Short History Of... - The Ninja

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Remembered in popular culture as the ultimate type of assassin, the Ninja were ancient masters of secrecy, operating for just 200 years in central Japan. Legends tell of them walking on water, controlling the weather, and even turning invisible. But what is the true story of the Ninja? How did this form of espionage originate? And how did Ninjas move from the shadows of folklore to the spotlight of modern culture? This is a Short History Of The Ninja. Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to John Man, historian and author of the book ‘Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior’. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The year is 1332 on Seido Island, just off the coast of Honshu, the Japanese mainland. A 13-year-old boy is climbing a hill through a misty bamboo forest. His name is Hino Kunimitsu, and he is from a noble family that serves the emperor. It is May, and the morning air is cool and dry, full of birdsong. The boy passes a shrine and whispers a prayer. He's hoping to see his father today. The man is a samurai warrior and a counselor at the imperial court. But he fell out of favor and has been imprisoned here on Seido. Soon he is to be executed. Kunimitsu is supposed to be in hiding, but he has traveled to the prison island in secret to say goodbye to his father. Kunimitsu rings the doorbell at the residence of a monk called Honma Saburo.

The monk answers, but does not let the boy enter. Instead, he presents him with a white box. Inside are his father's ashes. Kunimitsu is too late. The boy races back to his lodgings. Shutting himself into his room, he weeps over his father's remains. But once he has all cried out, his grief turns to anger. How dare that cowardly monk execute a brave samurai? Kunimitsu arranges for his father's

ashes to be sent to a Buddhist temple on the mainland. But the boy pretends to be too ill to travel and stays behind in Seido. He has other plans. A few nights later, Kunimitsu returns to the monk's residence. In the dark, he picks a lock and sneaks inside. The boy creeps through the corridors on stockinged feet, moving silently so as not to alert the guards. His anger has settled into a steely determination with a sharp focus. He wants revenge. He follows a path of lamplight to the master bedroom.

Carefully, he slides the door aside. Inside, Saburo, the monk, snores. The room is too bright for a stealth attack, but Kunimitsu fears that suddenly blowing out the candle may disturb his victim, so he opens a window. may disturb his victim, so he opens a window. Hundreds of moths stream inside, flapping around the light until they extinguish the flame without waking the sleeping man. Now that the room is completely dark, Kunimitsu approaches the bed and picks up the monk's own sword. He raises it to strike, but then recalls something his father once told him. It is cowardly to murder a sleeping man. So, with his sword poised and ready, Kunimitsu kicks the monk to wake him. As soon as his terrified victim calls out an alarm, the boy swings the blade at his throat. The boy drops the weapon and flees.

He climbs out of the window and crouches in the bushes. But the guards have found his small, bloody footprints and shout as they give chase. Kunimitsu runs down the hill from the residence until his escape route is blocked by a wide moat of turbulent water. Scanning for a means of escape, the boy spots a thick trunk of bamboo. It bends under his weight, then swings him out over the water and across to the other side. He leaps off, and the bamboo springs back into place as he lands safely on the far shore. The guards arrive noisy and disorganized. Kunimitsu looks back for just a moment,

laughing at the enraged man who cannot work out how he managed to cross the water. And then, nimble as a cat, he disappears into the night. The story of Kunimitsu reveals an early example of a new type of espionage. Unlike his father, a sword-swinging samurai, this boy uses only wit and wiles to conduct his covert mission. His is a more subtle craft that develops in the coming centuries into the way of the ninja. Japan's masters of spycraft were active for only 200 years in one central region, but their legend expands far beyond the limits of place, time, and even reality. Today there is much fantasy as history. Perceived as assassins in black robes,

they were rumored to have the ability to walk on water, control the weather, and turn invisible. The true ninja was closer to a secret agent, a spy whose mission was to gain information, infiltrate the enemy, and survive by stealth and cunning. But how did the ninja originate? How did they move from the shadows of folklore to the spotlight of popular culture? And what did these ancient masters of secrecy contribute to the spycraft of the 20th century and beyond? I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa of this is a short history of the ninja

the ninja emerged in the 15th century a time of widespread conflict in japan the country has long been ruled by emperors of the Yamato clan, who claim to be direct descendants of the sun goddess. But the Yamato are puppet rulers. The real power lies in the hands of military dictators called the Shogun, noble families, or Buddhist monks. By the middle 1400s, local lords called daimyo also start to establish decentralized kingdoms and add to the complexity of the political environment. Soon their feuding escalates into all-out civil unrest between numerous warring factions. It becomes known as the Sengoku era, or Warring States period.

