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