July 19, 2025 • 43 mins
In this four-part 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. (originally published 7/30/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick and it's Saturday, so we are
heading down into the vault for an older episode of
the show. This is part two of the series that
we began reairing on this previous Thursday. This is The Ninja,
Part two, originally published July thirtieth, twenty twenty four. Hope
(00:27):
you enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
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
(01:08):
Ninja media, either 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 definitely
(01:30):
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, and
(01:51):
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 like continuing
(02:12):
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 1 (02:28):
Right, So, 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
(02:48):
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 shnoby activities
during warfare, especially during a particular historical period that we're
(03:09):
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,
(03:30):
and whether what they're talking about matches the idea of
the ninja that has come down to us.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
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 a create, a creation of fiction and legend making.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But there is something lying underneath it, and we're going
to try to take a look at what that might be.
Right now 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
(04:19):
section 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
(04:41):
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 an number of different activities
(05:01):
in warfare. 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,
(05:22):
sneak attacks by night, psychological warfare, attempts to sew division
within enemy ranks, and things like that. So it's actually
a rather diverse set of activities or duties that would
fall to the ninja or shanobi. But they're all in
some way related to some kind of hiddenness or deception
or surprise.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
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 think twice about fighting
(06:03):
for them.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Oh but this actually, yeah, this is perfectly in line
with what some historical uses of shinobi 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
(06:25):
a linguistic complication, which is that, as Stephen 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
(06:47):
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 shinomi nomah know
as a person who is specialized by training. It's a
type of person. But you do have lots of records
of groups of regular soldiers or other people carrying out
(07:11):
a shinoby 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 shinoby attack in
the adverb sense. Do you count that as a story
of a shinoby as a noun, as like a did
(07:33):
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 3 (07:43):
Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a moment in
the recent adaptation of Showgun, the excellent FX adaptation that
I have the recommend in the pivotal scene where these
Shinobi attack. If memory serves and I've only seen it once,
I believe the characters exclaim like shnobi, and it's maybe
left a little vague, like they're just saying like something
(08:05):
shinobi is occurring, like sound the alarm of shnobi actions
in progress.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
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 shenobi or hiddenness, we can again
just call them shinobi for short, to the extent that
they were historical specialists in spying and undercover warfare, when
(08:32):
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 shanobi are primarily associated
with the Singoku Period, also known as the Warring States
period of Japanese history. This was a turbulent age of
(08:53):
roughly one hundred years with fuzzy boundaries from the mid
fifteenth to the mid to late sixteenth 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. So this
(09:16):
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 historical basis of
the ninja myth, if there is one. Now, Turnbull raises
a few very interesting questions about the historical ninja from
(09:38):
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 inn in secret warfare,
(10:02):
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, and the
(10:23):
Roman Empire.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that the author's hero Coo
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
(10:47):
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 1 (10:59):
Oh. Yeah, you include the Iliad. I would also say,
like the Trojan horse seems like a very ninja or
Shanobi type ploy.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
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
(11:27):
third the ancient third century BCE to third century CE
Sanskrit text the a Thrastra, 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 1 (11:48):
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
(12:11):
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 koh
Umru who infiltrates Masakado's stronghold with one companion, makes notes
of its layout and defensive capabilities, and then sends the
(12:33):
companion 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. Masakato
and his rebels fight off the attack, and this leads
to the spy being exposed and executed. And there are
(12:55):
plenty of other early examples of stories of people who
go into enemy trees 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
(13:17):
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 3 (13:28):
Yeah, and this reminds me of one thing we talked
about in the last episode about the different 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,
(13:51):
as opposed to I need you to like switch out
a drink or stab someone in the back with a
dag or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
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
(14:18):
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
(14:39):
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
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
fact that it goes back so far means that of
course people were spying before there was a concept of
the 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 shinobi as a
