Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And we are back with our second episode on the Ninja.
Speaker 2: If you didn't listen to part one, go back and
Speaker 2: start with that one. We talked about the modern pop
Speaker 2: culture idea of the ninja a bit we didn't cover everything.
Speaker 2: We're going to continue to throw in some mentions here
Speaker 2: and there. And we've been getting some great listener mail
Speaker 2: from folks writing in about their own first exposure to
Speaker 2: ninja media, either you know, Japanese media or international media,
Speaker 2: and so just keep that kind of stuff rolling in.
Speaker 2: And when we get around to doing another listener mail episode,
Speaker 2: which we're currently experimenting with a return to the old
Speaker 2: format of having our listener mail episodes occur on a
Speaker 2: Tuesday or Thursday, when we get around to that will
Speaker 2: definitely dive into the ninja portion of the mail bag.
Speaker 2: We talked about how the idea of the ninja entered
Speaker 2: the global mainstream. We discussed a little bit the scarcity
Speaker 2: of historical accounts of the ninja, basic ideas concerning the
Speaker 2: reality of what we refer to as a ninja, the
Speaker 2: origin of the word, other colloquial names for the ninja,
Speaker 2: and what sorts of activities they engaged in and are
Speaker 2: said to have engaged in. And we also discussed how
Speaker 2: the pop culture transformation of the ninja was not a
Speaker 2: Western or even a modern thing, but began in Japan
Speaker 2: centuries ago. And so we're going to jump back in
Speaker 2: here talking about some more ninja history and sort of
Speaker 2: like continuing to sort of tease apart, like what is history,
Speaker 2: what is probably accurate from a historical standpoint, and then
Speaker 2: then what are the additional layers of legend and fiction
Speaker 2: that also lead to this modern idea of what the
Speaker 2: ninja is.
Speaker 3: Right Before we get into more individual anecdotes and investigations,
Speaker 3: I wanted to start with a brief way of looking
Speaker 3: at the historical basis of the ninja myth. As we
Speaker 3: mentioned in the last episode, this is a really complicated subject.
Speaker 3: There are serious questions among scholars about to what extent
Speaker 3: the historical ninja actually existed at all. It certainly is
Speaker 3: the case that there are lots of historical records of
Speaker 3: activities during warfare that were referred to as shinobi. This
Speaker 3: is a synonym for ninja shenoby no mono shinoby activities
Speaker 3: during warfare, especially during a particular historical period that we're
Speaker 3: going to talk about in a bit. So it's not
Speaker 3: like a scarcity of historical sources referring to ninja type
Speaker 3: activities or shnobi activities. Instead, it seems to me the
Speaker 3: historicity question is more about how accurate these sources are,
Speaker 3: how to understand what they're talking about within its historical context,
Speaker 3: and whether what they're talking about matches the idea of
Speaker 3: the ninja that has come down to us.
Speaker 2: That's right. Like in the last episode we talked about
Speaker 2: how the basic idea, the image that instantly infiltrates your
Speaker 2: mind concerning the ninja, of the black clad individual with
Speaker 2: swords and so forth. This is largely a fiction. This
Speaker 2: is largely are a creation of fiction and legend making.
Speaker 3: But there is something lying underneath it, and we're going
Speaker 3: to try to take a look at what that might be.
Speaker 3: Right now, I want to mention again a major source
Speaker 3: that I brought up in the last episode. This is
Speaker 3: a book by Stephen Turnbull, who is a British historian
Speaker 3: who's written a lot on the history of the ninja
Speaker 3: and on Japanese history. The book is called Ninja Unmasking
Speaker 3: the Myth from twenty seventeen, and specifically, in this section
Speaker 3: we're about to do, I'm sort of relying on a
Speaker 3: chapter of his book that's trying to trace the elusive,
Speaker 3: underlying nature of what the ninja was and how that
Speaker 3: relates to the ninja lore that came down. So to
Speaker 3: refresh from last time, ninja or shinobi no mono are
Speaker 3: two different ways of expressing the same idea. The core
Speaker 3: idea is a person who sneaks, one who practices stealth, secrecy,
Speaker 3: or hiddenness, or also, in one alternate reading of the word,
Speaker 3: one who practices endurance or patience, which is an interesting
Speaker 3: double loading of meaning on the term. While this term
Speaker 3: can apply to a number of different activities in warfare,
Speaker 3: a commonly cited equivalent in English would be something like
Speaker 3: spy or secret agent. Now, as classically understood, ninja or
Speaker 3: shinobi would be engaged in activities like spying across enemy lines,
Speaker 3: infiltrating enemy strongholds, engaging in trickery and deception, sneak attacks
Speaker 3: by night. Psychological warfare attempts to sew division within enemy
Speaker 3: ranks like that. So it's actually a rather diverse set
Speaker 3: of activities or duties that would fall to the ninja
Speaker 3: or shnobi. But they're all in some way related to
Speaker 3: some kind of hiddenness or deception or surprise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not all of them translate into the pop cultural
Speaker 2: idea of the ninja. Like, I've never seen a ninja
Speaker 2: movie where the ninja's main mission is to infiltrate the
Speaker 2: enemy barracks and start bad talking the rice rations, you know,
Speaker 2: being like, man, they really don't give us good rice,
Speaker 2: and they'd give us a little of it. I can't
Speaker 2: believe these guys. We should probably, you know, think twice
Speaker 2: about fighting for them.
