not seen it myself, but I include a
still from it here where you can see a giant
phantom toe jumping into battle.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I believe, my god, that's so good. And I just
looked at it. I think I have found a stream
of this online, so we could watch it. We could
watch it for Weird House.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, I believe it's a twenty one minute film. So yeah,
it looks like there are some streams.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Okay, that's that's going on the list.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
They mentioned that they so the book goes into a
lot of the other ways that the fictional world of
the ninja grew and spread. You know, later on during
the early nineteen tens, the novel Sorrow Toobe Saske was
a big ninja hit, still leaning more heavily on the
magical aspects of the ninja, and then you would just
get an additional ninja revivals that would occur in like
(37:44):
the fifties and sixties. And I think those those waves
will continue and you still see it continuing today. Like
ninjas have not gone away. It's not like everyone's like, hey,
do you remember ninja movies? Like, no, they're still around.
This ninja video game is still around, but they'll still
be an occasional like big hit that comes out and
it reminds everyone just how awesome ninja fiction really is.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
So the way I understand it, it's this revival of
interest in the ninja through these like novels and stories
and movies in roughly the fifties and the sixties that
give way to the international, especially in English speaking markets,
obsession with the ninja.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, it does make me wonder, like, outside of Japan
an international level, what would happen if you had like
a true, like sort of revitalization of the black magic
aspect of ninja. You know, that might be interesting, But again,
that seems to have never completely gone away in Japanese
(38:44):
media itself.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I think it's halfway there in some American ninja media,
Like it's not fully the case that we're seeing ninja
as like sorcerers doing spells and writing spectral toads, but
there's more a kind of vague mysticism to them, you know,
like that they're portrayed in a way where you wonder
if they are capable of magic.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah. Yeah, And I guess one has to acknowledge Mortal
Kombat ninjas, though I think in some cases I'm always
a little foggy on how everything works in Mortal k
I think some of those characters are supposed to be
Chinese as opposed to Japanese, but then they're clearly embracing
like Japanese ninja pop culture. But yeah, you have characters
(39:25):
that are clearly ninjas that are also doing things like
throwing fireballs or freeze balls or whatever the heck.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Are like Scorpion and sub Zero interpreted. I never even
thought about the nationality of those characters. Are they implied
to be Japanese? I thought it was like Lu Kang
is a Shalan warrior, isn't he right?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Right? And I believe at least originally sub Zero was
supposed to be Chinese. But this is Mortal Kombat. It
plays very fast and loose with its source materials here
to create its own strange universe, which I love. But again,
you have to sort of take everything with a grain
of salt and follow it through to, like, you know,
(40:07):
the the the original inspirations to get maybe an idea
of where things come from. And even then there's a
lot of overlap.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Johnny Cage is American, Sonia Blade is American, right, I
think so?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah? American Duell until he was played by an Australian man.
In the in the the Mortal Kombat movie in the
nineties and after that, and part of it I believe
is like a dedication to him because he died young.
They were like, Okay, Kano is Australian from now on,
so you know, you have changes like that that.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Occur raidings from out world.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, so he's generally maybe French gentleman depicted as French. Yeah,
he's French scorpion. On the other hand, I think has
always been depicted as Japanese. But I'm not one sure
on that either.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Okay, all right, well, I think maybe we're out of
time for today's episode, but next time we will be
back with more stories of ninjas throughout history, legendary ninjas,
ninja anecdotes and techniques and technologies and just we're going
to find a lot of little corners to look into.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, and there will be a little bit of ninja
science in there. I can't promise lots of ninja science,
but I know there will be at least a little bit.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
The physics of toad riding.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yes, all right, we're going to go and close it
out there, but let's see what to mention here. Hey,
I'll just give throughout this once more, if you were
on Instagram, why don't you follow the Stuff to Blow
your Mind Instagram account. It is STBYM podcast. That's our handle.
We had to reset it a while back because we
(41:42):
lost access to the old one and then we were
eventually able to send in some shinobi to destroy the
old one from the inside. But we need to get
the followers up on that Instagram. So if you use Instagram,
follow us there. I can promise you it won't be
completely boring. It'll be some you'll get an update on
what we're talking about sometimes some fun videos in there.
(42:03):
So give us a follow. STBYM Podcast reminder that Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture
podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays,
we do a short form episode. On Fridays, we set
aside most serious concerns, all just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema, and then we have some
vault episodes that occur. We have a vault episode of
our core episodes on Saturdays and on Mondays. Our current
(42:26):
format is to do a Weird House rewind that's a
vault episode, a rerun of a past Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Episode, Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer
JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. M
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