July 26, 2025 • 51 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 8/01/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Saturday,
so we are heading into the vault for an older
episode of the podcast. This is part three of the
series that Rob and I did on the Ninja. This
originally published August first, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
three in our series on Ninja. Now, if you haven't
heard the first two parts of this series, this is
a case where you really should go back and listen
to those before you listen to today's episode, because we
lay a lot of groundwork, especially about the tricky historical
questions about the sort of act curacy of a lot
(01:01):
of the received knowledge about the Ninja. And so if
you are wondering about like how the Ninja fit into
real history versus pop culture and then sort of subsequent
lore and legend, we talk more about that in the
previous episodes. Today we're going to be focusing more on
just some of the great bits of texture and the
(01:22):
anecdotes from that historical law and legend. The stories of
individual ninjas, the stories of the stories of tools and
techniques and equipment and so forth.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, I mean, you basically can think of it this way.
The ninja existed, true statement, the ninja are a myth
and never existed true statement depends on how you tease
it apart, you know. And likewise a lot of this too,
Like we'll get into specific examples of ninja tools or weapons,
and you can say this never existed, and then you
(01:54):
can also say, but I can buy one at the
mall today, and so it's like, well it exists now, right,
So it gets complicated.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
This is a great time, I think to discuss some
of the various ninjutsu manuals that were published beginning in
the Edo period beginning under the Tokugawa Shogunate, that are
the source of a lot of the ninja lore that
we have today. So you can think about sort of
like multiple stages of development of the ninja lore over
(02:24):
the centuries. This is going way back. It's questionable whether
some of the things reported in these manuals were actually
used in the earlier periods. But these, you know, seventeenth
eighteenth century texts have lots of great stuff in them
that I think later gets picked up by authors, say
(02:44):
in the twentieth century, and reprocessed and turned into the
pop culture idea of the ninja. So there are multiple
ninjitsu manuals, and I'm just going to list some common
characteristics of them. So they will teach techniques of espionage, stealth,
and intelligence gathering, including everything from how to infiltrate a
(03:07):
building using different kinds of ladders to how to gag
a prisoner. So they're full of descriptions of techniques. They
pass along practical knowledge about real subjects, such as pharmacology,
like using herbs to achieve an effect in the body,
and how to use gunpowders. So there is some amount
of chemistry knowledge, at least as it was understood in
(03:28):
the seventeenth century. In some of these books, they describe
and illustrate tools and equipment such as caltrops. You know,
these spiked spiked objects that would be used. You know,
you'd throw them on the ground to slow the advance
of an enemy or to deny them access to an area.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, makabishi, I believe is the term for these. And
these are interesting on their own terms because if you've
played Dungeons and Dragons. You may have used these, you know,
these are pretty common way to slow down an enemy,
but a pair when you get into the history of
their use in Shinobi activities, like some examples of them
(04:06):
may have been essentially organic or found items, like essentially
like throwing nuts or you know, or today's version would
be like spreading legos all over the floor. That's not
quite like a nature fact or a found item, but
you know, you get the idea, and then you could
progress from there into potentially like metal objects that are
spiked and so forth. And speaking of those ladders, yes,
(04:28):
ladders are absolutely a tool of the ninja. And if
you are in the Dungeons and Dragons campaign and you're
playing a rogue, go ahead and equip that ladder, bring
that ladder with you, and dare your dungeon master to
make you roll a dexterity check whilst climbing it. Ladders
are great. Trust the ninja on this.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
My current rogue has a real affinity for climbing. He's
got the I don't know his level three or level
four or wherever it is. You get to pick one
of the feats, and he's got second story work where
you know, you can climb at the same rate you
can you can run.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That's great. Yeah, but I feel like we've been kind
of it's like a modern Ninja batmanification of our understanding
of what rogues should have because Batman never carried a ladder,
but he probably should have carried a ladder. I think
that would be great.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The bat ladder, I mean, the rope ladder will get
you a lot of places. I guess Batman doesn't need
a ladder because he has the unrealistic the batclaw thing
that you can just shoot and will zip him up anywhere.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Absolute trust in the masonry the building that he's interacting with. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
But anyway, all the stuff I've mentioned so far, that's
the stuff you would imagine a ninjitsu manual to include, right,
you know, techniques about stealth tools. You could use, knowledge
about pharmacology and gunpowder and things like that, but there
are also things you might expect less. These manuals often
(05:44):
emphasize spiritual and philosophical elements of the Shinobi lifestyle, like
some during the Edo period promote Confucianism with a strong
emphasis on loyalty, which of course was favored by the
Tokugawa shoguns. They sometimes also include moral discourses that serve
as justification for shnobi activities, like it's okay to use
(06:06):
lies and deception and trickery because they will help you win.
They're what you have to do to win, and what's
ultimately right is to be loyal to your masters and
to help win in the conflict. And so so you know,
you got to deliver that intelligence. It doesn't matter if
you have to lie to do it. They sometimes also
include more esoteric guidance, like the use of astrology or divination.
(06:31):
They are often falsely attributed to a great hero or
legend from history. They do not depict shnobi in black
costumes and masks. They are not generally concerned with assassination,
nor do they usually describe hand to hand combat or
sword fighting techniques, as would come to be the calling
(06:52):
card of ninja in later movies. Once again, they are
most often concerned with intelligence gathering, cycle, logical warfare, and sabotage.
And to this point, one of the manuals I'll mention
in a minute actually specifies that your shnobi your spies
should be selected based on intelligence and not physical strength
(07:13):
because these people were not primarily thought of as fighters,
but as tricksters and observers, gatherers of information.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, like your shnobi,
are they going to be able to throw down with
the samurai of an arms samurai, like you know, one
to one in some sort of a battle. I think
there's a strong case to be made. No, the trickery
if that, if that's sort of violent encounter were to occur,
the trickery is going to make the difference, not the
(07:43):
martial arts.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I'm guessing that's right. As we talked about in the
last episode, the idea of shnobi as instigators of daring
individual violence and hand to hand combat, that is more
of the later movie ninja thing. The earlier emphasis is
though there all there are lots of sort of shinobi
warfare activities in shinobi attacks, sneak attacks by night. Most
(08:05):
of the time, these manuals and early ideas of shinobi
are more focused on spying. For just one example of
how these older military manuals might focus more on espionage
strategy than on the type of combat focused ninja behavior
we think of today, there was a sixteenth century military
(08:25):
manual called the Kinetsushu, and this text was from earlier
than the major ninjutsu manual, So this is not I
want to be clear, this is not one of the
ninjutsu manuals I'm talking about. This is a general warfare
manual from a little bit earlier, and its focus is
broadly on strategy and warfare, but it contains a subsection
(08:46):
on espionage techniques, and it recommends things like the following.
It says, before you go on a military campaign, send
spies into the area that you're targeting to pose as
merchants and craftsmen. And these spies should make maps of
local topography and try to figure out the morale of locals,
for example by listening to whether people sing sad songs
(09:09):
or happy songs. And you can also try to split
loyalties within the region by doing things like have your
spies make donations to local temples and shrines to win
over the approval of the priest class.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And I'm guessing you had to be kind of selective
about how you do it, Like don't immediately set up
shop and be like, hey, what do you think of
the latest Lena Delray album? You know, like tease it
out a little bit. Make sure you have enough lead
time to really immerse yourself in the local community.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Exactly right. Oh, and I should say, by the way,
I mentioned it in the last couple of episodes, but
just to flag again one of my major sources here
also on the general facts about these ninja two manuals
is a book by a British historian named Stephen Turnbull
called Ninja Unmasking the Myth from twenty seventeen, and so
he highlights several important ninjitsu manuals that I wanted to
(10:02):
talk about for a moment here. These later manuals in
the seventeenth century onward were more directly focused on ninjitsu,
and they include texts such as the Gunpo Jeoshu, which
was published in the sixteen fifties, and the famous mansen
Shuki or bensen Chukai from around sixteen seventy six, the
(10:23):
latter of which has in some instances been referred to
as the Ninja Bible, though this is probably a misleading
way to characterize it. Mens In Chuki or bensen Chukai
the title means ten thousand rivers flowing together into an ocean,
and in particular this one is the source of a
lot of modern ninja lore. It contains details about ingenious
(10:47):
ninja gadgets and equipment. It also contains different philosophies about
spying and infiltration. It makes an interesting distinction between what
it calls yonin and enin Yonin meaning open infiltration. So
this would be sneaking into somewhere by wearing a disguise
or being accepted by the target community, so you are
(11:08):
within view, but you are disguising your intentions in some way. Meanwhile,
in en means invisibility or hiding, so this would be
infiltration by sneaking by night or hiding under floorboards.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And that's where we get into some of these the
elements of patients and endurance that we mentioned in the
last episode. I believe, like, if you're going to have
to hide under the floorboards for let's say forty eight hours,
you know you're going to have to use some chenobi patients.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's right. And that's one reason that there may not
be as much difference between the idea of practicing endurance
or patients and practicing stealth as you might originally think,
like a lot of stealth is patience. In fact, you
could even argue that that patience is very important when
you are just being accepted within a target community or
(11:59):
in disguise. Right, you've got to play the part for
a long time to sort of make people comfortable.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, yeah, you got to actually run that business. Like,
don't offer like really deep discounts. They're going to be suspicious.
