TRAINING
Historically, ninjutsu was a profession inherited at birth. From infancy, the children of ninja families were conditioned to be constantly aware of the things around them. As they grew up, they were gradually educated in the secrets and traditions of the ryu. At age five or six, their play activities began to take the form of training exercises. Games stressing balance and agility were introduced. The children would walk atop narrow horizontal poles, run up inclined planks, and leap over low shrubs. At age nine, body conditioning for muscle limberness and joint flexibility was stressed. The children practiced rolling, jumping, and yoga-like movements. As the young ninja matured, striking and kicking techniques were practiced against targets of bundled straw. From this training the children progressed to the basics of unarmed self-defense techniques, and later to the fundamentals of using the Japanese sword and the traditional wooden staff.
In the early teen years, the ninja learned to use the special weapons of their ryu. Blade throwing, the concealment of weapons, and rope or chain techniques might be taught. They practiced swimming and underwater tactics, and learned how to use nature to gather information or conceal themselves. Hours were spent in confined quarters or hanging from trees to build patience, endurance, and stamina. There were exercises in silent movement and distance running, and the ninja were taught to leap from tree to tree, and from roof to roof.
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12. Ninja in training.
In the late teen years, ninja learned to be actors and practical psychologists. Through observation of their own actions as well as those of others, they came to understand the workings of the psyche, and how to use the mental weaknesses and limitations of others to their own advantage. The young ninja also learned how to prepare medicines and drugs. They were shown how to gain surreptitious entrance to buildings, and techniques for climbing walls, crossing ceilings, and stealing under floors. Ways of tying and binding the enemy as well as methods of escape were taught. The ninja also practiced sketching maps, routes and landmarks, and faces.
AT THE HEIGHT OF POWER
By the fourteenth century, the ninja had developed into powers in the areas of Iga and Koga. They worked to secure their own local influence, served as protectors of the mikkyo temples, and hired out their services to diose who sympathized with their unconventional methods and life-style .
But as political turbulence and war increased after the battle of Onin no Ran in 1467, there was more call for the ninja’s deadly skills throughout Japan. They were employed by powerful rulers such as Shogun (military dictator of all Japan) Yoshihisa Ashikaga, and many lesser warlords. The mystics of the mountains began to stress military tactics, and emerged as a force to be reckoned with. No longer content to remain aloof in their secret villages, performing at the whim of others, the ninja extended their own influence in Japan by assassinating hostile lords and attacking their forces.
One result of this increased activity was the blossoming of popular tales about the ninja, which portrayed them more as sorcerers than as commandos. Able to walk on water, pass through solid walls, read minds, know the future, disappear at will, or transform themselves into wolves or crows, the ninja of the sixteenth- century legends seemed fearsome and invincible foes to their adversaries.
The tales were the result of a mixture of imagination, exaggeration, and deception. The original ninja were mystics, in touch with powers that we would describe as psychic today. Their ability to tune into the scheme of totality and thereby become receptive to subtle input from beyond the usual five senses was strange and terrifying to the common foot soldier. Thus, confronted by a single ninja with fingers entwined in one of the mystic kuji-in (energy-channeling hand positions), a superstitious opponent might indeed feel weakened by his own subconscious fear. The opponent naturally attributed this weakness to ninja magic. Furthermore, by using their knowledge of the laws of nature and the character of an adversary to anticipate the outcome of a series of events, the ninja developed the reputation of being able to know and guide the future. Unique and imaginative weapons and tools, special methods of walking and climbing, and completely unorthodox combat techniques all intensified the awe in which the ninja were held.
THE DECLINE
The avowed enemy of all ninja was the powerful general Nobunaga Oda, infamous because of his high regard for forceful and usually violent action as a means of attaining his goals. A cold pragmatist, Nobunaga detested the mysterious and occult teachings of the ninja mikkyo, and even went so far as to protect and encourage the budding Christian religion in Japan to combat the influence of mysticism. The Christian church structure, with its hierarchy of European priests and bishops to control the followers, seemed ripe for use as a tool to Nobunaga. The esoteric ninja beliefs, in which every man was his own priest, were just an obstacle to the ambitious general’s plans to become shogun.
Legend has it that while riding through Iga with his samurai one time, Nobunaga was thrown from his horse for the first time in his life. The haunting desolation of the eerie, fog-enshrouded forests of Iga, coupled with the unprecedented fall from his horse, planted in Nobunaga a feeling of apprehension that culminated in his ordering his son Katsuyori to attack the ninja stronghold.
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13. One of the ninja’s 81 mystic hand positions.
In the battle of Tensho Iga no Ran in 1579, Nobunaga’s samurai troops under the command of Katsuyori were soundly defeated by ninja of Iga led by Sandayu Momochi. Infuriated, Nobunaga retaliated by himself leading a massive invasion of Iga in 1581. This time, outnumbered by more than ten to one, the men, women, and children of Iga were slaughtered by their enemies. The ninja, the legendary invisible ones, had been crushed by the brute force they so despised.
A few ninja survived, to scatter and go into even deeper hiding than before. Families like the Tarao, Hattori, Togakure, and Momochi took their remaining members and withdrew to regroup in new mountain retreats. The training of ninja slowly began again, and a new life unfolded for the outlaw families.
With the 1582 murder of Nobunaga in Honnoji, his ally Ieyasu Tokugawa had to move safely from Sakai in the Osaka area to his stronghold of Okazaki Castle near present-day Nagoya, without passing through the dangerous Honnoji territory. The only route left was through the treacherous mountains of Iga and Koga. Ieyasu left his fate in the hands of Iga-ryu ninja Hanzo Hattori. Hanzo successfully organized several ryu in Iga, as well as their one-time rivals in Koga, to afford protection and safe passage to the man who would become shogun in 1603 and whose family would rule Japan for the next two and a half centuries. Some of the ninja families were happy to assist Ieyasu, simply because of their joy at the death of Nobunaga. Some families saw it as a chance to secure a more stable future for themselves. Some remained silently apart from the action, keeping warily to themselves and neither attacking nor assisting.
Ironically, it was peace, not defeat in battle, that caused the final demise of the ninja clans. The rule of the Tokugawa shoguns -Ieyasu and his descendants-brought peace and civil order, which cut off demand for the ninja’s services. With less opportunity for work in the ryu, many chunin and some genin struck out on their own, but without the philosophical direction of the jonin their wisdom and effectiveness declined. Some found applications for their unique talents in police work, and others in the military. Many turned to crime, so that the right amount of money, regardless of purpose, could hire men who had once been ninja, but had become mere thugs in ninja clothing. Others cut a more romantic figure as outlaws or guerrilla fighters. The deeds of ninja bandit heroes such as Sasuke Sarutobi, Saizo Kirigakure, and Goemon Ishikawa are glamorized in the children’s tales of Japan, just as the stories of Robin Hood, Zorro, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are told in the Western world today.
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