Speaker 3: Oh but this, actually, yeah, this is perfectly in line
Speaker 3: with what some historical uses of shnobi would refer to. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the use of trying to sew division within enemy ranks
Speaker 3: by using a double agent or a secret agent. Now,
Speaker 3: one really important point is that when looking to our
Speaker 3: earliest sources on the real shnobi of history, there is
Speaker 3: a linguistic complication, which is that, as Steven Turnbull talks
Speaker 3: about in his book in Historical Documents, Shinobi is not
Speaker 3: only used as a noun, it can also be and
Speaker 3: very often is, an adverb, meaning it's describing an action,
Speaker 3: not a type of person, and the adverb form means
Speaker 3: that a person, maybe anyone, not just a specialist, can
Speaker 3: carry out an activity in a shinobi manner. So we
Speaker 3: often understand ninja or its equivalent shinobi shinobi nomono as
Speaker 3: a person who is specialized by training. It's a type
Speaker 3: of person. But you do have lots of records of
Speaker 3: groups of regular soldiers or other people carrying out a
Speaker 3: shinobi attack on a castle or fortress, usually meaning a
Speaker 3: sneak attack by night, or some of their secretive approach,
Speaker 3: and this creates issues for historians. When you see a
Speaker 3: story of somebody doing some kind of shinobi attack in
Speaker 3: the adverb sense, do you count that as a story
Speaker 3: of a shnoby as a noun as like a did
Speaker 3: a ninja necessarily do that? Or is this the case
Speaker 3: where we're using the equivalent of ninja to describe just
Speaker 3: a way of doing something in secret, even if they're
Speaker 3: not a specialist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a moment in
Speaker 2: the recent adaptation of Showgun the excellent FX adaptation that
Speaker 2: I have to recommend. In the pivotal scene where these
Speaker 2: shanoby attack, if memory serves and I've only seen it once,
Speaker 2: I believe the characters just exclaim like shnoby, and it's
Speaker 2: maybe left a little vague that like they're just saying
Speaker 2: like something shinoby is occurring, like sound the alarm shnobi
Speaker 2: actions in progress.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's interesting, And so that could refer to
Speaker 3: any kind of like deception or surprise or hiddenness. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But to come back to the idea of shinobi nomono,
Speaker 3: the people who practice shinoby or hiddenness, we can again
Speaker 3: just call them shinoby for short. To the extent that
Speaker 3: they were historical specialists in spying and undercover warfare, when
Speaker 3: did they flourish. There's a bit of complication here also
Speaker 3: because you get some claims of earlier precedents. We're going
Speaker 3: to talk about some of these later in this episode.
Speaker 3: But the classical ninja, the classical shinobi are primarily associated
Speaker 3: with the Singoku period, also known as the Warring States
Speaker 3: period of Japanese history. This was a turbulent age of
Speaker 3: roughly one hundred years, with fuzzy boundaries from the mid
Speaker 3: fifteenth to the mid to late sixteenth century, characterized by
Speaker 3: civil wars, rebellions, and revolts throughout Japan, and this time
Speaker 3: came to a close as the country fell under the
Speaker 3: central control of the Tokugawa Shogunate beginning around the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: So this time the Singoku period, the time of civil
Speaker 3: wars in the fourteen hundreds to the fifteen hundreds, this
Speaker 3: was the heyday of the historical ninja, and it's in
Speaker 3: records of this time period that we'll find the history
Speaker 3: basis of the ninja myth, if there is one. Now.
Speaker 3: Turnbull raises a few very interesting questions about the historical
Speaker 3: ninja from the Singoku period and how they relate to
Speaker 3: received facts about the ninja that we've sort of gotten
Speaker 3: from the tradition and lore that emerged over time. One
Speaker 3: question that comes up is are the ninja uniquely Japanese?
Speaker 3: Ninja are sometimes represented as a totally unique Japanese innovation
Speaker 3: in secret warfare, but Turnbull disputes this, saying that if
Speaker 3: you look at the types of activities that are attributed
Speaker 3: to them in the sources that have some chance of
Speaker 3: being historically accurate. They're similar to activities we see recorded
Speaker 3: in all kinds of societies, in all large war fighting societies.