hereditary elite. Part of the received ninja mythology is about
(15:43):
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
(16:03):
these warrior elites. They were sort of medieval commandos with
a hereditary component, and this vision of shnobi 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,
(16:26):
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
(16:47):
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
(17:07):
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 activities of the Singoku period use terms that
(17:31):
are also used to describe common crime. One example is
the Japanese term seto, which normally means thieves. Turnbull cites
a sixteen to 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,
(17:52):
he will know nothing of his enemy's dispositions. So this
appears to be describing the work of a ninja as
a spot 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
(18:16):
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, Turnbull
includes a text from the fourteenth century. This is the Minaiki,
compiled in thirteen forty eight and this is a longer section,
(18:37):
but it reads as follows. Various kinds of disturbing events
occurred around the eras of Shoan 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
(18:58):
hat like a woman's in sea dead of an aboshi,
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
(19:19):
took on 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 they behaved like
shinobi canusu, meaning sneak thieves.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
This reminds me of something we talked about in the
last episode, the idea that you have less historical accounts
of Shnobi in part because you wanted your stories to
be about the aristocratic samurai, the brave exploits of the
samurai in the upper class samurai, as opposed to the
(19:55):
potentially shameful but necessary activities of actually sneak thieves, as
we're saying here, bandits and pirates exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And this could also give rise to the idea of
ninja as a kind of super samurai.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Of the pirate.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
In many ways, we romanticize them to a degree that
would not have matched up with the reality of living
during their heyday.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
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 seizes other ships from an enemy
country and takes on their goods and takes prisoners and
(20:56):
so forth. 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
(21:18):
passage I just read, Turnbull says that these gangs are
described quite differently as horsemen wearing finely decorated armor and
weapons inlaid with gold or silver, 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
(21:41):
and an 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
(22:01):
classify them 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
(22:26):
possible that in some cases shinobi 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 shinobi. So this also
brings up the question of shinobi as mercenaries. So a
(22:48):
mercenary is 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 and Goku warfare are mostly limited to shnobi
type activities. We don't really read of hired mercenaries doing
(23:08):
the work of the samurai, you know, like supposedly honorable
face to face warfare, 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
(23:31):
might pay local criminals to do high risk activities, including
shanobi activities like spying, 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,
(23:56):
since records indicate that these warriors were often seen as
crew food, low class, 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
(24:17):
hereditary elite interpretation of Ninja's is not based in history.
That they were 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,
(24:39):
or at least that many of them were lower class
warriors who were looked 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
(25:02):
Unification period under the 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, the shanobi of the
(25:27):
Tokugawa period were 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
(25:47):
turnbull rights quote. They were 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.
It's a very different take on the idea of shinobi
that the same term is being used here to describe
this very different orientation. But strangely, this is also when
(26:10):
this subsequent literature mythologizing the ninja from the earlier period.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
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 Shanobi
with ninja, and one of them bears mentioned right here,
because when I was visiting the grounds of the Imperial
(26:36):
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 guard house.
(26:57):
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 Shenobi into his personal army, allegedly in special forces roles,
(27:20):
and 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 even these more like
sort of criminal mercenary activities, but they were discharged with
(27:44):
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 kind of like a secret police
manning check points, checking papers, and you know, also keeping
(28:06):
keeping an ear open for anything they need to pass
up the chain.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
So it's interesting to 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
it would we would really be remiss if we denied
(28:41):
ourselves just delving headfirst into the ninja legend, uh and
just exploring some of the anecdotes, whatever their basis in
real history.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, so we should probably begin with the what
is in some accounts, the first Ninja of Japanese traditions. Again,
this is possible to define from a realistic standpoint. Again,
like nobody invented espionage, per se, no one invented assassination,
(29:11):
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 twenty two CE. Now,
given his era and his status, he's attributed with a
(29:35):
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
(29:57):
their era, and therefore they are now the inventor. Yes,
and so Shataku is he's been attributed as promoting the
spread of Buddhism. Okay, fair enough. I'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.
(30:18):
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 cool, which I think is quite questionable.