Don't act like you're not interested in making a profit
one way or the other. Yeah, become a part of
the community and then betray them.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Another interesting thing about these ninjasu manuals is the thing
that makes them really tempting to interpret is that sometimes
they might include explanations and references that seem kind of circumspect,
like they don't give all the details of what they're
talking about. And then sometimes they'll have a note like
additional information is only to be passed on by word
(12:38):
of mouth.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Oh boy, that sounds very shanobi.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah. One random detail that I love, by the way,
just came across this in the book. This is about
the gun pogoshu. It's the claim that in the ancient past,
men of the regions Ega and Coca, which are places
in Japan that are the have long been claimed as
national headquarters of shinobi training. So the claim is that
(13:05):
these these ninja from IgA and Coca would travel as
secret agents, and while doing so, they would pose as yamabushi,
which means street performers such as monkey tamers. So like
the next time you see a busker playing a Goo
Goo Dolls song on the sidewalk, or you see a
guy dressed up as Superman in Times Square, you might
(13:26):
wonder is this a ninja? Is this person gathering intelligence?
Another interesting fact about the gun Pogoshu in particular is
that some of its espionage advice is given in the
form of a collection of poems, poems about spying.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Wow. Wow, that's fascinating that. Yeah, this goes hand in
hand with some of the things we've been talking about
about disguising yourself blending in. But I guess sometimes like
being the obnoxiously obvious person is also a way of
blending into the background, like nobody suspects the like the
Times Square Elmo of well, you suspect the Times Square
Elmo of things, but probably not espionage.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right exactly anyway, So, with all the caveats we've previously
established about the historicity of what's in these manuals that
you know, we might regard them with some historical skepticism. Nevertheless,
(14:25):
they do describe a lot of fascinating alleged tricks and
tools of ninjasu. So I think we should just dive
right in and talk about some alleged ninja techniques.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, I want to pick up talking a little a
bit about the female shinobi or the kuno ichi, which
I believe we mentioned in passing in the first episode.
You know, the idea that we could have both male
and female ninja, and this does really stress the the
reality that that shinobi activities would have covered a lot
(14:58):
of ground that isn't just concerned with assassination or military
and military and you know, direct military adjacent combat adjacent activities,
but get into all these areas of spycraft. And there
is apparently, according to Yoda and Ault in their book
on Ninja's that I that I cited in the previous episodes,
there there's no evidence that female shanoby ever engaged in combat,
(15:22):
though of course there are historic examples of Japanese women
serving as warriors, such as tome Gozen of the late
twelfth century. So so again not saying there weren't female
warriors in Japanese history, and even that there weren't female
shanoby operatives who engaged in combat, but there's no evidence
of such, but there there are writings about female shanobi operatives,
(15:47):
and this makes sense for reasons we already stressed, like
if you were going to engage in spycraft, you you're
you're going to take advantage of whatever tools are at
your disposal, and there are going to be certain segments
of society through which females are going to be able
to travel with a little more ease or a little
less notice. There And as we mentioned last time, there
(16:09):
is at least one named female ninja, Mochizuki chi Yojo,
and this individual's still somewhat of a mystery. There are
some arguments that she didn't exist at all, but Yoda
and all lister existence has confirmed, so I guess there
is a certain amount of evidence on one side of
the argument to say that this person did exist in
(16:31):
some form. Assuming she did exist, however, she would have
been like a poet, a noble woman, and it's said
that she was affiliated with the Takata samurai clan and
to have presided over a team of the uruki miko
or walking maidens. So she would have kind of like
been a spymaster of female shanov and so on the
(16:51):
realistic end of things, if there's truth to any of this,
whether we were dealing with the specifics of this individual or
just the general idea that there were females spy operatives
in Japan during the Warring States period, just as there
have been female spy operatives in pretty much every culture.
I think, every culture, I think we will be a
safe assumption these would have been female operatives who could
(17:15):
travel around, often as Shinto holy women, as entertainers, or
perhaps prostitutes. Now on the legendary end of the spectrum, however,
female shanobi were often imbued with various powers that were
linked to female sexuality and reproduction, and a lot of
this has much in common with various witchlike belief systems
(17:36):
from around the world, you know, even getting into ideas
of like the monstrous feminine, you know, the other ring
of the female, and taking aspects of reproduction and sexuality
and tweaking them into the you know, the demonic realm
and so forth. But this also put me very much
in mind of the Beni Jesert from Frank Herbert's done,
(17:58):
as well as their later series counterparts, the Honored Matre
or kind of like a splinter of the Benijesterrit, who
are their opposition. So I wanted to run through some
of the powers and abilities attributed to them. Again, we're
dealing very much with the legendary supernatural end of the
of the ninja pop cultural world here and not historic reality,
(18:22):
though perhaps you know, if you read between the lines,
you can sort of see like realistic spycraft, you know,
at the heart of some of these legends. So according
to Yoda and All, there were several abilities that were
said to be linked to conception, such as the power
to remove an unborn child from the womb, change its features,
and then return it to the womb. Also the transfer
(18:46):
of an unborn child from one woman to another, and
the ability for female shinobi to choose to have a
baby with any partner they've slept with over the last
ten months. This last one I found pretty interesting because
some organisms actually do engage in female sperm storage, a
form of sexual selection by which sperm cells are retained
(19:08):
by the receiving female for a period, sometimes a prolong
period of time before using said sperm. Human beings do
not do this, but you do find some organisms that do.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I recall reading about sharks.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yes, yes, sharks are a great example. And yeah, sometimes
this involves post copulatory cryptic female choice. I believe the
terminology via various methods. So it is interesting that, yeah,
this is a supposed ability of legendary mythic female ninja,
(19:42):
but you have to go into the animal world to
find examples of it in reality. Now, it should also
come as no surprise, given the sort of fem fatale
nature of female ninja and pop culture, that some of
their weapons are related to seduction and sex. If go
ahead and maybe skip fifteen seconds of this if you
just want to skip the the very mild details here,
(20:04):
but here they are. They include death by orgasm, death
by reversing the male's reproductive ejections, shall we say, back
into his body, killing him in the process. And then
there's the technique where they seduce a man so hard
that he's mentally turned into an infant.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
HM.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Great trick if you can pull it off.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Now, I'm not sure that Frank Herbert was directly inspired
by any of this, And if I had to guess
I would say he was probably not, but I have
read that he did study Japanese and Chinese culture, among
so many other things, so it's not impossible that he
got some inspiration from all of this. And certainly, like
some of these, the detailed classifications of spycraft, we do
(20:47):
see these reflected in the Dune series. You know, it's
just thinking earlier about the Hearkenans hiding somebody away in
the walls in Araken as an assass a nation attempt
on the royal household. You know, there's somebody who's like
locked up for days or whatnot. You know, so who knows,
Maybe he was inspired by it, maybe not. Now for
(21:10):
other magical arts attributed to the ninja, well, we've already
mentioned the fictional phantom toad summoning of Juriah, but there
are some other interesting ones as well, and Yoda and
all mentioned some of these, And again, not all of
these are definitely classified as ninja or shnobi, but a
lot of them are kind of shinobi adjacent. And then
again you have to think about the fact that as
(21:32):
ninja myths in the popular culture kind of coalesce, they're
going to draw in multiple things. So one figure worth
looking at is sixteenth century sage Kashin Kogi, not a ninja,
more of a wizard, attributed with various acts of illusion
and shape shifting. So he would do things like allegedly
(21:55):
throw leaves into the water and make them turn into fish.
Various other entertaining illusion instead are maybe not that far
remove from the idea of somebody doing little illusionary tricks
on the sidewalk or in a subway station.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Oh that's interesting, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
But yeah, he was according to legend, he was something
of a trickster for sure. For instance, there's this story
that he painted a detailed illustration of the torments of
Hell that when he looked at it, it seemed animated
to the naked eye, So you know, do with that
what you will. Maybe it was just like really detailed.
Maybe there was some sort of effect involved, or it
(22:33):
was magic. You know, he's a magical painter, and it
looks like it moves like you know, Harry Potter style
or something, and everybody was really impressed by it, and
in fact, the powerful Daimyo some called him the demon
Daimyo Nabunaga, insisted on buying it, and the negotiations apparently
included at least one assassination attempt on the artist, and
(22:54):
you know, but Cogie stuck to his guns and finally
agreed to sell it for just a crazy son, just
I don't know how much, but a lot, at which
point the art suddenly lost its animated magic and Nabanaga
is like, what happened? Why is it not moving anymore?
Why is it not as amazing as was previously? And
(23:15):
he's like, well, it used to be priceless, but then
we agreed on a price, and so the quality of
the piece adjusted to that price sounds like a great
way to get beheaded. But I don't know. You know,
that's the thing about being a trickster, daring, trickster wizard.
You can pull these things off. I guess.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Artists in the audience remember this negotiating.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Tape again, Yeah, yeah, try and pull that one off.
So Koji again not a ninja, but a figure that
crosses over with some of the attributed magics of the ninja,
and as a pop culture figure, he does pop up
in a lot of ninja media, such as nineteen eighty
two's Ninja Wars aka Death of a Ninja starring hero
(23:53):
Yuki Sonata, a major actor who would go on to
of course have a starring role in the recent Showgun
series on FX. But also he played Scorpion the ninja
in one of those in that recent Mortal Kombat film.
So definitely a figure that has immersed in the ninja lore,
and I think he's popped up in a film or
two for Weird House cinema. Great actor. I have not
(24:14):
seen Ninja Wars though, so I can't really vouch for it.
All right, shall we get into some more alleged ninja
technologies of note?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
As we previously discussed, the modern trope of the ninja
typically involves their use of a traditional martial art that
prioritizes medieval weaponry. Right, so these ninjas will use a
schuriken to bypass a security panel. They will kill a
robot with a sword, right, you know exactly what I'm
getting at here?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Oh? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
In reality, though, as we've been stressing, the shanobi would
have used whatever tools were necessarily and available to them,
including what was essentially cutting edge technology like the latest
in explosives, the latest in chemistry, the latest in firearms.