Speaker 3: You might find similar records of activities in China, Mesopotamia,
Speaker 3: and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that the author's hero Yoda
Speaker 2: and Matt All talk about in Ninja Attack True Tales
Speaker 2: of Assassin Samuraian Outlaws, which is a book that I've
Speaker 2: been turning to in research for this episode, and they
Speaker 2: point out that you see shnobi like activities in such
Speaker 2: cases as the Odyssey, you know, which of course is
Speaker 2: a is a literary work, but still like the most
Speaker 2: one of the more believable aspects of the Odyssey is,
Speaker 2: say the example of Odysseus dresses as a beggar to
Speaker 2: sneak into the walls of Troy.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, you include the Iliad. I would also say,
Speaker 3: like the Trojan Horse seems like a very ninja or
Speaker 3: Shanobi type ploy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. They also point to the episode in the Bible
Speaker 2: where Joshuason's a pair of secret agents into the walled
Speaker 2: city of Jericho, and you know, just looking around, there
Speaker 2: are also accounts of espionage under King Hammurabi of the
Speaker 2: Second millennium BCE Babylon. They're apparently accounts from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2: And we've already mentioned the art of war, but the third,
Speaker 2: the ancient third century BCE to third century CE Sanskrit
Speaker 2: text the Arastra, also speaks of it. So again, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Japanese didn't invent secrecy, assassination, espionage, and all these
Speaker 2: other related activities. It just emerges universally as just part
Speaker 2: of human conflict.
Speaker 3: But there are some i think cultural details that will
Speaker 3: attach themselves to the Ninja myth as it develops that
Speaker 3: are more unique, and we'll talk about those as we
Speaker 3: go on. Another thing Turnbull points out is that there
Speaker 3: are references to spying during warfare in Japanese texts from
Speaker 3: before the Singoku period. One example is a text called
Speaker 3: the Shomunkey, which is from the tenth century, and it
Speaker 3: tells the story of a rebel named Taira Masakato, and
Speaker 3: in this record, his enemy hires a spy named Koha Rumaru,
Speaker 3: who infiltrates Masakado's stronghold with one companion, makes notes of
Speaker 3: its layout and defensive capabilities, and then sends the companion
Speaker 3: back to their employer with the information. But in this
Speaker 3: story the dangers of spying are made clear because the
Speaker 3: spy's employer uses the information, the information acquired by the
Speaker 3: spy to launch a night attack, which fails. Masakado and
Speaker 3: his rebels fight off the attack, and this leads to
Speaker 3: the spy being exposed and executed. And there are plenty
Speaker 3: of other early examples of stories of people who go
Speaker 3: into enemy terrain or inside an enemy castle or fortification,
Speaker 3: make a note of the layout, and then report back
Speaker 3: to outside conspirators. So this is a common form of spying,
Speaker 3: a very important thing in warfare. That's a little bit
Speaker 3: less what you imagine if you know, you're thinking of
Speaker 3: the ninja as like a martial artist, someone who goes
Speaker 3: in and sort of does daring individual violence. A lot
Speaker 3: of spying is just making note of information and getting
Speaker 3: it back outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this reminds me of one thing we talked
Speaker 2: about in the last episode about the different classifications according
Speaker 2: to sun Zoo of the spy and how there are
Speaker 2: different things you dare ask of your different level of
Speaker 2: espionage operative. And so it's a much I mean, it's
Speaker 2: still highly dangerous, but it's one thing to say, I
Speaker 2: need you to make a small map and report back,
Speaker 2: as opposed to I need you to switch out a
Speaker 2: drink or stab someone in the back with a dag
Speaker 2: or that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Right, So, spying both within and outside Japan predates any
Speaker 3: concept of specialized ninja training, and it would have been
Speaker 3: influenced by literature such as the Chinese classic The Art
Speaker 3: of War, which you just brought up. I mentioned The
Speaker 3: Art of War in the previous episode because of this
Speaker 3: section about the five different kinds of secret agents. But
Speaker 3: there is plenty of evidence that Japanese political and military leaders,
Speaker 3: including the Samurai aristocracy, were widely familiar with this work
Speaker 3: and others like it. Just one interesting example that stood
Speaker 3: out to me that Turnbull sites there's a story about
Speaker 3: an eleventh century Samurai hero named Minimoto Yoshi who used
Speaker 3: a clue he had learned from reading the Art of
Speaker 3: War to anticipate in ambush. The clue was that he
Speaker 3: noticed birds rising startled from a thicket of forest, and
Speaker 3: he knew that this meant his enemies were settling into
Speaker 3: hiding there to launch a trap. So, therefore, Turnbull says,
Speaker 3: there's ample evidence that Japan's long history of spying and
Speaker 3: undercover warfare techniques are not uniquely Japanese, as some sources
Speaker 3: have claimed, but was in part at least influenced by
Speaker 3: Chinese military wisdom already in print for centuries, and the
Speaker 3: fact that it goes back so far means that of
Speaker 3: course people were spying before there was a concept of
Speaker 3: the new ninja that emerges in the Singoku period. Now
Speaker 3: there's another thing this chapter addresses that I think is interesting,
Speaker 3: and that's the idea of ninja or shanobi as a
Speaker 3: hereditary elite. Part of the received ninja mythology is about
Speaker 3: specialization and lineage. It's the idea that undercover warfare techniques