I how many culinary inventions can truly be attributed to rulers,
you know, in kings and emperors and so forth. Generally
(30:40):
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've
you know, we've been talking about as being a text
(31:01):
that definitely values and quantifies and defines the different forms
of espionage that are important for any kind of like
military operation.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
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 3 (31:25):
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 Chataku is said to
have dubbed o Tomo this shnoby individual as Ghenoby along
with his operatives, and they aided him in surviving against
(31:47):
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 involve
tricking the enemy into thinking their forces were more numerous
than they actually were. Like, they point to some other
(32:08):
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, Atmo would come to be described
(32:28):
as the first ninja. The info may be scant, but
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 Atomo is apparently also the
name of one of the android ninjas in RoboCop III.
(32:48):
The ninja culture, you know, spreads far and wide. It's irresistible.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Did these ninjas have rocket boots or something? Were they
rocket ninjas? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
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 1 (33:09):
Oh no, do we have to watch RoboCop three for
weird house? I don't know, investigations for another time.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah. So in this book, Ninja Attack True Tales of
Assassin Samurai Outlaws. As the title suggests, it's not all
just about ninja's 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
(33:37):
associated with ninja tradition, many of them are only vaguely shanobi,
and they may fit the mold of the latter day
mint 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
(33:59):
magic users.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Hmm. 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 3 (34:18):
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 Juria.
So Juriah was the protagonist of an eighteen oh six
book by kanwate Onnataki. But modern ninja fans probably wouldn't
(34:39):
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 Lored 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 out, you know, some
(35:00):
sort 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 1 (35:22):
That is so much cooler than the now cliche idea
of someone riding a dragon. Riding 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 the dragon's kind of like a horse
riding a toad. That's different.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
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 and 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 in
his novels, But does he have snake toad slug level
(36:02):
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 1 (36:12):
What yeah, how do the slugs beat snakes? They just do? Okay,
they just do.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It's just it's just how reality works.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I don't know, that's just science.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
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
the threads. But so many of these characters in Japanese
ninja pop culture, they end up emerging and re emerging,
(36:46):
you know, people keep diving back in and re exploring
them and reinventing them. But yeah, Juriah seems to have
been a very pivotal figure in ninja fiction, igniting a
huge nin of fad around eighteen thirty nine. This is
when an illustrated publication of the text in question came out,
(37:07):
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 Jeriah the Hero sometimes cited
is the first tokusatsu or special effects movie, and Joe,
I have not seen it myself, but I included a
(37:29):
still from it here where you can see a giant
phantom toad jumping into battle.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
We could watch it for weird House. Yeah, I believe
it's a twenty one minute film. So, yeah, it looks
like there are some streams.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Okay, that's gone on the list.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
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 Sara 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
(38:13):
the fifties and sixties, and I think 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 now they're still around. This
ninja video game is still around, but there'll still be
an occasional like big hit that comes out and it
reminds everyone just how awesome ninja fiction really is.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
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 3 (38:52):
Yeah, it does make me wonder like, outside of Japan
an international level, what would happen if you had 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
(39:13):
media itself.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
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 3 (39:34):
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 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 that
(39:54):
are clearly ninjas that are also doing things like throwing
fireballs or freeze by whatever the heck.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
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 Shaolin warrior, isn't he right?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Right? And I believe at least originally sub Zero was
supposed to be Chinese. But this, this is Moratl 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,
(40:35):
you know, 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 1 (40:42):
Johnny Cage is American, Sonia Blade is American, right I
think so?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah, American, dwell 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 i'd young.
They were like, Okay, Cano is Australian from now on.
Oh so you know you have changes like that that.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Occur raidings from out world.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Yeah. So he's generally or maybe not 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 1 (41:24):
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 Ninja's throughout history, legendary ninjas,
Ninja anecdotes and techniques and technologies, and just we're gonna
find a lot of little corners to look into.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Least a little bit the physics of toad riding.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yes, all right, we're gonna 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 lost
(42:12):
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.