And so we do have some examples of the sort
of thing again with the huge caveat that we have
(25:03):
a lot of crossing of history and legend here. But
fifteenth century Shnobi commander Mochiuki Izumo no Kami is said
to have utilized smoke bombs, pyrotechnics, code signals, and some
form of weather prediction. And I'm not sure to what
extent we're talking about weather prediction that based on acceptable
(25:28):
models and methods or something that was maybe a little
more supernatural in form, but you know, both are likely
to some degree.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, Remember some of these ninja tsu manuals did involve
like divination and astrology.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, and so ninja throughout the centuries were said to
use noarroshi no jutsu smoke bombs, though yoda and all stresses.
These were likely quote carefully placed in ignited smoke pots,
given the limited pyrotechnic abilities of the time, and that
also they would use things that we would think of
as just simple firecrackers to serve as distractions, you know,
(26:01):
set off a little pop over here, just enough distraction
to do whatever it is you need to do, be
that something more pop culture ninja ish as sneak from
one point to another, or you know, switch out a
piece of paper in an office, that sort of thing.
But yeah, the smoke bombs, of course are a huge
part of the Ninja myth, and they spill over into
Batman as well, like Batman's always throwing smoke bombs and
(26:24):
disappearing right, and the reality is maybe less as instantly
dramatic as that. It might have been more something that
involved like placing something, lighting it and waiting for the
smoke to build up. Right. Now, getting into the use
of weaponry, we have the example of sixteenth century assassin
(26:44):
of Sujatini Zunjubo, and he is noted for his use
of the Japanese matchlock rifle. So this is an individual
that was definitely an assassin, definitely an attempted assassin, definitely
a marksman. Was he a shnobi, I don't know. I'm
not as sure on that. I think you could say
(27:05):
that he definitely engaged in a major shnobi activity, though
this was apparently a Codo clan marksman task with the
assassination of Oda Nobuniga himself, a local warlord was said
to have hired him for the task and provided with
key intel about Nabonaga's scheduled transit through a particular pass
in Omi. This would have been on May nineteenth, fifteen seventy,
(27:28):
so you know basic you know, sort of sniper operations.
Here he set up a position days in advance, using
like the patients of the shnoby if nothing else until okay,
here it comes the retinue. Here comes Nabunka in armor
on his on his steed, accompanied by all of his men,
and our would be assassin. Here Zenjubo knows that he
(27:52):
really only has one shot. You know, this is this
is a matchlock rifle. You know, he's not rapid fire.
He's going to get one shot off and then it's
going to be so loud and it's going to produce
a discharge of smoke. And he's not like, you know,
miles away or anything. So he knows that the instant
he fires this shot, they're gonna mark his position, and
(28:14):
so he needs to he needs to make sure that
that shot lands home or he's gonna have to like
try and get off the second one if he can.
So he fires the shot, knocks in Abunika from his horse,
but as it turns out, does not kill him because
the collar armor that he's wearing absorbs the shot, so
Zenjubo flees, he hides that he is eventually caught and
(28:36):
subjected to slow execution. I believe the story is that
they buried him up to his neck in the sand
and like sawed his head off.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Now it was worth noting that snipers then and now
sometimes utilize breathing techniques to steady one's aim in. Various
breathing techniques and things that you could also think of
as like self hypnosis have also been attributed to the
shinobi general to aid in stealth or patience. Now, at
this point, let's come back to the idea of a
(29:05):
ninja sword, something that is just inseparable from the modern
myth of the ninja. In fact, we already in passing
I think, talked about teenage mutant ninja turtles with katana.
You know, like, if you're gonna make turtles into ninjas,
you give one of them swords. That's just what you do.
And we actually heard from at least one listener who
wrote in and was like, oh, yeah, there's actually the
(29:26):
whole thing about the ninja having a specific sword, the
Shanovi katana. But as this listener pointed out, and as
it is discussed in the text we were working from,
this sword's exact form is at least a matter of
some controversy. There are a lot of strong arguments that
(29:47):
this sword never existed at all. This is one of
those examples where we don't see mention of it in
the historic ninja guide books and instruction manuals. There's a
very strong argument that these were created entirely in the
twentieth century. Though again this is certainly something where then
(30:07):
you can go around and buy one at a mall
in like Wisconsin, so you can argue that will this
shouobi katana exists now you see it in movies and
you can buy one, you know, at the mall. But
let's get into the idea of it, at least the
myth of it. The idea is that this would be
a short straight blade with a pointed scabbard, So the
(30:27):
scabbard has a point at the end, and also a
simple square guard you know, at the between the hilt
and the blade, and the aspects of its design were
said to be very practical for the ninja. So the
pointed scabbard allowed it to be driven into the ground,
so it could be you could serve as a footstool
to aid in climbing. I think there's some other stories
(30:47):
about the scabbard being used as like a breathing tube
if an engine needed to go under water. I'm not
sure why that would be more effective than having a
breathing tube on you or using a red or something.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Trying to imagine now, I think the idea with the
scabbard is that you wouldn't you could stab it into
the ground within its scabbard and then stand on the
hilt of the sword to like hop over a wall
and then like pull it up by a rope. That's
the idea, because I guess if you were to stab
the blade of the sword into the ground, the ideas
that would dull it. Yeah, But I'd also seen something
(31:22):
about just generally using the scabbard of this sword as
a kind of like a feeler, like an untinnee in
the dark.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah. The idea that you would kind of like partially
unsheath your sword, hold it out in front of you,
and if you like taped into something, you're like, oh,
there's a person there, and then you can pull your
sword out and like slash them or something. I think
it's been referred to as like a person detector or
a people detector. And of course there's the other obvious
idea that if you're doing some sneaking around and potentially
(31:52):
using that weapon in a confined space, it pays for
your sword to be short as opposed to being some
sort of like a longer sword. So this would be
in keeping with operations that required disguise and so forth
easier to hide, easier to carry, and all that. So again,
very strong argument to be made that these were just
invented in the twentieth century as part of outright ninja
(32:14):
fiction and myth making. But something that Yoda and All
point out is that, okay, if these swords did exist,
which depending on where you land on this could be
a huge if they would have been very simple. They
wouldn't have been ornate because they would not have been
forged by a master swordsmith, one of these individuals responsible
(32:35):
for the just the elegant superiority of the noble samurai sword.
But rather these would have been made by blacksmiths in
the country, probably who were willing to take a risk
making an illegal sword. Because remember, your average genobi here is,
if not an actual criminal is at least a common
born person, and it was illegal for commoners to own
(32:58):
a weapon of any so these would have been dirty
weapons made for dirty practitioners of the sketchy arts. Yeah,
and I think we also might want to consider it
questions of necessity, right, would is Shanoby operative need a sword,
because even a small sword is fairly sizable, and especially
if you consider, well, what are you gonna use it for?
(33:20):
Are you gonna are you gonna engage in a sword fight?
Probably not. And if you do need some sort of
a sharp object as a weapon or a tool, well
there there are other choices you could make, such as
a common field knife, some other kind of like sharpened
tool that on one hand, maybe doesn't constitute a full weapon,
(33:41):
and so for you're not like you're not going to
be found out immediately just because you have it on
your person, but the kind of thing that could be
used as a weapon if things got dire m h.
And in the cases where they did use swords, yeah,
we're probably talking about the equivalent of some sort of
like a black market sword. Now, these again are all
(34:09):
like pretty standard pop culture ninja weapons, though I think
it's even more fun to get into some of the
perhaps weirder technologies that ninja are held to have utilized.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Right, I think it's time to talk about misugumo. Misugumo
is a device described in the sixth volume of the
seventeenth century ninjitsu manual Mensin chu Kai, which I mentioned earlier,
And the sixth volume is sort of a It describes
various pieces of ninjitsu equipment and gadget it's kind of
(34:42):
a C branch compendium. Now when it comes to the misugumo,
there is a way in which it has commonly been
interpreted in twentieth century sources, and then there is a
revisionist understanding of it, which I think seems much more
likely what the original sources intended. I'm going to start
(35:02):
off by talking about the more likely confused interpretation. So
misugumo literally means water spider, and it's clear from the
context in which this device is described that it's some
kind of flotation device. So in some popular ninja literature
of the twentieth century, it has been interpreted as a
(35:24):
kind of footwear that allows the ninja to walk on
top of the water, often said to be used for
crossing the watery moat surrounding a castle. So imagine a
kind of wooden sandal that is a little rectangular sandal
in the middle bound with twine in the center of
(35:44):
a large flat disk made out of wooden quarter circle pieces.
So you imagine a round disc with a hollow center
made out of wood cut into four different pieces, and
they're bound together with twine, and then in the middle
you've got this little flat sandal soul to stand on.
You can look up illustrations of this if you want.
(36:06):
But this idea, in the first interpretation, is that the
ninja would stand on these and then use them to
walk across the surface of the water, because hey, wood
floats right now. Would this actually work? Would such a
device allow you to walk on water? I think we
can start by thinking about its namesake, which is the
(36:28):
water spider. There are insects and spiders that are able
to walk across the surface of the water without sinking in.
There are a number of different species that can do this.