The instability continues for over a century, as various ruling houses wrestle for power. Both Shoguns and Daimyos rely on the might of samurai warriors, who have been an important military force for centuries. an important military force for centuries. John Mann is a historian and author of the book Ninja, A Thousand Years of the Shadow Warriors. John Mann, Author of the book Ninja, A Thousand Years of the Shadow Warriors Japan was an anarchic chaos of states and cities, and there must have been something like 60 provinces and 600 estates, all of which were fighting for dominance.

The structure was that you have the emperor at the top and you have his military side, which is the shogun, with very, very dubious authority over any of these entities, all of whom were struggling for everything they could get in terms of fighting the opposition and establishing their dominance socially and militarily through the samurai who were their military wing the bulk of the population were farmers who were paying taxes to their lord and masters in a sort of a feudal system whereby they would be protected in exchange for loyalty to their master. Amid the unrest, two regions find themselves in a unique position. Iga and Koga lie close to the capital at Kyoto. They are geographically central to the turmoil, but their communities remain isolated and protected by a mountainous landscape.

So the peasants of Iga and Koga are largely untroubled by bands of samurai mercenaries who roam the land, violently forcing people in other regions to pledge allegiance to whichever daimyo the warriors serve. Nevertheless, the villagers here soon realize that they must take steps to defend themselves. The landscape is lovely actually. It's rolling hills with forests and farms along the valley floors. There weren't so many castles as there were in the rest of Japan. They developed their own incipient democracy, I suppose is the way that you would put it, rather like Athens. And they formed what was called an icky, a community of farmers who

would look after themselves. And so that they were remarkably independent from all the rest of the chaos around them throughout the Middle Ages. And come the 15th century, they had got quite a strong pseudo-democracy, semi-democracy on the go. These were not so easy to conquer because they were a community of farmers who were a challenge to the idea of national unity. It becomes increasingly important for feuding powers to control the rebellious Ikki groups of Igar and Koga, which resemble local government or trade unions. But the Ikki have no interest in handing over their power to feudal lords, and instead they get organized.

They sign constitutional documents which are ratified by a monk, and representatives meet regularly at a Shinto temple to discuss important matters. Crucially, they refuse to pay for the protection of samurai, instead preferring to train their own independent defenders. The word ninja would be meaningless to the people of Iga and Koga because it doesn't come into use until the 19th century. It means a person of perseverance or stealth. But the name they might give themselves is shinobi, an older word meaning one who sneaks or conceals. As both names suggest, the emphasis is on deception and secrecy, not violence. Their mountains are dotted with temples dedicated to folk religion,

the Shinto faith and Buddhism. It's common for holy men to seek enlightenment via the practice of Shugendo, or the way of training and testing. An ancient ritual that dates back to at least the 7th century, Shugendo focuses on physical and mental development. Its followers believe the highlands occupy the border between the two realms of the human and the spiritual,

making these mountains the best place for their ascetic practice. Acolytes run barefoot through the forest, survive in the wild, or climb high peaks without ropes. It is said that the process of enduring physical hardship can develop almost supernatural powers, like being able to walk through fire or turn invisible. There is even a belief in the system of karakiri, or nine hand gestures, that can perform magic. Successful students of Shugendo train up other peasants to defend their homeland. The arcane practice accounts for much of the mystique around the ninja, but their real-life espionage skills help them gain the upper hand against the feudal lords who seek to subjugate them. Shugendo was a practice of going to mountains indulging

in religious semi-religious and physical self-improvement so the idea of suffering in the mountains was crucial to Japanese religion, not just Shintoism and Buddhism, a sort of a strange combination of that. They would go on marches through the mountains. They would sit under waterfalls. They would starve themselves. They would harden themselves. And this overlapped a good deal, not so much with samurai,

but with the ninja techniques that were used for spying. And of course, the ninjas were originally in Iga and Koga were farmers and said that they had a lot of equipment that they could use in fighting. And you see, rather interesting, the same thing if anybody who's watched The Seven Samurai will see what farmers could use in terms of fighting when they lacked swords. You can use farm equipment in the most pretty devastating way. And these became part of the whole armory of ninjas and part of the legend. The two brands of Japanese warrior, the ninja and the samurai, are often confused, but there are many differences.