(42:32):
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 format
(42:55):
is to do a Weird House rewind. That's a vault episode,
a rerun of a past Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Huge thanks 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 2 (43:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick and it's Saturday, so we are
heading down into the vault for an older episode of
the show. This is part two of the series that
we began reairing on this previous Thursday. This is The Ninja,
Part two, originally published July thirtieth, twenty twenty four. Hope
(00:27):
you enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
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
(01:08):
Ninja media, either 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 definitely
(01:30):
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, and
(01:51):
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 like continuing
(02:12):
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 1 (02:28):
Right, So, 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
(02:48):
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 shnoby activities
during warfare, especially during a particular historical period that we're
(03:09):
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,
(03:30):
and whether what they're talking about matches the idea of
the ninja that has come down to us.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
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 a create, a creation of fiction and legend making.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But there is something lying underneath it, and we're going
to try to take a look at what that might be.
Right now 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
(04:19):
section 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
(04:41):
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 an number of different activities
(05:01):
in warfare. 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,
(05:22):
sneak attacks by night, psychological warfare, attempts to sew division
within enemy ranks, and things like that. So it's actually
a rather diverse set of activities or duties that would
fall to the ninja or shanobi. But they're all in
some way related to some kind of hiddenness or deception
or surprise.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
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 think twice about fighting
(06:03):
for them.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Oh but this actually, yeah, this is perfectly in line
with what some historical uses of shinobi 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
(06:25):
a linguistic complication, which is that, as Stephen 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
(06:47):
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 shinomi nomah know
as a person who is specialized by training. It's a
type of person. But you do have lots of records
of groups of regular soldiers or other people carrying out
(07:11):
a shinoby 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 shinoby attack in
the adverb sense. Do you count that as a story
of a shinoby as a noun, as like a did
(07:33):
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 3 (07:43):
Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a moment in
the recent adaptation of Showgun, the excellent FX adaptation that
I have the recommend in the pivotal scene where these
Shinobi attack. If memory serves and I've only seen it once,
I believe the characters exclaim like shnobi, and it's maybe
left a little vague, like they're just saying like something
(08:05):
shinobi is occurring, like sound the alarm of shnobi actions
in progress.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
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 shenobi or hiddenness, we can again
just call them shinobi for short, to the extent that
they were historical specialists in spying and undercover warfare, when
(08:32):
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 shanobi are primarily associated
with the Singoku Period, also known as the Warring States
period of Japanese history. This was a turbulent age of
(08:53):
roughly one hundred years with fuzzy boundaries from the mid
fifteenth to the mid to late sixteenth 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. So this
(09:16):
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 historical basis of
the ninja myth, if there is one. Now, Turnbull raises
a few very interesting questions about the historical ninja from
(09:38):
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 inn in secret warfare,
(10:02):
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, and the
(10:23):
Roman Empire.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that the author's hero Coo
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
(10:47):
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 1 (10:59):
Oh. Yeah, you include the Iliad. I would also say,
like the Trojan horse seems like a very ninja or
Shanobi type ploy.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
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
(11:27):
third the ancient third century BCE to third century CE
Sanskrit text the a Thrastra, 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 1 (11:48):
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
(12:11):
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 koh
Umru who infiltrates Masakado's stronghold with one companion, makes notes
of its layout and defensive capabilities, and then sends the
(12:33):
companion 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. Masakato
and his rebels fight off the attack, and this leads
to the spy being exposed and executed. And there are
(12:55):
plenty of other early examples of stories of people who
go into enemy trees 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
(13:17):
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 3 (13:28):
Yeah, and this reminds me of one thing we talked
about in the last episode about the different 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,
(13:51):
as opposed to I need you to like switch out
a drink or stab someone in the back with a
dag or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
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
(14:18):
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
(14:39):
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
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
fact that it goes back so far means that of
course people were spying before there was a concept of
