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