So how do they do it well? There are generally
two physical forces that they can take advantage of. One
is standard buoyancy. This works by displacing water with a
(36:50):
lower density object, and this is how boats float. Boats
float by having a hollow hull, thus displacing more weight
in water than their own weight, so they get to
sit on top of the water without sinking down. The
other physical factor is surface tension. Insects and spiders are
small enough that different forces play a major role in
(37:12):
the way they move through the world, and the surface
tension of water is one of those forces. Water is
a polar molecule, so it likes to stick to itself,
and when there's a mass of water, it forms a
kind of skin on its surface, with the water molecules
clinging very tightly to each other and to some extent
(37:33):
resisting being split apart. So it takes some force actually
to break through this surface layer of water. Now, given
the mass of a human body, Earth's gravity pulling us
downward into a pool of water quite easily overcomes the
surface tension of water, and we plunge right in. But
as you become smaller and smaller and your mass becomes smaller,
(37:57):
gravity becomes less relevant and the surface tension of water
becomes more relevant. So some insects and spiders are specially
evolved to take advantage of the power of surface tension
at their body size by having hydrophobic or water repelling
surfaces and hairs on their bodies and especially on their feet.
(38:19):
And these surfaces they for one thing, they spread out
their weight over a larger surface area by having like
specially shaped feed and these hairs that allow them to
kind of spread out their footprint, so they distribute their
weight over a larger surface of the water. But they
also at the molecular level, tend to be made of
hydrophobic substances that do not want to get wet. They
(38:41):
chemically resist getting wet, and so they do not want
to penetrate the surface level of the water. And so
with the combination of these hydrophobic surfaces and distributing their
weight over the larger space, the arthropod is able to
walk or skate over the surface of the water by
taking advantage of that surface tent. This is great for insects,
(39:02):
but again it works because they are extremely small and
have very small mass. Once you start getting bigger and
having more mass to your body, you're just too big
to take advantage of the surface tension of water in
this way.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So you're saying Ninja might have been just really small.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
If Ninja were the size of insects. Yeah, you can
quite well imagine coming up with technology for running over
the surface of water. And that brings us back to
the Misigumo device. So I was not able to find
any rigorous testing of this device, of recreations of this
device published in a scientific or historical journal. But I've
(39:41):
come across a few informal tests staged in things like
documentaries and TV programs, And having reviewed this evidence and
read what I could about it, my assessment is this
device would probably not work as described, at least in
the way it's interpreted here as footwear, unless the shoes
were absurdly large, much larger than the specifications in the
(40:03):
Ninjasu manual indicate, in which case I question the extent
to which you could be said to walk on water
as opposed to just floating upright on two small boats.
And in that case, why is this method of crossing
the water preferable to just piloting a small raft or canoe.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Right, because a small rafter canoe works. Wonders like, there's
a reason we still use canoes and kayaks and so forth.
They're great. Why would you wear a couple of like
huge floaty clown shoes instead? Especially if you're trying to
be stealthy.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
That's right. Now, you might argue, well, you know, a
rafter canoe is big and you have to it would
be hard to like carry it to the But in
order for these shoes to work, they would also need
to be big and hard to carry.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I mean, I'm reminded of every time as a child
or even as an adult, where I've attempted to stand
on something floating and say a swimming pool, and how
long can you stay up unless it is like a
large surfboard or a larger float, But even a fair
sized float can prove difficult. You're not going to stay
up there very long.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, that's another thing I want to get to in
just a minute. Balance. Now, there is another consideration, which
is the question of what exactly are you crossing. If
it's actually water, these these you know, water walking shoes
seem very implausible. But if it's some thicker substance like
a muddy marsh, perhaps increasing the surface area over which
(41:31):
your weight is distributed with these wooden disks actually would
give you an advantage walking over a mud flat or
a marsh, or some kind of thicker, thicker substrate like
that it might help to have shoes like this because
they would function more like snow shoes, you know, they
just spread your weight out.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
This remind you know, remember we did some episodes on
mud a while back, right, and I remember looking into
like military experiments with mud and with vehicles. But I
believe there were also some accounts of boots, like trying
to figure out like what kind of boots would enable
soldiers to move through or across the mud easier. And
I know there were at least some experiments involving like
(42:12):
sort of wider shoes almost kind of like snowshoes for mud.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, So if you're thinking about mud or some other
kind of substrate different than just plain water, different footwear
options could have advantages. But coming back to the water walking,
like literal water walking interpretation, that seems unlikely to me.
One example of these informal tests that recreated a model
(42:36):
of this device and tried it out was actually MythBusters
that they did an episode where they tried it and
it did not work at all. They sank right into
the water or quickly lost upright balance and toppled over.
And they even made like much more buoyant shoes like
more buoyant, larger shoes that were different than the original
design in these Ninjasu manuals and still had trouble staying upright.
(43:00):
The issue is that an adult human is just way
too heavy for reasonably sized shoe worn floatation devices to
keep them afloat, So they're not going to work unless
you make the shoes gigantic. But in doing so, you
would probably lose the ability to quote walk in them
with any kind of grace, So you're just trying to
like stand up into little canoes. And this brings us
(43:23):
back to the how generally floatation devices on the human
scale and larger work by displacing more weight of water
than the total amount of weight that is being kept afloat.
So you can float a thousand ton boat on top
of the water if the volume of the boat displaces
more than a thousand tons of water. Right, So, you
(43:45):
can have a boat made out of steel that has
a hollow hull, and even though steel is very dense
and would sink in water, it's displacing more water than
the total weight of the boat and all its cargo.
So when you think about it this way, it's relatively
easy to create a personal floatation device that will keep
you from sinking entirely under the water, because once your
(44:08):
body is mostly submerged in the water, it's already displacing
a lot of water. The average density of the human
body is very close to the density of water. I've
seen estimates that on average, a human adult with lungs
full of air is slightly less dense than water and
will float, and a human after exhaling with the lungs
(44:31):
empty is slightly more dense than water on average, or
roughly neutrally buoyant, and will more likely sink. And this
is going to vary somewhat due to tissue composition, clothing,
Literally how much gas you have in your digestive system
that plays a role in your natural buoyancy. But as
animals were naturally right around on the line between sinking
(44:55):
and floating, So if you just add a little bit
of extra low mass volume, like a life vest, it
pushes your volume to weight ratio over the line and
makes you a little more buoyant enough that your head
easily stays above the water, with most of your body
maybe neck down or shoulders down, displacing a lot of
water below the water line, but walking on top of
(45:19):
the water is a very different physical goal than just
keeping your head and its breathing holes above the water line.
To walk on top of the water, you would need
shoes that by themselves, just the shoe part, displace your
entire body's weight in water, which again means that the
shoes need to be both light or boat shaped in
(45:43):
a way with like a hollow hull and compared to
normal shoes huge. So it is not impossible to have
sort of shoes that will allow you to float on
the top of the water. You can look up videos
of people creating things like this, but again it's just
like people standing on too small boats. They're like big things,
they're not like shoes. The other issue is balance. You
(46:06):
brought this up rob Because of the low friction that
the interface between your water walking shoes and the water
as compared to shoes and the ground, it is difficult
to stay upright and propel yourself forward on a floatation device.
In videos like the MythBusters test, when people try to
do this, they quickly either sink or just tumble over.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, you end up falling one way, and say, like
the boogie board you're trying to balance on ends up
like soaring off the other way.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, so the mizogumo as shoes interpretation for walking on
actual water seems totally not plausible. However, a lot of
this gets cleared up with a reinterpretation of what this
device was intended to be used for. So the original
text that describes this device does not describe about how
(47:00):
it's used. It only sort of give give specifications of
the device itself and shows an illustration of a single
one in isolation, notably not a pair of them. Also,
the original illustration does not indicate any kind of sandal
strap or other way of attaching the paddle in the
middle of the disk to one's foot. So some modern
(47:23):
scholars have come to think that this device was not
actually intended to be used in pairs as footwear, but
instead was a seat used for floatation in the water.
So a ninja could, according to this interpretation, sit in
this sort of ring and use it like an inner
(47:44):
tube and then float across a water remote but they
absolutely would get wet if they did this. They would
be sitting in the water, but the upper part of
their body would be sitting above the water like sitting
in an inner tube.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
So you might want to, like take your pants off,
you an pants in your pack until you get across,
climb up half naked, and then put your pants back
on right.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
And of course all of the caveats and uncertainties about
hystericity remain. We don't know if this was ever like
really used, or if it was exactly what it was
used for. I've seen speculation that seems again just total speculation,
that you could, like, oh, you could transport gunpowder across
the water without getting it wet by using one of these.
You know, you could hold it up in the air
(48:28):
and float across the water. I guess you could do that,
But then again, you could also probably just use like
a small raft or boat. So I don't think it's
fully understood what the alleged benefit of this device as
described would be. But it does seem to me that
the floating seat interpretation is more likely what the author
(48:52):
intended than the footwear and interpretation.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
I mean, we mentioned that it's important for a shnobi
operative to potentially become part of the community open up
a business. What if that business was essentially tubing, providing
inflatable circular devices for tourists to float from point a
to point B down a river, you know, at leisure,
perhaps while enjoying a beverage. It might give you the
(49:18):
cover you need.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Okay, well, maybe we have to call it for part
three here, but we've got more alleged ninja techniques and
anecdotes to talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
That's right, we'll be back and we'll cover We'll cover
some big ones. If you're wondering why didn't they talk
about X, Y or Z, we'll hold on for the
next episode, but still in the meantime, go ahead right
into us because everything is fair at game here. If
you have thoughts about ninja lore, ninja history, various shnobi activities,
(49:50):
either in the history books or on the big screen. Yeah,
it's all fair game right in. We'd love to hear
from you. Just a reminder. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
and Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, and
on Friday's Weird House Cinema that time when we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie.
(50:10):
And hey, we'll remind you. If you're on the social media,
check us out follow us and some of the various
places you can find us. A big one of course
is Instagram. That's SDBYM podcast. That's our user name there,
that's our handle there. If you're on the gram, then
go over there and follow us. Why not. It's one
way to keep up with the episodes we're putting out.