the 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 shinobi as a
hereditary elite. Part of the received ninja mythology is about
(15:43):
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
(16:03):
these warrior elites. They were sort of medieval commandos with
a hereditary component, and this vision of shnobi 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,
(16:26):
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
(16:47):
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
(17:07):
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 activities of the Singoku period use terms that
(17:31):
are also used to describe common crime. One example is
the Japanese term seto, which normally means thieves. Turnbull cites
a sixteen to 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,
(17:52):
he will know nothing of his enemy's dispositions. So this
appears to be describing the work of a ninja as
a spot 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
(18:16):
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, Turnbull
includes a text from the fourteenth century. This is the Minaiki,
compiled in thirteen forty eight and this is a longer section,
(18:37):
but it reads as follows. Various kinds of disturbing events
occurred around the eras of Shoan 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
(18:58):
hat like a woman's in sea dead of an aboshi,
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
(19:19):
took on 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 they behaved like
shinobi canusu, meaning sneak thieves.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
This reminds me of something we talked about in the
last episode, the idea that you have less historical accounts
of Shnobi in part because you wanted your stories to
be about the aristocratic samurai, the brave exploits of the
samurai in the upper class samurai, as opposed to the
(19:55):
potentially shameful but necessary activities of actually sneak thieves, as
we're saying here, bandits and pirates exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And this could also give rise to the idea of
ninja as a kind of super samurai.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Of the pirate.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
In many ways, we romanticize them to a degree that
would not have matched up with the reality of living
during their heyday.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
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 seizes other ships from an enemy
country and takes on their goods and takes prisoners and
(20:56):
so forth. 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
(21:18):
passage I just read, Turnbull says that these gangs are
described quite differently as horsemen wearing finely decorated armor and
weapons inlaid with gold or silver, 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
(21:41):
and an 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
(22:01):
classify them 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
(22:26):
possible that in some cases shinobi 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 shinobi. So this also
brings up the question of shinobi as mercenaries. So a
(22:48):
mercenary is 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 and Goku warfare are mostly limited to shnobi
type activities. We don't really read of hired mercenaries doing
(23:08):
the work of the samurai, you know, like supposedly honorable
face to face warfare, 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
(23:31):
might pay local criminals to do high risk activities, including
shanobi activities like spying, 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,
(23:56):
since records indicate that these warriors were often seen as
crew food, low class, 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
(24:17):
hereditary elite interpretation of Ninja's is not based in history.
That they were 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,
(24:39):
or at least that many of them were lower class
warriors who were looked 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
(25:02):
Unification period under the 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, the shanobi of the
(25:27):
Tokugawa period were 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
(25:47):
turnbull rights quote. They were 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.
It's a very different take on the idea of shinobi
that the same term is being used here to describe
this very different orientation. But strangely, this is also when
(26:10):
this subsequent literature mythologizing the ninja from the earlier period.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
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 Shanobi
with ninja, and one of them bears mentioned right here,
because when I was visiting the grounds of the Imperial
(26:36):
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 guard house.
(26:57):
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 Shenobi into his personal army, allegedly in special forces roles,
(27:20):
and 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 even these more like
sort of criminal mercenary activities, but they were discharged with
(27:44):
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 kind of like a secret police
manning check points, checking papers, and you know, also keeping
(28:06):
keeping an ear open for anything they need to pass
up the chain.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
So it's interesting to 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
it would we would really be remiss if we denied
(28:41):
ourselves just delving headfirst into the ninja legend, uh and
just exploring some of the anecdotes, whatever their basis in
real history.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, so we should probably begin with the what
is in some accounts, the first Ninja of Japanese traditions. Again,
this is possible to define from a realistic standpoint. Again,
like nobody invented espionage, per se, no one invented assassination,
(29:11):
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 twenty two CE. Now,
given his era and his status, he's attributed with a
(29:35):
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
(29:57):
their era, and therefore they are now the inventor. Yes,
and so Shataku is he's been attributed as promoting the
spread of Buddhism. Okay, fair enough. I'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.
(30:18):
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 cool, which I think is quite questionable.