Samurai are akin to medieval knights. They advertise themselves by wearing brightly colored armor, often with identifying flags on their back. They bristle with weapons and are bound by a strict code of conduct known as bushido. Etiquette holds that a samurai should protect his honor by committing seppuku a ritual form of suicide by disembowelment that proves his courage and self-control a samurai might commit seppuku to atone for a mistake to follow his master to death or to prevent being captured by the enemy. By contrast, the ninja are masters of survival.

Their training allows them to come and go without being seen, to fulfill their mission, escape and live to fight another day. If samurai are soldiers, then ninja are spies. Many ninja are samurai, but very few samurai are also ninja, a special ops of Japanese warfare. One of the interesting things about the ninjas is that there's a lot of emphasis on right-mindedness. That is, you have a cause and you fulfill the cause as best you can. And what you do not do is what the samurai did, which is to seek death. Now, the whole idea is it's about toughening of the mind and spirit

and about survival, exactly the opposite of the samurai. Another point of contrast to the brash samurai is the ninja's attire, which is designed to blend in so that they go unnoticed. For this reason, it is unlikely that they wear the familiar black robes depicted in popular culture, because any kind of uniform would single them out. Instead, they prefer to hide in plain sight, perhaps disguised as monks, merchants, street performers, or the guards of the castle they are planning to infiltrate. The ninja are a secretive sect who intend to stay hidden,

perhaps even from the history books. Some say this explains why so little is written about them. The spaces left in the archives have been filled over the centuries by the fantastical ideas of writers and performers in popular culture. This includes their black clothing, but also their lethal weapons like shuriken throwing stars and cunning gadgets known as spider shoes that enable them to walk on water. Most of these are written later, in books to be shelved under fantasy rather than history.

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. I mean, these throwing stars, which are very popular, a lot of blades which you can throw and they stick into wooden things with a satisfying clunk. But they're blades, and how you're supposed to carry them, I have no idea. They certainly couldn't kill anybody. What you would use them for, I genuinely don't know.

Also, these things are supposed to enable you to walk on water. Well, there were floats which you could sit in and paddle across a pool, but there were no shoes that helped you walk on water or anything like that. And this whole idea of invisibility, I mean, it's to do with disguise, but then the myth grew up that somehow they could make themselves invisible, and basically that's part of the myth grew up that somehow they could make themselves invisible, and basically that's part of the myth. Similarly, there are tall tales about supposed anti-ninja devices. One example is so-called nightingale floors, built into Japanese palaces.

It is said that the wooden floors are constructed so that whenever someone walks over the boards, someone like a creeping ninja, the nails rub against the metal brackets. The chirping sound it makes is akin to birdsong, but it alerts residents to the presence of a possible assassin. The most famous example of this ingenious burglar alarm is at Nijo Castle in Kyoto, but even this is bound up in the mythology of the ninja, as some say the squeaking noise is only a by-product of the style of floor construction

and not intentional at all. Most likely, the nails are hammered into the floorboards from beneath rather than above so that they're hidden and don't stick up and snag on long garments such as kimono. Nevertheless, the idea of a nightingale floor reveals a prevalent fear of shinobi, those who sneak and conceal. In reality, rather than relying on magical abilities and fanciful gadgets, the ninja thrive by carefully honing skills. These were basically simple farmers trying to discover information by sneaking into castles. And the way that you do this is by disguise and by trickery, and also, as opposed to the samurai, by charm. So the stories of ninja who were trying to discover information from inside a castle would ingratiate themselves with the guards with flattery and food and perhaps the exchange of a little basically, it's the sort of behavior that you'd expect from a secret agent when they're trying to discover information abroad. You have to fit in, make friends, be charming,

discover as much information as you can, and then somehow get yourself or the information out again. and then somehow get yourself or the information out again. The rise of the ninja is inextricably linked to Japan's warring states period. After successfully defending their homeland during this long period of unrest, the fame of Iga and Koga secret agents spreads. Other shoguns and daimyos want to hire them as their spies, assassins, informers, and to carry out special operations. The shinobi are soon in high demand. One new employer is a man called Tokugawa Ayesu. His dream is to end the warring states

by unifying Japan under one ruling shogun. Born in 1543, he is the son of a minor daimyo, but he allies himself with a powerful lord called Oda Nabunaga. These two men will change the destiny of Japan. Unifiers are almost by definition extremely ruthless. Well, two things. One is you have a vision of unity, and the other is that you pursue this by all possible means, which means warfare, spying, killing of opposition, and the gradual unification of these 60 provinces and 600 estates, all of which have to be crushed.