Speaker 3: in Japan were practiced exclusively by quote a highly skilled,
Speaker 3: hereditary core of elite warriors called shinobi, and that ninjutsu,
Speaker 3: the practices of the ninja, were the exclusive domain of
Speaker 3: these warrior elites. They were sort of medieval commandos with
Speaker 3: a hereditary component. And this vision of shinobi also implies
Speaker 3: that they may have had some kind of social elite
Speaker 3: status as well, that they were a kind of super samurai,
Speaker 3: surpassing ordinary samurai warrior elites in the techniques of covert warfare,
Speaker 3: like infiltrating secure locations and causing disruption inside enemy ranks,
Speaker 3: and all the other stuff we've already mentioned. But as
Speaker 3: we brought up in the last episode, there are some
Speaker 3: serious reasons for doubting the idea of shinobi as these
Speaker 3: hereditary elites. The accounts of shnobi activities taking place during
Speaker 3: the Japanese Civil Wars generally do not make any reference
Speaker 3: to the idea of specialized elite warriors, certainly not from
Speaker 3: a social elite, and so shnobi activities may be carried
Speaker 3: out by regular samurai or by soldiers, but in other
Speaker 3: cases by people who are quite clearly associated with the
Speaker 3: lower classes. There is good reason to believe that the
Speaker 3: historical ninja were more likely from the lower classes, and
Speaker 3: in some cases even thought of as criminals, and this
Speaker 3: does raise a different kind of elite status that Turnbull
Speaker 3: goes into depth about the idea of ninja as a
Speaker 3: criminal elite, but this gets complicated too. Many accounts describing
Speaker 3: covert military activity of the Singoku period use terms that
Speaker 3: are also used to describe common crime. One example is
Speaker 3: the Japanese term seto, which normally means thieves. Turnbull cites
Speaker 3: a sixteen fifty three military manual called the Gunpo Geoshu,
Speaker 3: which says quote, if a daimyo does not have a
Speaker 3: seto serving under him, then no matter how good he is,
Speaker 3: he will know nothing of his enemy's dispositions. So this
Speaker 3: appears to be describing the work of a ninja as
Speaker 3: a spy, but uses a common word for thief. Does
Speaker 3: this indicate some kind of historical overlap. Perhaps, and there
Speaker 3: are some good reasons for thinking that there is actual
Speaker 3: direct overlap between ninja in warfare and criminal gangs. But
Speaker 3: another possibility is that the idea of a thief or
Speaker 3: a bandit is in the eye of the beholder, and
Speaker 3: that designation is class related. So to illustrate that turnbul
Speaker 3: inclincludes a text from the fourteenth century. This is the Minaiki,
Speaker 3: compiled in thirteen forty eight, and this is a longer section,
Speaker 3: but it reads as follows. Various kinds of disturbing events
Speaker 3: occurred around the eras of Choan and Kingen, with rebellions,
Speaker 3: coastal piracy, raids, robbery, mountain banditree pillaging, and so on
Speaker 3: happening all over the place. They disguised themselves in an
Speaker 3: unusual way by wearing yellowish brown clothes and a ropagassa
Speaker 3: hat like a woman's instead of an aboshie, which is
Speaker 3: a type of cap or hat, and not showing their faces.
Speaker 3: Individuals who congregated in groups of between ten and twenty
Speaker 3: men wore swords that had no ornamentation, with rough quivers
Speaker 3: on their backs and bamboo poles for spears, and neither
Speaker 3: helmet nor armor. They withdrew to castles and took on
Speaker 3: their enemies there, or they won over an enemy but
Speaker 3: then betrayed him, committing themselves to nothing. They were fond
Speaker 3: of gaming and gambling, and the behaved like shinobi canusu,
Speaker 3: meaning sneak thieves.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of something we talked about in the
Speaker 2: last episode, the idea that you have less historical accounts
Speaker 2: of shanobi in part because you wanted your stories to
Speaker 2: be about the aristocratic samurai, the brave exploits of the samurai,
Speaker 2: not in the upper class samurai, as opposed to the
Speaker 2: potentially shameful but necessary activities of essentially sneak thieves, as
Speaker 2: we're saying here, bandits and pirates exactly.
Speaker 3: And this could also give rise to the idea of
Speaker 3: ninja as a kind of super samurai.
Speaker 2: You know. Having mentioned piracy now in that quote you read,
Speaker 2: this does make me see some strong similarities to what
Speaker 2: has occurred with pirates as well in popular culture. Like
Speaker 2: the modern pop culture idea of a pirate is rather
Speaker 2: far removed from the reality of the pirate in many ways.
Speaker 2: It is a romantic size them to a degree that
Speaker 2: would not have matched up with the reality of living
Speaker 2: during their heyday.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, certainly. But then I want to raise a question,
Speaker 3: because this applies somewhat to piracy as well. What is
Speaker 3: the difference between a pirate or a privateer and a
Speaker 3: naval vessel that seizes other ships from an enemy country
Speaker 3: and takes on their goods and takes prisoners and so forth.
Speaker 3: Sometimes these boundaries might be a little blurrier than you
Speaker 3: would think, And the same applies here. So in contemporary records,
Speaker 3: these groups that I was just talking about in that
Speaker 3: passage I read a second ago, they are referred to
Speaker 3: with terms meaning thieves or bandits. You know, they're disreputable,
Speaker 3: they're sneak thieves. But twenty years after the passage I
Speaker 3: just read, Turnbull says that these gangs are described quite
Speaker 3: differently as horsemen, wearing finely decorated armor and weapons inlaid
Speaker 3: with gold or silk, organized and loyal to their leader.
