Ninja are stock characters today as the masked spies of medieval Japan. While a lot of what people know about the ninja is true, there are a lot of misconceptions about these mysterious assassins.
The ninja, or shinobi, was a spy or covert martial artist hired by daimyo (feudal lords) or samurai (warriors) to perform secret operations, gather intel about the enemy, or to commit stuff forbidden by the code of bushido, which was very similar to the European idea of chivalry. Samurai were required to follow bushido, but ninja had no such restrictions. Therefore, samurai would hire ninja as mercenaries so as to not get their hands dirty.
Ninja are characterized as wearing black clothing and appear very obvious when compared with normal people, but in reality, to blend in, a ninja would’ve worn the standard indigo-dyed dark blue clothes of a farmer, with a mask and belt for weapons. The myth of black-clad ninjas arose from kabuki theatre, in which the ninja were often portrayed by puppeteers already practiced in being inconspicuous. The puppeteers usually wore black that blended in with the theatre floor, so that puppets would appear to move by themselves.
Ninja are characterized as using shurikens to kill, but in reality the shuriken was used to delay and distract the opponent. The kunai or trowel knife was the main tool of the ninja, being used to kill, fight, and to dig and other purposes. Ninja often carried grappling hooks and ropes, but they probably did not carry ninjatos, which are swords alleged to have been used by the ninja instead of the katana or tachi that were used by samurai. Since there is no evidence, though, of ninjatos existing before the 20th century, ninja probably used katanas as their swords. Ninja assassins were known to have used arquebuses or muskets and an attempt on lord Oda Nobunaga’s life was made by Sugitani Zenjubo, a sharpshooter, using two arquebuses.
Ninja primarily came from two clans, the Iga and the Koga, who lived in their separate, but adjacent counties. The Iga and the Koga were hired famously in the Sengoku period by the lords Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Oda Nobunaga is famous for destroying the Iga and Koga clans’ villages in this period, and after Tokugawa Yoshimune became shogun, after the Sengoku period, the ninja disappeared as a profession, being replaced by oniwaban. Hattori Hanzo was one of the last ninja from Iga and was close to Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Today the ninja appear in many fictionalized accounts and many schools have been founded on ninjutsu, or the art of the ninja. However, there is still a lot that we don’t know about ninja as it was kinda necessary to their living that they keep their secrets, well secret.
Anay Ganesh 