(50:31):
And we also have some amusing videos going up as well,
reels I guess reels they call them les Huge.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
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 at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows. M
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's Saturday,
so we are heading into the vault for an older
episode of the podcast. This is part three of the
series that Rob and I did on the Ninja. This
originally published August first, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
three in our series on Ninja. Now, if you haven't
heard the first two parts of this series, this is
a case where you really should go back and listen
to those before you listen to today's episode, because we
lay a lot of groundwork, especially about the tricky historical
questions about the sort of act curacy of a lot
(01:01):
of the received knowledge about the Ninja. And so if
you are wondering about like how the Ninja fit into
real history versus pop culture and then sort of subsequent
lore and legend, we talk more about that in the
previous episodes. Today we're going to be focusing more on
just some of the great bits of texture and the
(01:22):
anecdotes from that historical law and legend. The stories of
individual ninjas, the stories of the stories of tools and
techniques and equipment and so forth.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, I mean, you basically can think of it this way.
The ninja existed, true statement, the ninja are a myth
and never existed true statement depends on how you tease
it apart, you know. And likewise a lot of this too,
Like we'll get into specific examples of ninja tools or weapons,
and you can say this never existed, and then you
(01:54):
can also say, but I can buy one at the
mall today, and so it's like, well it exists now, right,
So it gets complicated.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
This is a great time, I think to discuss some
of the various ninjutsu manuals that were published beginning in
the Edo period beginning under the Tokugawa Shogunate, that are
the source of a lot of the ninja lore that
we have today. So you can think about sort of
like multiple stages of development of the ninja lore over
(02:24):
the centuries. This is going way back. It's questionable whether
some of the things reported in these manuals were actually
used in the earlier periods. But these, you know, seventeenth
eighteenth century texts have lots of great stuff in them
that I think later gets picked up by authors, say
(02:44):
in the twentieth century, and reprocessed and turned into the
pop culture idea of the ninja. So there are multiple
ninjitsu manuals, and I'm just going to list some common
characteristics of them. So they will teach techniques of espionage, stealth,
and intelligence gathering, including everything from how to infiltrate a
(03:07):
building using different kinds of ladders to how to gag
a prisoner. So they're full of descriptions of techniques. They
pass along practical knowledge about real subjects, such as pharmacology,
like using herbs to achieve an effect in the body,
and how to use gunpowders. So there is some amount
of chemistry knowledge, at least as it was understood in
(03:28):
the seventeenth century. In some of these books, they describe
and illustrate tools and equipment such as caltrops. You know,
these spiked spiked objects that would be used. You know,
you'd throw them on the ground to slow the advance
of an enemy or to deny them access to an area.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, makabishi, I believe is the term for these. And
these are interesting on their own terms because if you've
played Dungeons and Dragons. You may have used these, you know,
these are pretty common way to slow down an enemy,
but a pair when you get into the history of
their use in Shinobi activities, like some examples of them
(04:06):
may have been essentially organic or found items, like essentially
like throwing nuts or you know, or today's version would
be like spreading legos all over the floor. That's not
quite like a nature fact or a found item, but
you know, you get the idea, and then you could
progress from there into potentially like metal objects that are
spiked and so forth. And speaking of those ladders, yes,
(04:28):
ladders are absolutely a tool of the ninja. And if
you are in the Dungeons and Dragons campaign and you're
playing a rogue, go ahead and equip that ladder, bring
that ladder with you, and dare your dungeon master to
make you roll a dexterity check whilst climbing it. Ladders
are great. Trust the ninja on this.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
My current rogue has a real affinity for climbing. He's
got the I don't know his level three or level
four or wherever it is. You get to pick one
of the feats, and he's got second story work where
you know, you can climb at the same rate you
can you can run.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That's great. Yeah, but I feel like we've been kind
of it's like a modern Ninja batmanification of our understanding
of what rogues should have because Batman never carried a ladder,
but he probably should have carried a ladder. I think
that would be great.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The bat ladder, I mean, the rope ladder will get
you a lot of places. I guess Batman doesn't need
a ladder because he has the unrealistic the batclaw thing
that you can just shoot and will zip him up anywhere.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Absolute trust in the masonry the building that he's interacting with. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
But anyway, all the stuff I've mentioned so far, that's
the stuff you would imagine a ninjitsu manual to include, right,
you know, techniques about stealth tools. You could use, knowledge
about pharmacology and gunpowder and things like that, but there
are also things you might expect less. These manuals often
(05:44):
emphasize spiritual and philosophical elements of the Shinobi lifestyle, like
some during the Edo period promote Confucianism with a strong
emphasis on loyalty, which of course was favored by the
Tokugawa shoguns. They sometimes also include moral discourses that serve
as justification for shnobi activities, like it's okay to use
(06:06):
lies and deception and trickery because they will help you win.
They're what you have to do to win, and what's
ultimately right is to be loyal to your masters and
to help win in the conflict. And so so you know,
you got to deliver that intelligence. It doesn't matter if
you have to lie to do it. They sometimes also
include more esoteric guidance, like the use of astrology or divination.
(06:31):
They are often falsely attributed to a great hero or
legend from history. They do not depict shnobi in black
costumes and masks. They are not generally concerned with assassination,
nor do they usually describe hand to hand combat or
sword fighting techniques, as would come to be the calling
(06:52):
card of ninja in later movies. Once again, they are
most often concerned with intelligence gathering, cycle, logical warfare, and sabotage.
And to this point, one of the manuals I'll mention
in a minute actually specifies that your shnobi your spies
should be selected based on intelligence and not physical strength
(07:13):
because these people were not primarily thought of as fighters,
but as tricksters and observers, gatherers of information.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, like your shnobi,
are they going to be able to throw down with
the samurai of an arms samurai, like you know, one
to one in some sort of a battle. I think
there's a strong case to be made. No, the trickery
if that, if that's sort of violent encounter were to occur,
the trickery is going to make the difference, not the
(07:43):
martial arts.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I'm guessing that's right. As we talked about in the
last episode, the idea of shnobi as instigators of daring
individual violence and hand to hand combat, that is more
of the later movie ninja thing. The earlier emphasis is
though there all there are lots of sort of shinobi
warfare activities in shinobi attacks, sneak attacks by night. Most
(08:05):
of the time, these manuals and early ideas of shinobi
are more focused on spying. For just one example of
how these older military manuals might focus more on espionage
strategy than on the type of combat focused ninja behavior
we think of today, there was a sixteenth century military
(08:25):
manual called the Kinetsushu, and this text was from earlier
than the major ninjutsu manual, So this is not I
want to be clear, this is not one of the
ninjutsu manuals I'm talking about. This is a general warfare
manual from a little bit earlier, and its focus is
broadly on strategy and warfare, but it contains a subsection
(08:46):
on espionage techniques, and it recommends things like the following.
It says, before you go on a military campaign, send
spies into the area that you're targeting to pose as
merchants and craftsmen. And these spies should make maps of
local topography and try to figure out the morale of locals,
for example by listening to whether people sing sad songs
(09:09):
or happy songs. And you can also try to split
loyalties within the region by doing things like have your
spies make donations to local temples and shrines to win
over the approval of the priest class.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And I'm guessing you had to be kind of selective
about how you do it, Like don't immediately set up
shop and be like, hey, what do you think of
the latest Lena Delray album? You know, like tease it
out a little bit. Make sure you have enough lead
time to really immerse yourself in the local community.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Exactly right. Oh, and I should say, by the way,
I mentioned it in the last couple of episodes, but
just to flag again one of my major sources here
also on the general facts about these ninja two manuals
is a book by a British historian named Stephen Turnbull
called Ninja Unmasking the Myth from twenty seventeen, and so
he highlights several important ninjitsu manuals that I wanted to
(10:02):
talk about for a moment here. These later manuals in
the seventeenth century onward were more directly focused on ninjitsu,
and they include texts such as the Gunpo Jeoshu, which
was published in the sixteen fifties, and the famous mansen
Shuki or bensen Chukai from around sixteen seventy six, the
(10:23):
latter of which has in some instances been referred to
as the Ninja Bible, though this is probably a misleading
way to characterize it. Mens In Chuki or bensen Chukai
the title means ten thousand rivers flowing together into an ocean,
and in particular this one is the source of a
lot of modern ninja lore. It contains details about ingenious
(10:47):
ninja gadgets and equipment. It also contains different philosophies about
spying and infiltration. It makes an interesting distinction between what
it calls yonin and enin Yonin meaning open infiltration. So
this would be sneaking into somewhere by wearing a disguise
or being accepted by the target community, so you are
(11:08):
within view, but you are disguising your intentions in some way. Meanwhile,
in en means invisibility or hiding, so this would be
infiltration by sneaking by night or hiding under floorboards.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And that's where we get into some of these the
elements of patients and endurance that we mentioned in the
last episode. I believe, like, if you're going to have
to hide under the floorboards for let's say forty eight hours,
you know you're going to have to use some chenobi patients.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's right. And that's one reason that there may not
be as much difference between the idea of practicing endurance
or patients and practicing stealth as you might originally think,
like a lot of stealth is patience. In fact, you
could even argue that that patience is very important when
you are just being accepted within a target community or
(11:59):
in disguise. Right, you've got to play the part for
a long time to sort of make people comfortable.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, yeah, you got to actually run that business. Like,
don't offer like really deep discounts. They're going to be suspicious.