Speaker 3: So sounds a lot more like the way that local
Speaker 3: warriors who are simply in rebellion against a distant feudal
Speaker 3: authority would be described let more like warriors and an
Speaker 3: organized political authority, and less just like a criminal gang.
Speaker 3: And so Turnbull concludes that there is some blurring of
Speaker 3: the lines between warriors and criminals depending on who is
Speaker 3: writing the account. Higher class authors would look down on
Speaker 3: warriors of a lower level local uprising and classify them
Speaker 3: not as worthy warriors. You know, this is not a
Speaker 3: political conflict. These are bandits or pirates, and so a
Speaker 3: similar thing could be going on with later records from
Speaker 3: the Singoku period, which sometimes refer to people who by
Speaker 3: description are functioning as spies and secret agents, but are
Speaker 3: referred to as thieves or criminals. So it's possible that
Speaker 3: in some cases Shenoby warriors were perceived or described as
Speaker 3: bandits by a contemptuous higher class authority. However, it's also
Speaker 3: possible that in many cases actual bandits were recruited to
Speaker 3: warfare and served as shnobi. So This also brings up
Speaker 3: the question of shinobi as mercenaries. So a mercenary is
Speaker 3: generally understood as a soldier who is hired to fight
Speaker 3: for a land that is not their own, and records
Speaker 3: of the use of mercenaries in this sense in the
Speaker 3: Sengoku warfare are mostly limited to shnobi type activities. We
Speaker 3: don't really read of hired mercenaries doing the work of
Speaker 3: the samurai, you know, like supposedly honorable face to face warfare,
Speaker 3: leading cavalry charges and so forth. Instead, it seems that
Speaker 3: mercenaries were used for sneak attacks and dirty tricks. So
Speaker 3: you might have a daimyo who has his own regular
Speaker 3: soldiers that are fighting on the battlefield and defending fortresses,
Speaker 3: but in addition to that, the daimyo might pay local
Speaker 3: criminals to do high risk activities, including shnobi activities like spying,
Speaker 3: sneak attacks, false flags, and psychological warfare, as well as
Speaker 3: less shnoby coated high risk maneuvers like covering the retreat
Speaker 3: of regular troops and Turnbull suggests that this also militates
Speaker 3: against the super samurai interpretation of ninja, since records indicate
Speaker 3: that these warriors were often seen as crude, low class,
Speaker 3: and expendable, and these warriors were also implicated in very
Speaker 3: sordid types of activities like slave harvesting, raiding villages, and
Speaker 3: kidnapping people into slavery. And so from all this Turnbull
Speaker 3: concludes that the sort of super samurai hereditary elite interpretation
Speaker 3: of ninja's is not based in history. That they were
Speaker 3: not from a social elite to the extent that they existed,
Speaker 3: but there clearly were people carrying out these activities at
Speaker 3: the time, and that if we're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what their identity was, it may very well be that
Speaker 3: there was significant overlap with crime, or at least that
Speaker 3: many of them were lower class warriors who were looked
Speaker 3: down upon by the social elites and in some cases
Speaker 3: had some criminal experience or criminal skills such as piracy
Speaker 3: or burglary or banditry. Now another important note on the
Speaker 3: changing meaning of shinobi after the Singoku period. Again, remember
Speaker 3: so after this you get the Unification period under the
Speaker 3: Tokugawa Shogunate. This is also known as the Edo period.
Speaker 3: During this time, there are lots of references to contemporary
Speaker 3: people called shinobi, but in this time period they are
Speaker 3: not at all the ninja you have in mind, and
Speaker 3: they're also not the ninja we were just thinking we
Speaker 3: were just talking about that are engaging in secrecy during warfare. Instead,
Speaker 3: the shanobi of the Tokugawa period were a official agents
Speaker 3: of the central government, which ruled the country by martial law,
Speaker 3: and the duties of these agents included rooting out dissent
Speaker 3: and disloyalty among the people. So in reality, their function
Speaker 3: at this time was more like a secret police than
Speaker 3: a class of secret agents turnbull rights quote. They were
Speaker 3: engaged instead in sordid tasks such as listening to gossip
Speaker 3: through keyholes, ready to denounce their victims and give them
Speaker 3: over to torture and confession. So that's a very different
Speaker 3: take on the idea of shenoby that the same term
Speaker 3: is being used here to describe this very different orientation.
Speaker 3: But strangely, this is also when this subsequent literature mythologizing
Speaker 3: the ninja from the earlier period.
