How Can We Separate Ninja Fact from Ninja Fiction?

Over a few hundred years, real stories about secretive agents developed into the legend of the ninja. Learn how this myth captured the world's imagination -- and about the work being done at the world's first International Ninja Research Center -- in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/first-ninja-research-center-out-to-solve-myth-behind-legend.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren
Bolebaum here answer the door on Halloween, and no matter
what else is going on in pop culture, every fifth
hit or so will be dressed as some iteration of
a ninja. There's just something about the legend of these silent,

(00:24):
secretive assassins that captures our imagination, like Pirates or robin Hood.
But just like those other legendary figures, our image of
these stealthy Japanese warriors is based largely on nuggets of
historical truth buried under mountains of myth. However, there is
a research center devoted to teasing out those nuggets of truth.

(00:48):
In twenty seventeen, Miya University in Ida, Japan, established the
world's first international Ninja research center. The center is located
about forty miles or sixty four kilometers west of Kyoto,
where as of the fifteen hundreds, the first and most
famous Ninja school may have existed. The research center houses

(01:09):
not only historical documents related to the ninja, but also
hundreds of novels, movies, and cartoons that have helped forge
the modern image of the black clad assassin. For the article,
this episode is based on how stuffworks. Spoke with Stephen Turnbull,
a historian of Japanese military history who gave the inaugural
lecture at the opening of the research center in Ega.

(01:31):
He's written more than seventy five books on samurai and
Japanese warfare, including the Ninja Unmasking the Myth. He explained
that everything we associate with the character of the ninja,
the black costume, the weapons, the spycraft and secrecy is
all based on historical truth. He said, what's made up

(01:51):
is to give it to the ninja. Alike any good legend,
the image of the ninja is crafted over centuries of story,
time telling, and colorful exaggeration. A Starting more than three
hundred years ago, Japanese people in the Ego region began
taking elements of traditional warfare that exist in all cultures,
a spying, subterfuge, and assassination, and assigning them to a

(02:15):
secretive brotherhood of Japanese warriors called Shinobi. The logographic characters
for Shnobi can also be read and pronounced as ninja.
The origin of the word itself reveals a lot about
ninja mythmaking. In Japanese. Shinobi means in secret, and the
earliest known historical account of ninja like activities in IgA

(02:37):
from fifteen forty one specifically uses that word. A local
monk wrote up a brief crime report describing an attack
on a castle by a band of criminals who entered
in secret and set fire to a few things. In
fifteen hundreds, the word shinobi was used as an adverb
to describe any activity carried out in secret. In the

(02:57):
monk's account, the invaders could have been ercenaries, common thieves,
or highly trained warriors. All we know was that they
acted in secret. But as early as the sixteen hundreds
you start seeing exaggerated stories about ego warriors in which
shanoby the adverb becomes shanoby the noun. Turnbull said, instead

(03:19):
of saying that it was done in a shanoby way,
in a secret way, you say it was done by
a shanoby. They're taking something that's real, these things that
really happened, but instead of them being done in secret,
the stories say they're being done by these special secret people.
The biggest challenge in separating ninja truth from myth is

(03:41):
a lack of reliable primary sources. When the research center opened,
it housed only five total documents, similar to the Monk's account.
What's most remarkable about that handful of documents isn't so
much the content of the original texts, but how they've
been transformed into these tales. The mission of the research

(04:03):
center is to trace the path from a few garden
variety nighttime attacks in the sixteenth century to what became
a global cultural phenomenon. The birth of the ninja myth
starts with those exaggerated shinobi stories of the early Ato
period in the sixteen hundreds, spread by members of the
Japanese warrior class who were feeling a little underappreciated because

(04:25):
they'd been largely out of a job since a time
of widespread peace kicked off in sixteen fifteen. Then in
the seventeen hundreds came a series of military manuals concerned
with spying techniques, which mentioned the importance of operating in disguise.
Around the same time, Japanese artists created some famous woodblock

(04:46):
prints of people dressed in black carrying out assassinations. That's
where Turnbull believes the idea of the black ninja robe
took hold, even though the prints weren't specifically about Ninja
at all grid of attacks. People were employed for clandestine
work around Japan at the time, but a specific image

(05:07):
was starting to develop in popular books. In theater. The
throwing stars, known as shadikan have an even less founded origin.
They started as novelty weapons of the eighteen hundreds that
bored Japanese gentlemen dabbling in the martial arts would play
around with. It took a pair of enterprising Ega enthusiasts

(05:29):
to put these spiky stars in the hands of ninja.
Starting in the nineteen thirties, a Japanese martial arts historian
and military advisor named Seko Fujita began writing about Ninja.
He teamed up with the mayor of IgA to promote
the region as the heartland of the Ninja. One of
their ingenious moves was to find old illustrations of throwing

(05:52):
stars in eighteen hundreds martial arts manuals and revive them
as Ninja weapons. The two men built the first Ninja
museum in Ega in the nineteen fifties. Around the same time,
they started collaborating with novelists and filmmakers to forge the
image of what, in their minds, at least Ninja should
have been like the modern ninja legend was sealed by

(06:15):
the nineteen sixty two film Shinobi Nomono, which depicted everything
we associate with the ninja myth, the black robes and
specialized weapons, a strict code of secrecy, almost superhuman martial
arts skills, and selfless sacrifice. Turnbull said, that's really where
it all started. These two guys took these genuine historical

(06:37):
episodes and other elements from Japanese history and culture, stuck
them all in a big pot and gave it a stir,
and the rest is history. If you're interested in learning
more but not quite ready to sign up for a
master's program yet, the town of Ega holds a Ninja
Festival every April. On the weekends, you can participate in

(06:57):
ninja activities, a costume competition, and tours of the castle.
Today's episode is based on the article Research Center seeks
to Separate Ninja Fact from Fiction on how Stuffworks dot Com,
written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced

(07:18):
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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