Don't act like you're not interested in making a profit
one way or the other. Yeah, become a part of
the community and then betray them.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Another interesting thing about these ninjasu manuals is the thing
that makes them really tempting to interpret is that sometimes
they might include explanations and references that seem kind of circumspect,
like they don't give all the details of what they're
talking about. And then sometimes they'll have a note like
additional information is only to be passed on by word
(12:38):
of mouth.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Oh boy, that sounds very shanobi.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah. One random detail that I love, by the way,
just came across this in the book. This is about
the gun pogoshu. It's the claim that in the ancient past,
men of the regions Ega and Coca, which are places
in Japan that are the have long been claimed as
national headquarters of shinobi training. So the claim is that
(13:05):
these these ninja from IgA and Coca would travel as
secret agents, and while doing so, they would pose as yamabushi,
which means street performers such as monkey tamers. So like
the next time you see a busker playing a Goo
Goo Dolls song on the sidewalk, or you see a
guy dressed up as Superman in Times Square, you might
(13:26):
wonder is this a ninja? Is this person gathering intelligence?
Another interesting fact about the gun Pogoshu in particular is
that some of its espionage advice is given in the
form of a collection of poems, poems about spying.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Wow. Wow, that's fascinating that. Yeah, this goes hand in
hand with some of the things we've been talking about
about disguising yourself blending in. But I guess sometimes like
being the obnoxiously obvious person is also a way of
blending into the background, like nobody suspects the like the
Times Square Elmo of well, you suspect the Times Square
Elmo of things, but probably not espionage.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right exactly anyway, So, with all the caveats we've previously
established about the historicity of what's in these manuals that
you know, we might regard them with some historical skepticism. Nevertheless,
(14:25):
they do describe a lot of fascinating alleged tricks and
tools of ninjasu. So I think we should just dive
right in and talk about some alleged ninja techniques.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, I want to pick up talking a little a
bit about the female shinobi or the kuno ichi, which
I believe we mentioned in passing in the first episode.
You know, the idea that we could have both male
and female ninja, and this does really stress the the
reality that that shinobi activities would have covered a lot
(14:58):
of ground that isn't just concerned with assassination or military
and military and you know, direct military adjacent combat adjacent activities,
but get into all these areas of spycraft. And there
is apparently, according to Yoda and Ault in their book
on Ninja's that I that I cited in the previous episodes,
there there's no evidence that female shanoby ever engaged in combat,
(15:22):
though of course there are historic examples of Japanese women
serving as warriors, such as tome Gozen of the late
twelfth century. So so again not saying there weren't female
warriors in Japanese history, and even that there weren't female
shanoby operatives who engaged in combat, but there's no evidence
of such, but there there are writings about female shanobi operatives,
(15:47):
and this makes sense for reasons we already stressed, like
if you were going to engage in spycraft, you you're
you're going to take advantage of whatever tools are at
your disposal, and there are going to be certain segments
of society through which females are going to be able
to travel with a little more ease or a little
less notice. There And as we mentioned last time, there
(16:09):
is at least one named female ninja, Mochizuki chi Yojo,
and this individual's still somewhat of a mystery. There are
some arguments that she didn't exist at all, but Yoda
and all lister existence has confirmed, so I guess there
is a certain amount of evidence on one side of
the argument to say that this person did exist in
(16:31):
some form. Assuming she did exist, however, she would have
been like a poet, a noble woman, and it's said
that she was affiliated with the Takata samurai clan and
to have presided over a team of the uruki miko
or walking maidens. So she would have kind of like
been a spymaster of female shanov and so on the
(16:51):
realistic end of things, if there's truth to any of this,
whether we were dealing with the specifics of this individual or
just the general idea that there were females spy operatives
in Japan during the Warring States period, just as there
have been female spy operatives in pretty much every culture.
I think, every culture, I think we will be a
safe assumption these would have been female operatives who could
(17:15):
travel around, often as Shinto holy women, as entertainers, or
perhaps prostitutes. Now on the legendary end of the spectrum, however,
female shanobi were often imbued with various powers that were
linked to female sexuality and reproduction, and a lot of
this has much in common with various witchlike belief systems
(17:36):
from around the world, you know, even getting into ideas
of like the monstrous feminine, you know, the other ring
of the female, and taking aspects of reproduction and sexuality
and tweaking them into the you know, the demonic realm
and so forth. But this also put me very much
in mind of the Beni Jesert from Frank Herbert's done,
(17:58):
as well as their later series counterparts, the Honored Matre
or kind of like a splinter of the Benijesterrit, who
are their opposition. So I wanted to run through some
of the powers and abilities attributed to them. Again, we're
dealing very much with the legendary supernatural end of the
of the ninja pop cultural world here and not historic reality,
(18:22):
though perhaps you know, if you read between the lines,
you can sort of see like realistic spycraft, you know,
at the heart of some of these legends. So according
to Yoda and All, there were several abilities that were
said to be linked to conception, such as the power
to remove an unborn child from the womb, change its features,
and then return it to the womb. Also the transfer
(18:46):
of an unborn child from one woman to another, and
the ability for female shinobi to choose to have a
baby with any partner they've slept with over the last
ten months. This last one I found pretty interesting because
some organisms actually do engage in female sperm storage, a
form of sexual selection by which sperm cells are retained
(19:08):
by the receiving female for a period, sometimes a prolong
period of time before using said sperm. Human beings do
not do this, but you do find some organisms that do.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I recall reading about sharks.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yes, yes, sharks are a great example. And yeah, sometimes
this involves post copulatory cryptic female choice. I believe the
terminology via various methods. So it is interesting that, yeah,
this is a supposed ability of legendary mythic female ninja,
(19:42):
but you have to go into the animal world to
find examples of it in reality. Now, it should also
come as no surprise, given the sort of fem fatale
nature of female ninja and pop culture, that some of
their weapons are related to seduction and sex. If go
ahead and maybe skip fifteen seconds of this if you
just want to skip the the very mild details here,
(20:04):
but here they are. They include death by orgasm, death
by reversing the male's reproductive ejections, shall we say, back
into his body, killing him in the process. And then
there's the technique where they seduce a man so hard
that he's mentally turned into an infant.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
HM.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Great trick if you can pull it off.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Now, I'm not sure that Frank Herbert was directly inspired
by any of this, And if I had to guess
I would say he was probably not, but I have
read that he did study Japanese and Chinese culture, among
so many other things, so it's not impossible that he
got some inspiration from all of this. And certainly, like
some of these, the detailed classifications of spycraft, we do
(20:47):
see these reflected in the Dune series. You know, it's
just thinking earlier about the Hearkenans hiding somebody away in
the walls in Araken as an assass a nation attempt
on the royal household. You know, there's somebody who's like
locked up for days or whatnot. You know, so who knows,
Maybe he was inspired by it, maybe not. Now for
(21:10):
other magical arts attributed to the ninja, well, we've already
mentioned the fictional phantom toad summoning of Juriah, but there
are some other interesting ones as well, and Yoda and
all mentioned some of these, And again, not all of
these are definitely classified as ninja or shnobi, but a
lot of them are kind of shinobi adjacent. And then
again you have to think about the fact that as
(21:32):
ninja myths in the popular culture kind of coalesce, they're
going to draw in multiple things. So one figure worth
looking at is sixteenth century sage Kashin Kogi, not a ninja,
more of a wizard, attributed with various acts of illusion
and shape shifting. So he would do things like allegedly
(21:55):
throw leaves into the water and make them turn into fish.
Various other entertaining illusion instead are maybe not that far
remove from the idea of somebody doing little illusionary tricks
on the sidewalk or in a subway station.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Oh that's interesting, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
But yeah, he was according to legend, he was something
of a trickster for sure. For instance, there's this story
that he painted a detailed illustration of the torments of
Hell that when he looked at it, it seemed animated
to the naked eye, So you know, do with that
what you will. Maybe it was just like really detailed.
Maybe there was some sort of effect involved, or it
(22:33):
was magic. You know, he's a magical painter, and it
looks like it moves like you know, Harry Potter style
or something, and everybody was really impressed by it, and
in fact, the powerful Daimyo some called him the demon
Daimyo Nabunaga, insisted on buying it, and the negotiations apparently
included at least one assassination attempt on the artist, and
(22:54):
you know, but Cogie stuck to his guns and finally
agreed to sell it for just a crazy son, just
I don't know how much, but a lot, at which
point the art suddenly lost its animated magic and Nabanaga
is like, what happened? Why is it not moving anymore?
Why is it not as amazing as was previously? And
(23:15):
he's like, well, it used to be priceless, but then
we agreed on a price, and so the quality of
the piece adjusted to that price sounds like a great
way to get beheaded. But I don't know. You know,
that's the thing about being a trickster, daring, trickster wizard.
You can pull these things off. I guess.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Artists in the audience remember this negotiating.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Tape again, Yeah, yeah, try and pull that one off.
So Koji again not a ninja, but a figure that
crosses over with some of the attributed magics of the ninja,
and as a pop culture figure, he does pop up
in a lot of ninja media, such as nineteen eighty
two's Ninja Wars aka Death of a Ninja starring hero
(23:53):
Yuki Sonata, a major actor who would go on to
of course have a starring role in the recent Showgun
series on FX. But also he played Scorpion the ninja
in one of those in that recent Mortal Kombat film.
So definitely a figure that has immersed in the ninja lore,
and I think he's popped up in a film or
two for Weird House cinema. Great actor. I have not
(24:14):
seen Ninja Wars though, so I can't really vouch for it.
All right, shall we get into some more alleged ninja
technologies of note?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
As we previously discussed, the modern trope of the ninja
typically involves their use of a traditional martial art that
prioritizes medieval weaponry. Right, so these ninjas will use a
schuriken to bypass a security panel. They will kill a
robot with a sword, right, you know exactly what I'm
getting at here?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Oh? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
In reality, though, as we've been stressing, the shanobi would
have used whatever tools were necessarily and available to them,
including what was essentially cutting edge technology like the latest
in explosives, the latest in chemistry, the latest in firearms.