Speaker 2: Sort of emerges fascinating and this ties into I mentioned
Speaker 2: in the last episode that when I recently traveled to Japan,
Speaker 2: I got to see some historic sites associated with the
Speaker 2: shanobi with Ani, and one of them bears mentioned right
Speaker 2: here because when I was visiting the grounds of the
Speaker 2: Imperial Palace in Tokyo, there is a place known as
Speaker 2: the hyakunen Bansho Guard House. It's located in the East
Speaker 2: gardens and it was the headquarters of the Hyakun and
Speaker 2: Gumi teams that protected Edo. This would have housed samurai
Speaker 2: but also ninja and it served as a checkpoint in
Speaker 2: guard house. So the historical situation here is that in
Speaker 2: fifteen ninety, when the warlord Tokugawa Ayasu began fortifying the
Speaker 2: fishing village that would become Edo modern day Tokyo, he
Speaker 2: had already integrated shanobi into his personal army, allegedly in
Speaker 2: special forces roles, and we had the caveat there based
Speaker 2: on everything we've been discussing here. But then during the
Speaker 2: Edo period they took on new roles, so he formed
Speaker 2: them into one hundred man platoons or Hayakun and gumi
Speaker 2: and charge they were charged not with espionage, not with
Speaker 2: again what we would think of is ninja activities or
Speaker 2: even these more like sort of criminal mercenary activities. Uh,
Speaker 2: but they were discharged with roles involved in protecting the
Speaker 2: city using modern flintlock rifles and using them potentially at
Speaker 2: fortified positions. So Yoda and all compare them to like
Speaker 2: a kind of like homeland Security and Secret Service rolled
Speaker 2: into one. So, like you said earlier, kind of like
Speaker 2: a secret police manning checkpoints, checking papers, and you know,
Speaker 2: also keeping keeping an ear open for anything they need
Speaker 2: to pass up the chain.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting to uh to really trace the evolution
Speaker 3: of the concept here and to dig through these sources
Speaker 3: to try to find the foundation of it in real history.
Speaker 3: But despite all of these caveats about like what the
Speaker 3: real ninja were to the extent that they really existed,
Speaker 3: and where these stories come from, I think we would
Speaker 3: really be remiss if we denied ourselves just delving headfirst
Speaker 3: into the ninja legend and just exploring some of the anecdotes,
Speaker 3: whatever their basis in real history.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so we should probably begin with the what
Speaker 2: is in some accounts, the first ninja of Japanese traditions. Again,
Speaker 2: this is impossible to define from a realistic standpoint, Like again,
Speaker 2: like nobody invented espionage, per se, no one invented assassination
Speaker 2: and so forth. But according to Japanese traditions. There was
Speaker 2: an individual named a Tomo who would have served the
Speaker 2: semi legendary regent by the name of Prince Shotaku, who
Speaker 2: was also known by various other names, and he would
Speaker 2: have lived five seventy four through six two. See he now,
Speaker 2: given his era and his status, he's attributed with a
Speaker 2: vast number of things. We've encountered situations like this before
Speaker 2: in various cultures where you have a significantly old and
Speaker 2: semi legendary leader, they're going to be associated with various
Speaker 2: you know, it can be things even straight up magical
Speaker 2: and mythological acts or culture bearing acts, or you get
Speaker 2: the idea in many cases where it's like somebody who
Speaker 2: worked for them invented something or something was invented in
Speaker 2: their era, and therefore they are now the inventor. Ah yes,
Speaker 2: and so Shataku is. He's been attributed as promoting the
Speaker 2: spread of Buddhism. Okay, fair enough, It'd said that he
Speaker 2: was an excellent multitasker, which I've read nobody is maybe,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess maybe maybe he was an okay multitasker.
Speaker 2: But I've also read that it might have to do
Speaker 2: with like, just like how many different streams of information
Speaker 2: were coming to him or something. But also the idea
Speaker 2: that he invented sushi coo, which I I think is
Speaker 2: quite questionable. I how many culinary inventions can truly be
Speaker 2: attributed to rulers, you know, in kings and emperors and
Speaker 2: so forth. Generally it's more of a bottom up sort
Speaker 2: of situation with culinary invention. Yeah, but anyway, a Tomo
Speaker 2: was a regent, He served Empress Suiko, and he was
Speaker 2: an early Japanese proponent of Sun Zu's The Art of War,
Speaker 2: which we know we've been talking about as being a
Speaker 2: text that definitely values and quantifies the and defines the
Speaker 2: different forms of espionage that are important for any kind
Speaker 2: of like military operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and places a lot of importance on spies. Doesn't
Speaker 3: just say like, here are the types of spies to use,
Speaker 3: but it's like, make sure you use your spies. You
Speaker 3: should never fight a battle until you have adequately discovered
Speaker 3: all of your enemy's secrets.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. Again, it's like, you know, you may
Speaker 2: not like thieves, but you need thieves. You know, you're
Speaker 2: not going to win this battle or this war via
Speaker 2: bravery and nobility alone. So Prince Chautaku is said to
Speaker 2: have dubbed O Tomo, this shnobi individual as Shenobi along
Speaker 2: with his operatives, and they aided him in surviving against
Speaker 2: a vast enemy army that outnumbered them seemingly via some
Speaker 2: specific shanobi tricks. I don't know that we really have
Speaker 2: an idea what those tricks were, but Yoda and all
Speaker 2: point out that their suspicion that they might have involved
Speaker 2: tricking the enemy into thinking their forces were more numerous
Speaker 2: than they actually were. Like, they point to some other
Speaker 2: examples of this that may be connected, such as dressing
Speaker 2: civilians up in armor or making them look more or
Speaker 2: less like soldiers, sort of putting extras in place so
Speaker 2: that your forces look greater than they are. So yeah,
Speaker 2: total Shanobi move, and so in ninja traditions. In ninja
Speaker 2: culture and pop culture, a tomo would come to be
Speaker 2: described as the first ninja. The info maybe scant, but
Speaker 2: yet it sounds like a tomo was more in line
Speaker 2: with what we think of is kind of like a
Speaker 2: master of spies, a misinformation manager, and so forth. I
Speaker 2: should also point out that a Tomo is apparently also
Speaker 2: the name of one of the android ninjas in RoboCop three,
Speaker 2: Ninja culture, you know, spreads far and wide. It's irresistible.