I how many culinary inventions can truly be attributed to rulers,
you know, in kings and emperors and so forth. Generally
(30:40):
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've
you know, we've been talking about as being a text
(31:01):
that definitely values and quantifies and defines the different forms
of espionage that are important for any kind of like
military operation.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
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 3 (31:25):
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 Chataku is said to
have dubbed o Tomo this shnoby individual as Ghenoby along
with his operatives, and they aided him in surviving against
(31:47):
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 involve
tricking the enemy into thinking their forces were more numerous
than they actually were. Like, they point to some other
(32:08):
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, Atmo would come to be described
(32:28):
as the first ninja. The info may be scant, but
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 Atomo is apparently also the
name of one of the android ninjas in RoboCop III.
(32:48):
The ninja culture, you know, spreads far and wide. It's irresistible.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Did these ninjas have rocket boots or something? Were they
rocket ninjas? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
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 1 (33:09):
Oh no, do we have to watch RoboCop three for
weird house? I don't know, investigations for another time.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah. So in this book, Ninja Attack True Tales of
Assassin Samurai Outlaws. As the title suggests, it's not all
just about ninja's 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
(33:37):
associated with ninja tradition, many of them are only vaguely shanobi,
and they may fit the mold of the latter day
mint 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
(33:59):
magic users.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Hmm. 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 3 (34:18):
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 Juria.
So Juriah was the protagonist of an eighteen oh six
book by kanwate Onnataki. But modern ninja fans probably wouldn't
(34:39):
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 Lored 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 out, you know, some
(35:00):
sort 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 1 (35:22):
That is so much cooler than the now cliche idea
of someone riding a dragon. Riding 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 the dragon's kind of like a horse
riding a toad. That's different.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
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 and 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 in
his novels, But does he have snake toad slug level
(36:02):
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 1 (36:12):
What yeah, how do the slugs beat snakes? They just do? Okay,
they just do.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It's just it's just how reality works.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I don't know, that's just science.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
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
the threads. But so many of these characters in Japanese
ninja pop culture, they end up emerging and re emerging,
(36:46):
you know, people keep diving back in and re exploring
them and reinventing them. But yeah, Juriah seems to have
been a very pivotal figure in ninja fiction, igniting a
huge nin of fad around eighteen thirty nine. This is
when an illustrated publication of the text in question came out,
(37:07):
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 Jeriah the Hero sometimes cited
is the first tokusatsu or special effects movie, and Joe,
I have not seen it myself, but I included a
(37:29):
still from it here where you can see a giant
phantom toad jumping into battle.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
We could watch it for weird House. Yeah, I believe
it's a twenty one minute film. So, yeah, it looks
like there are some streams.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Okay, that's gone on the list.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
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 Sara 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
(38:13):
the fifties and sixties, and I think 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 now they're still around. This
ninja video game is still around, but there'll still be
an occasional like big hit that comes out and it
reminds everyone just how awesome ninja fiction really is.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
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 3 (38:52):
Yeah, it does make me wonder like, outside of Japan
an international level, what would happen if you had 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
(39:13):
media itself.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
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 3 (39:34):
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 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 that
(39:54):
are clearly ninjas that are also doing things like throwing
fireballs or freeze by whatever the heck.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
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 Shaolin warrior, isn't he right?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Right? And I believe at least originally sub Zero was
supposed to be Chinese. But this, this is Moratl 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,
(40:35):
you know, 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 1 (40:42):
Johnny Cage is American, Sonia Blade is American, right I
think so?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah, American, dwell 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 i'd young.
They were like, Okay, Cano is Australian from now on.
Oh so you know you have changes like that that.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Occur raidings from out world.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Yeah. So he's generally or maybe not 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 1 (41:24):
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 Ninja's throughout history, legendary ninjas,
Ninja anecdotes and techniques and technologies, and just we're gonna
find a lot of little corners to look into.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Least a little bit the physics of toad riding.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yes, all right, we're gonna 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 lost
(42:12):
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.
(42:32):
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 format
(42:55):
is to do a Weird House rewind. That's a vault episode,
a rerun of a past Weird House Cinema episode.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Huge thanks 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 2 (43:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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