And so we do have some examples of the sort
of thing again with the huge caveat that we have
(25:03):
a lot of crossing of history and legend here. But
fifteenth century Shnobi commander Mochiuki Izumo no Kami is said
to have utilized smoke bombs, pyrotechnics, code signals, and some
form of weather prediction. And I'm not sure to what
extent we're talking about weather prediction that based on acceptable
(25:28):
models and methods or something that was maybe a little
more supernatural in form, but you know, both are likely
to some degree.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, Remember some of these ninja tsu manuals did involve
like divination and astrology.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, and so ninja throughout the centuries were said to
use noarroshi no jutsu smoke bombs, though yoda and all stresses.
These were likely quote carefully placed in ignited smoke pots,
given the limited pyrotechnic abilities of the time, and that
also they would use things that we would think of
as just simple firecrackers to serve as distractions, you know,
(26:01):
set off a little pop over here, just enough distraction
to do whatever it is you need to do, be
that something more pop culture ninja ish as sneak from
one point to another, or you know, switch out a
piece of paper in an office, that sort of thing.
But yeah, the smoke bombs, of course are a huge
part of the Ninja myth, and they spill over into
Batman as well, like Batman's always throwing smoke bombs and
(26:24):
disappearing right, and the reality is maybe less as instantly
dramatic as that. It might have been more something that
involved like placing something, lighting it and waiting for the
smoke to build up. Right. Now, getting into the use
of weaponry, we have the example of sixteenth century assassin
(26:44):
of Sujatini Zunjubo, and he is noted for his use
of the Japanese matchlock rifle. So this is an individual
that was definitely an assassin, definitely an attempted assassin, definitely
a marksman. Was he a shnobi, I don't know. I'm
not as sure on that. I think you could say
(27:05):
that he definitely engaged in a major shnobi activity, though
this was apparently a Codo clan marksman task with the
assassination of Oda Nobuniga himself, a local warlord was said
to have hired him for the task and provided with
key intel about Nabonaga's scheduled transit through a particular pass
in Omi. This would have been on May nineteenth, fifteen seventy,
(27:28):
so you know basic you know, sort of sniper operations.
Here he set up a position days in advance, using
like the patients of the shnoby if nothing else until okay,
here it comes the retinue. Here comes Nabunka in armor
on his on his steed, accompanied by all of his men,
and our would be assassin. Here Zenjubo knows that he
(27:52):
really only has one shot. You know, this is this
is a matchlock rifle. You know, he's not rapid fire.
He's going to get one shot off and then it's
going to be so loud and it's going to produce
a discharge of smoke. And he's not like, you know,
miles away or anything. So he knows that the instant
he fires this shot, they're gonna mark his position, and
(28:14):
so he needs to he needs to make sure that
that shot lands home or he's gonna have to like
try and get off the second one if he can.
So he fires the shot, knocks in Abunika from his horse,
but as it turns out, does not kill him because
the collar armor that he's wearing absorbs the shot, so
Zenjubo flees, he hides that he is eventually caught and
(28:36):
subjected to slow execution. I believe the story is that
they buried him up to his neck in the sand
and like sawed his head off.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Now it was worth noting that snipers then and now
sometimes utilize breathing techniques to steady one's aim in. Various
breathing techniques and things that you could also think of
as like self hypnosis have also been attributed to the
shinobi general to aid in stealth or patience. Now, at
this point, let's come back to the idea of a
(29:05):
ninja sword, something that is just inseparable from the modern
myth of the ninja. In fact, we already in passing
I think, talked about teenage mutant ninja turtles with katana.
You know, like, if you're gonna make turtles into ninjas,
you give one of them swords. That's just what you do.
And we actually heard from at least one listener who
wrote in and was like, oh, yeah, there's actually the
(29:26):
whole thing about the ninja having a specific sword, the
Shanovi katana. But as this listener pointed out, and as
it is discussed in the text we were working from,
this sword's exact form is at least a matter of
some controversy. There are a lot of strong arguments that
(29:47):
this sword never existed at all. This is one of
those examples where we don't see mention of it in
the historic ninja guide books and instruction manuals. There's a
very strong argument that these were created entirely in the
twentieth century. Though again this is certainly something where then
(30:07):
you can go around and buy one at a mall
in like Wisconsin, so you can argue that will this
shouobi katana exists now you see it in movies and
you can buy one, you know, at the mall. But
let's get into the idea of it, at least the
myth of it. The idea is that this would be
a short straight blade with a pointed scabbard, So the
(30:27):
scabbard has a point at the end, and also a
simple square guard you know, at the between the hilt
and the blade, and the aspects of its design were
said to be very practical for the ninja. So the
pointed scabbard allowed it to be driven into the ground,
so it could be you could serve as a footstool
to aid in climbing. I think there's some other stories
(30:47):
about the scabbard being used as like a breathing tube
if an engine needed to go under water. I'm not
sure why that would be more effective than having a
breathing tube on you or using a red or something.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Trying to imagine now, I think the idea with the
scabbard is that you wouldn't you could stab it into
the ground within its scabbard and then stand on the
hilt of the sword to like hop over a wall
and then like pull it up by a rope. That's
the idea, because I guess if you were to stab
the blade of the sword into the ground, the ideas
that would dull it. Yeah, But I'd also seen something
(31:22):
about just generally using the scabbard of this sword as
a kind of like a feeler, like an untinnee in
the dark.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah. The idea that you would kind of like partially
unsheath your sword, hold it out in front of you,
and if you like taped into something, you're like, oh,
there's a person there, and then you can pull your
sword out and like slash them or something. I think
it's been referred to as like a person detector or
a people detector. And of course there's the other obvious
idea that if you're doing some sneaking around and potentially
(31:52):
using that weapon in a confined space, it pays for
your sword to be short as opposed to being some
sort of like a longer sword. So this would be
in keeping with operations that required disguise and so forth
easier to hide, easier to carry, and all that. So again,
very strong argument to be made that these were just
invented in the twentieth century as part of outright ninja
(32:14):
fiction and myth making. But something that Yoda and All
point out is that, okay, if these swords did exist,
which depending on where you land on this could be
a huge if they would have been very simple. They
wouldn't have been ornate because they would not have been
forged by a master swordsmith, one of these individuals responsible
(32:35):
for the just the elegant superiority of the noble samurai sword.
But rather these would have been made by blacksmiths in
the country, probably who were willing to take a risk
making an illegal sword. Because remember, your average genobi here is,
if not an actual criminal is at least a common
born person, and it was illegal for commoners to own
(32:58):
a weapon of any so these would have been dirty
weapons made for dirty practitioners of the sketchy arts. Yeah,
and I think we also might want to consider it
questions of necessity, right, would is Shanoby operative need a sword,
because even a small sword is fairly sizable, and especially
if you consider, well, what are you gonna use it for?
(33:20):
Are you gonna are you gonna engage in a sword fight?
Probably not. And if you do need some sort of
a sharp object as a weapon or a tool, well
there there are other choices you could make, such as
a common field knife, some other kind of like sharpened
tool that on one hand, maybe doesn't constitute a full weapon,
(33:41):
and so for you're not like you're not going to
be found out immediately just because you have it on
your person, but the kind of thing that could be
used as a weapon if things got dire m h.
And in the cases where they did use swords, yeah,
we're probably talking about the equivalent of some sort of
like a black market sword. Now, these again are all
(34:09):
like pretty standard pop culture ninja weapons, though I think
it's even more fun to get into some of the
perhaps weirder technologies that ninja are held to have utilized.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Right, I think it's time to talk about misugumo. Misugumo
is a device described in the sixth volume of the
seventeenth century ninjitsu manual Mensin chu Kai, which I mentioned earlier,
And the sixth volume is sort of a It describes
various pieces of ninjitsu equipment and gadget it's kind of
(34:42):
a C branch compendium. Now when it comes to the misugumo,
there is a way in which it has commonly been
interpreted in twentieth century sources, and then there is a
revisionist understanding of it, which I think seems much more
likely what the original sources intended. I'm going to start
(35:02):
off by talking about the more likely confused interpretation. So
misugumo literally means water spider, and it's clear from the
context in which this device is described that it's some
kind of flotation device. So in some popular ninja literature
of the twentieth century, it has been interpreted as a
(35:24):
kind of footwear that allows the ninja to walk on
top of the water, often said to be used for
crossing the watery moat surrounding a castle. So imagine a
kind of wooden sandal that is a little rectangular sandal
in the middle bound with twine in the center of
(35:44):
a large flat disk made out of wooden quarter circle pieces.
So you imagine a round disc with a hollow center
made out of wood cut into four different pieces, and
they're bound together with twine, and then in the middle
you've got this little flat sandal soul to stand on.
You can look up illustrations of this if you want.
(36:06):
But this idea, in the first interpretation, is that the
ninja would stand on these and then use them to
walk across the surface of the water, because hey, wood
floats right now. Would this actually work? Would such a
device allow you to walk on water? I think we
can start by thinking about its namesake, which is the
(36:28):
water spider. There are insects and spiders that are able
to walk across the surface of the water without sinking in.
There are a number of different species that can do this.
So how do they do it well? There are generally
two physical forces that they can take advantage of. One
is standard buoyancy. This works by displacing water with a
(36:50):
lower density object, and this is how boats float. Boats
float by having a hollow hull, thus displacing more weight
in water than their own weight, so they get to
sit on top of the water without sinking down. The
other physical factor is surface tension. Insects and spiders are
small enough that different forces play a major role in
(37:12):
the way they move through the world, and the surface
tension of water is one of those forces. Water is
a polar molecule, so it likes to stick to itself,
and when there's a mass of water, it forms a
kind of skin on its surface, with the water molecules
clinging very tightly to each other and to some extent
(37:33):
resisting being split apart. So it takes some force actually
to break through this surface layer of water. Now, given
the mass of a human body, Earth's gravity pulling us
downward into a pool of water quite easily overcomes the
surface tension of water, and we plunge right in. But
as you become smaller and smaller and your mass becomes smaller,
(37:57):
gravity becomes less relevant and the surface tension of water
becomes more relevant. So some insects and spiders are specially
evolved to take advantage of the power of surface tension
at their body size by having hydrophobic or water repelling
surfaces and hairs on their bodies and especially on their feet.
