Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian segar. When you answer the door on Halloween,
Speaker 1: usually every fifth kid will be dressed as a ninja.
Speaker 1: There's just something about the legend of the ninja that
Speaker 1: captures our popular imagination. But just like those other legendary figures,
Speaker 1: are image of the stealthy Japanese warriors is based largely
Speaker 1: on nuggets of historical truth buried under mountains of myth.
Speaker 1: But we may soon have more clues to the real
Speaker 1: origins of the ninja tradition. And that's in part because
Speaker 1: in July, a Japanese university announced the opening of the
Speaker 1: world's first inter national ninja research center. That's right MEA
Speaker 1: University is located about forty miles southwest of Kyoto, where
Speaker 1: the first and most famous ninja school may have existed
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century. The new research center will house
Speaker 1: not only historical documents related to the ninja, but also
Speaker 1: hundreds of novels, movies, and cartoons that have helped to
Speaker 1: forge the modern image of the black clad assassin. Now
Speaker 1: Stephen Turnbull, a historian of Japanese military history, gave the
Speaker 1: inaugural lecture at the opening of the Research Center, and
Speaker 1: has written more than seventy five books on samurai and
Speaker 1: Japanese warfare, including the forthcoming The Ninja Unmasking the Myth,
Speaker 1: which is due in November. He explains that everything we
Speaker 1: associate with the character of the ninja, the black costume,
Speaker 1: the weapons, the spycraft, and the secrecy is all based
Speaker 1: on historical truth. The biggest challenge in separating ninja truth
Speaker 1: from myth is a lack of reliable primary sources. What's
Speaker 1: most remarkable about that handful of documents at the Research
Speaker 1: Center isn't so much the content pent of the original texts,
Speaker 1: but how they've been transformed into these legendary tales. The
Speaker 1: mission of the new center is to trace the path
Speaker 1: from a few garden variety nighttime attacks in the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century to what became a global cultural phenomenon. The birth
Speaker 1: of the ninja myth starts with those exaggerated shinobi stories
Speaker 1: of the seventeenth century, spread by members of the Japanese
Speaker 1: warrior class who were feeling a little under appreciated since
Speaker 1: widespread fighting in Japan largely ceased by sixteen fifteen. Next
Speaker 1: were a series of eighteenth century military manuals concerned with
Speaker 1: spying techniques, which mentioned the importance of operating in disguise.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, Japanese artists created some famous woodblock
Speaker 1: prints of people dressed in black carrying out assassinations. That's
Speaker 1: where Turnbull believes the idea of the black ninja robe
Speaker 1: took hold, even though the Prince weren't specifically about ninja
Speaker 1: at all, just secretive attacks. The modern ninja legend was
Speaker 1: sealed by the nineteen sixty two film Shinobi no Mono,
Speaker 1: which depicted everything we associate with the ninja myth, the
Speaker 1: black robes and specialized weapons, a strict code of secrecy,
Speaker 1: almost superhuman martial arts skills, and selfless sacrifice. Today's episode
Speaker 1: of brain Stuff was written and researched by Dave Ruce,
Speaker 1: produced by Dylan Fagan, and for more on this and
Speaker 1: other topics, please visit us at how stuff works dot com.