Speaker 3: Did these ninjas have rocket boots or something? Were they
Speaker 3: rocket ninjas?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They had swords? I think they you know,
Speaker 2: it's been a very long time since I watched RoboCop three.
Speaker 2: I think maybe RoboCop had rocket boots or some sort
Speaker 2: of rocket system that he used to fly.
Speaker 3: Oh no, do we have to watch RoboCop three for
Speaker 3: weird house? I don't know, investigations for another time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in this book, Ninja Attack True Tales of
Speaker 2: assassin Samurai Outlaws. As the title suggests, it's not all
Speaker 2: just about ninjas. It kind of spreads out to ninja
Speaker 2: adjacent characters and roles. So it looks at historical and
Speaker 2: legendary figures that have, through one way or another, become
Speaker 2: associated with ninja tradition. Many of them are only vaguely shinobi,
Speaker 2: and they may fit the mold of the latter day
Speaker 2: met ninja myth one way or the other, but not directly. So,
Speaker 2: you know, you have some characters in there that are
Speaker 2: just great warriors. You have some that are definite assassins
Speaker 2: or would be assassins. Spymasters and also wizards and magic users.
Speaker 3: Oh and I don't recall if we've brought this up
Speaker 3: yet in the series or not, but one thing to
Speaker 3: absolutely understand is that a lot of early ninja legend
Speaker 3: and references to ninjutsu the practice of a ninja are
Speaker 3: clearly magical in nature.
Speaker 2: Yes, And one of the best examples of that is
Speaker 2: the fictional character who had go on to become just
Speaker 2: a staple of ninja pop culture, especially in Japan, is Jerai.
Speaker 2: So Juriah was the protagonist of an eighteen oh six
Speaker 2: book by kanwate Onataki. But modern ninja fans probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: have even recognized Jeria as a ninja because, on one hand,
Speaker 2: the all black ninja garb had not been invented yet,
Speaker 2: that wasn't a part of the of the genre yet.
Speaker 2: And at this point in Ninja Lord, they were, as
Speaker 2: we've been discussing, far more associated with dark magic. They
Speaker 2: were more likely to use some sort of a spell
Speaker 2: against you than to bust out, you know, some sort
Speaker 2: of martial arts attack. And so Juriah was a just
Speaker 2: a kimono wearing like he's just describes wearing kimono's just
Speaker 2: wearing like regular clothes. Robin hood like character. He was
Speaker 2: a robber with a heart of gold and the magical
Speaker 2: ability to summon a giant, mighty phantom toad that served
Speaker 2: as his steed.
Speaker 3: That is so much cooler than the now cliche idea
Speaker 3: of someone riding a dragon, writing a dragon. I've seen
Speaker 3: it a million times. Dragon's already sort of like a
Speaker 3: horse anyway. I don't know why, don't ask me why.
Speaker 3: It just is dragon's kind of like a horse riding
Speaker 3: a toad. That's different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not only this, he had a sidekick who was
Speaker 2: a female master of slug magic, and they battled an
Speaker 2: evil master of snake magic and so Yoda an alt
Speaker 2: stress that there's kind of like a rock paper scissors
Speaker 2: scenario here in this magic system. Brandon Sanderson may get
Speaker 2: a lot of credit for his complex magical systems and
Speaker 2: his novels, but does he have snake toad slug level
Speaker 2: of magic here? Because basically the way it works is
Speaker 2: that snakes beat toads, Slugs beat snakes, and toads beat slugs,
Speaker 2: and that's the way the magic system works.
Speaker 3: What yeah, how do the slugs beat snakes?
Speaker 2: They just do Okay, they just do. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just how reality works. I don't know, that's just science.
Speaker 2: But Juriah has remained a strong part of Japanese pop culture,
Speaker 2: enjoying multiple retellings and apparently factors into the popular anime Naruto,
Speaker 2: which I think I've only watched one episode of, so
Speaker 2: I didn't get in deep enough to see all of
Speaker 2: the threads. But so many of these characters in Japanese
Speaker 2: ninja pop culture, they end up emerging and re emerging,
Speaker 2: you know, people keep diving back in and re exploring
Speaker 2: them and reinventing them. But yeah, Jiiah seems to have
Speaker 2: been a very pivotal figure in ninja fiction, igniting a
Speaker 2: huge ninja fad around eighteen thirty nine. This is when
Speaker 2: an illustrated publication of the text in question came out,
Speaker 2: and you ended up with like thirty years of sequels
Speaker 2: following that, along with various imitators, theater adaptations, and there
Speaker 2: was eventually a nineteen twenty one film version. A film
Speaker 2: adaptation of this story called Juria the Hero sometimes cited
Speaker 2: is the first tokusatsu or special effects movie, and Joe
Speaker 2: I have not seen it myself, but I include a
Speaker 2: still from it here where you can see a giant
Speaker 2: phantom toe jumping into battle.