(38:19):
And these surfaces they for one thing, they spread out
their weight over a larger surface area by having like
specially shaped feed and these hairs that allow them to
kind of spread out their footprint, so they distribute their
weight over a larger surface of the water. But they
also at the molecular level, tend to be made of
hydrophobic substances that do not want to get wet. They
(38:41):
chemically resist getting wet, and so they do not want
to penetrate the surface level of the water. And so
with the combination of these hydrophobic surfaces and distributing their
weight over the larger space, the arthropod is able to
walk or skate over the surface of the water by
taking advantage of that surface tent. This is great for insects,
(39:02):
but again it works because they are extremely small and
have very small mass. Once you start getting bigger and
having more mass to your body, you're just too big
to take advantage of the surface tension of water in
this way.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So you're saying Ninja might have been just really small.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
If Ninja were the size of insects. Yeah, you can
quite well imagine coming up with technology for running over
the surface of water. And that brings us back to
the Misigumo device. So I was not able to find
any rigorous testing of this device, of recreations of this
device published in a scientific or historical journal. But I've
(39:41):
come across a few informal tests staged in things like
documentaries and TV programs, And having reviewed this evidence and
read what I could about it, my assessment is this
device would probably not work as described, at least in
the way it's interpreted here as footwear, unless the shoes
were absurdly large, much larger than the specifications in the
(40:03):
Ninjasu manual indicate, in which case I question the extent
to which you could be said to walk on water
as opposed to just floating upright on two small boats.
And in that case, why is this method of crossing
the water preferable to just piloting a small raft or canoe.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Right, because a small rafter canoe works. Wonders like, there's
a reason we still use canoes and kayaks and so forth.
They're great. Why would you wear a couple of like
huge floaty clown shoes instead? Especially if you're trying to
be stealthy.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
That's right. Now, you might argue, well, you know, a
rafter canoe is big and you have to it would
be hard to like carry it to the But in
order for these shoes to work, they would also need
to be big and hard to carry.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I mean, I'm reminded of every time as a child
or even as an adult, where I've attempted to stand
on something floating and say a swimming pool, and how
long can you stay up unless it is like a
large surfboard or a larger float, But even a fair
sized float can prove difficult. You're not going to stay
up there very long.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, that's another thing I want to get to in
just a minute. Balance. Now, there is another consideration, which
is the question of what exactly are you crossing. If
it's actually water, these these you know, water walking shoes
seem very implausible. But if it's some thicker substance like
a muddy marsh, perhaps increasing the surface area over which
(41:31):
your weight is distributed with these wooden disks actually would
give you an advantage walking over a mud flat or
a marsh, or some kind of thicker, thicker substrate like
that it might help to have shoes like this because
they would function more like snow shoes, you know, they
just spread your weight out.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
This remind you know, remember we did some episodes on
mud a while back, right, and I remember looking into
like military experiments with mud and with vehicles. But I
believe there were also some accounts of boots, like trying
to figure out like what kind of boots would enable
soldiers to move through or across the mud easier. And
I know there were at least some experiments involving like
(42:12):
sort of wider shoes almost kind of like snowshoes for mud.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, So if you're thinking about mud or some other
kind of substrate different than just plain water, different footwear
options could have advantages. But coming back to the water walking,
like literal water walking interpretation, that seems unlikely to me.
One example of these informal tests that recreated a model
(42:36):
of this device and tried it out was actually MythBusters
that they did an episode where they tried it and
it did not work at all. They sank right into
the water or quickly lost upright balance and toppled over.
And they even made like much more buoyant shoes like
more buoyant, larger shoes that were different than the original
design in these Ninjasu manuals and still had trouble staying upright.
(43:00):
The issue is that an adult human is just way
too heavy for reasonably sized shoe worn floatation devices to
keep them afloat, So they're not going to work unless
you make the shoes gigantic. But in doing so, you
would probably lose the ability to quote walk in them
with any kind of grace, So you're just trying to
like stand up into little canoes. And this brings us
(43:23):
back to the how generally floatation devices on the human
scale and larger work by displacing more weight of water
than the total amount of weight that is being kept afloat.
So you can float a thousand ton boat on top
of the water if the volume of the boat displaces
more than a thousand tons of water. Right, So, you
(43:45):
can have a boat made out of steel that has
a hollow hull, and even though steel is very dense
and would sink in water, it's displacing more water than
the total weight of the boat and all its cargo.
So when you think about it this way, it's relatively
easy to create a personal floatation device that will keep
you from sinking entirely under the water, because once your
(44:08):
body is mostly submerged in the water, it's already displacing
a lot of water. The average density of the human
body is very close to the density of water. I've
seen estimates that on average, a human adult with lungs
full of air is slightly less dense than water and
will float, and a human after exhaling with the lungs
(44:31):
empty is slightly more dense than water on average, or
roughly neutrally buoyant, and will more likely sink. And this
is going to vary somewhat due to tissue composition, clothing,
Literally how much gas you have in your digestive system
that plays a role in your natural buoyancy. But as
animals were naturally right around on the line between sinking
(44:55):
and floating, So if you just add a little bit
of extra low mass volume, like a life vest, it
pushes your volume to weight ratio over the line and
makes you a little more buoyant enough that your head
easily stays above the water, with most of your body
maybe neck down or shoulders down, displacing a lot of
water below the water line, but walking on top of
(45:19):
the water is a very different physical goal than just
keeping your head and its breathing holes above the water line.
To walk on top of the water, you would need
shoes that by themselves, just the shoe part, displace your
entire body's weight in water, which again means that the
shoes need to be both light or boat shaped in
(45:43):
a way with like a hollow hull and compared to
normal shoes huge. So it is not impossible to have
sort of shoes that will allow you to float on
the top of the water. You can look up videos
of people creating things like this, but again it's just
like people standing on too small boats. They're like big things,
they're not like shoes. The other issue is balance. You
(46:06):
brought this up rob Because of the low friction that
the interface between your water walking shoes and the water
as compared to shoes and the ground, it is difficult
to stay upright and propel yourself forward on a floatation device.
In videos like the MythBusters test, when people try to
do this, they quickly either sink or just tumble over.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, you end up falling one way, and say, like
the boogie board you're trying to balance on ends up
like soaring off the other way.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, so the mizogumo as shoes interpretation for walking on
actual water seems totally not plausible. However, a lot of
this gets cleared up with a reinterpretation of what this
device was intended to be used for. So the original
text that describes this device does not describe about how
(47:00):
it's used. It only sort of give give specifications of
the device itself and shows an illustration of a single
one in isolation, notably not a pair of them. Also,
the original illustration does not indicate any kind of sandal
strap or other way of attaching the paddle in the
middle of the disk to one's foot. So some modern
(47:23):
scholars have come to think that this device was not
actually intended to be used in pairs as footwear, but
instead was a seat used for floatation in the water.
So a ninja could, according to this interpretation, sit in
this sort of ring and use it like an inner
(47:44):
tube and then float across a water remote but they
absolutely would get wet if they did this. They would
be sitting in the water, but the upper part of
their body would be sitting above the water like sitting
in an inner tube.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
So you might want to, like take your pants off,
you an pants in your pack until you get across,
climb up half naked, and then put your pants back
on right.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
And of course all of the caveats and uncertainties about
hystericity remain. We don't know if this was ever like
really used, or if it was exactly what it was
used for. I've seen speculation that seems again just total speculation,
that you could, like, oh, you could transport gunpowder across
the water without getting it wet by using one of these.
You know, you could hold it up in the air
(48:28):
and float across the water. I guess you could do that,
But then again, you could also probably just use like
a small raft or boat. So I don't think it's
fully understood what the alleged benefit of this device as
described would be. But it does seem to me that
the floating seat interpretation is more likely what the author
(48:52):
intended than the footwear and interpretation.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
I mean, we mentioned that it's important for a shnobi
operative to potentially become part of the community open up
a business. What if that business was essentially tubing, providing
inflatable circular devices for tourists to float from point a
to point B down a river, you know, at leisure,
perhaps while enjoying a beverage. It might give you the
(49:18):
cover you need.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Okay, well, maybe we have to call it for part
three here, but we've got more alleged ninja techniques and
anecdotes to talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
That's right, we'll be back and we'll cover We'll cover
some big ones. If you're wondering why didn't they talk
about X, Y or Z, we'll hold on for the
next episode, but still in the meantime, go ahead right
into us because everything is fair at game here. If
you have thoughts about ninja lore, ninja history, various shnobi activities,
(49:50):
either in the history books or on the big screen. Yeah,
it's all fair game right in. We'd love to hear
from you. Just a reminder. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
and Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, and
on Friday's Weird House Cinema that time when we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie.
(50:10):
And hey, we'll remind you. If you're on the social media,
check us out follow us and some of the various
places you can find us. A big one of course
is Instagram. That's SDBYM podcast. That's our user name there,
that's our handle there. If you're on the gram, then
go over there and follow us. Why not. It's one
way to keep up with the episodes we're putting out.
(50:31):
And we also have some amusing videos going up as well,
reels I guess reels they call them les Huge.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
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 at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows. M
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