Speaker 3: I believe, my god, that's so good. And I just
Speaker 3: looked at it. I think I have found a stream
Speaker 3: of this online, so we could watch it. We could
Speaker 3: watch it for Weird House.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it's a twenty one minute film. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks like there are some streams.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's going on the list.
Speaker 2: They mentioned that they so the book goes into a
Speaker 2: lot of the other ways that the fictional world of
Speaker 2: the ninja grew and spread. You know, later on during
Speaker 2: the early nineteen tens, the novel Sorrow Toobe Saske was
Speaker 2: a big ninja hit, still leaning more heavily on the
Speaker 2: magical aspects of the ninja, and then you would just
Speaker 2: get an additional ninja revivals that would occur in like
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties. And I think those those waves
Speaker 2: will continue and you still see it continuing today. Like
Speaker 2: ninjas have not gone away. It's not like everyone's like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you remember ninja movies? Like, no, they're still around.
Speaker 2: This ninja video game is still around, but they'll still
Speaker 2: be an occasional like big hit that comes out and
Speaker 2: it reminds everyone just how awesome ninja fiction really is.
Speaker 3: So the way I understand it, it's this revival of
Speaker 3: interest in the ninja through these like novels and stories
Speaker 3: and movies in roughly the fifties and the sixties that
Speaker 3: give way to the international, especially in English speaking markets,
Speaker 3: obsession with the ninja.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does make me wonder, like, outside of Japan
Speaker 2: an international level, what would happen if you had like
Speaker 2: a true, like sort of revitalization of the black magic
Speaker 2: aspect of ninja. You know, that might be interesting, But again,
Speaker 2: that seems to have never completely gone away in Japanese
Speaker 2: media itself.
Speaker 3: I think it's halfway there in some American ninja media,
Speaker 3: Like it's not fully the case that we're seeing ninja
Speaker 3: as like sorcerers doing spells and writing spectral toads, but
Speaker 3: there's more a kind of vague mysticism to them, you know,
Speaker 3: like that they're portrayed in a way where you wonder
Speaker 3: if they are capable of magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I guess one has to acknowledge Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat ninjas, though I think in some cases I'm always
Speaker 2: a little foggy on how everything works in Mortal k
Speaker 2: I think some of those characters are supposed to be
Speaker 2: Chinese as opposed to Japanese, but then they're clearly embracing
Speaker 2: like Japanese ninja pop culture. But yeah, you have characters
Speaker 2: that are clearly ninjas that are also doing things like
Speaker 2: throwing fireballs or freeze balls or whatever the heck.
Speaker 3: Are like Scorpion and sub Zero interpreted. I never even
Speaker 3: thought about the nationality of those characters. Are they implied
Speaker 3: to be Japanese? I thought it was like Lu Kang
Speaker 3: is a Shalan warrior, isn't he right?
Speaker 2: Right? And I believe at least originally sub Zero was
Speaker 2: supposed to be Chinese. But this is Mortal Kombat. It
Speaker 2: plays very fast and loose with its source materials here
Speaker 2: to create its own strange universe, which I love. But again,
Speaker 2: you have to sort of take everything with a grain
Speaker 2: of salt and follow it through to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the the the original inspirations to get maybe an idea
Speaker 2: of where things come from. And even then there's a
Speaker 2: lot of overlap.
Speaker 3: Johnny Cage is American, Sonia Blade is American, right, I
Speaker 3: think so?
Speaker 2: Yeah? American Duell until he was played by an Australian man.
Speaker 2: In the in the the Mortal Kombat movie in the
Speaker 2: nineties and after that, and part of it I believe
Speaker 2: is like a dedication to him because he died young.
Speaker 2: They were like, Okay, Kano is Australian from now on,
Speaker 2: so you know, you have changes like that that.
Speaker 3: Occur raidings from out world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's generally maybe French gentleman depicted as French. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's French scorpion. On the other hand, I think has
Speaker 2: always been depicted as Japanese. But I'm not one sure
Speaker 2: on that either.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, well, I think maybe we're out of
Speaker 3: time for today's episode, but next time we will be
Speaker 3: back with more stories of ninjas throughout history, legendary ninjas,
Speaker 3: ninja anecdotes and techniques and technologies and just we're going
Speaker 3: to find a lot of little corners to look into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there will be a little bit of ninja
Speaker 2: science in there. I can't promise lots of ninja science,
Speaker 2: but I know there will be at least a little bit.
Speaker 3: The physics of toad riding.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, we're going to go and close it
Speaker 2: out there, but let's see what to mention here. Hey,
Speaker 2: I'll just give throughout this once more, if you were
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Speaker 3: Episode, Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
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