Together, Aiesu and Nabunaga set out to unify Japan, but this will take several more decades of bloodshed. Much of their effort involves violent battles with hired samurai warriors who storm the castles of rebellious local daimyos. But on occasion, Aisu needs to change his tactics for something more subtle. Then he calls in the ninja. It is 1562. Mid-March in the mountains of Nagoya, 100 miles southwest of Mount Fuji.

The wind is bitter, howling around a precipice on which stands a mighty fortress, Kaminojo Castle. This is the stronghold of a clan who refused to join the union proposed by Oda Nobunaga and his deputy, Tokugawa Ayesu. To make matters worse, this clan has taken hostage two of Ayesu's children. It's believed they're being held in a secret location elsewhere. In a military camp at the foot of the mountains, Ayesu considers the rebel fortress that stands high above them on the precipice. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he needs to carry out a successful mission to prove himself to his master, Nabunaga.

On the other hand, he mustn't do anything rash that puts his own children in danger of reprisals. So he has opted for staging a quick and quiet raid. A messenger approaches to tell him that the new arrivals are coming, and soon he's surrounded by a crowd of 80 new men. by a crowd of 80 new men. Their leader steps forward, Tomo Tsukasada, a ninja from Koga. These men, he tells Ayesu, are the spies he asked for. His very best men. He points out one in particular, Hattori Hanzo. He is renowned as a brilliant tactician

and holds the rare honor of being both samurai and ninja. Now, Sukasada and Hanzo lead their men into the forest to begin the ascent to Kaminojo. The ninja split up to climb the precipice and get into position. Under cover of darkness, they reach the castle walls and stop to pull sets of clothes out of their bags. These are disguises, the same outfits as the Kaminojo Castle Guard. This allows the ninja to enter the fortress and move about in plain sight. The costumes in place, they swarm inside. Some quickly fulfill the first stage of their plan, setting fire to the castle towers.

Soon smoke billows through the building, the alarm is raised, and panic ensues. The disguised ninjas take advantage of the confusion. Hattori Hanzo comes face to face with the castle guard. Hanzo whispers a password, and the guard replies with the second part of the phrase to confirm that he is, in fact, a fellow Koga ninja. With a nod, the two spies go on their way. But when Hanzo turns a corner, he meets another soldier. He gives him the same chance to utter the password, but the guard is nonplussed. So Hanzo quickly

slays him and leaves his body lying in the corridor. Soon, word goes around the panicked castle that they are under attack from traitors. Their own guard must have turned against them. No one suspects that they have been infiltrated by ninjas. Deep within the complex, Sugasada turns down a corridor that leads to the Hall of Prayers, its woven walls lined with shrines and lanterns. Inside he finds the castle's commander, a man named Udono Nagamochi. Without hesitation, Tsukasada swings his sword.

He puts Nagamochi's head in a bag to present to his employer as proof of their successful mission. But also in the hall of prayers, Sukasada spots an even more important prize. Two boys, cowering in a corner. The sons of Nagamochi. These boys he captures alive. Sukasada leaves the Hall of Prayers, pushing his hostages ahead of him. Outside the castle garrison has fled, afraid of what they can only imagine is a treacherous faction of their own comrades.

The raid is over. Sukasada orders the dead commander's sons to be taken down the mountain and handed over to Ayesu. Leverage to secure the release of his own family. Following the ninja raid on Kaminojo Castle, Tokugawa Ayesu does indeed exchange the captured boys for his own children, who'd been held hostage. He also proves his worth to his master by presenting him with the head of the rebel leader. His tactical use of ninja spies instead of sword-swinging samurai is a great success.

Ten years after the assault on Kaminojo Castle, the mission to unify central Japan under the command of one ruling shogun is in full swing. But there is resistance. Nobunaga sends his son, called Oda Nobuo, with an army of samurai to crush rebels who have taken shelter in treacherous Iga territory. As well as being mountainous and home to the ninja, the region has turned against the unifies who do not respect their semi-democratic society. It is 1579, and Oda Nobuo is leading his samurai army over a mountain pass into enemy territory. Accompanied by his 10,000 warriors, he's confident. They have just crushed the forces of a troublesome daimyo who refused to submit to his father.

All he has to do now is hunt down and kill the survivors who fled here to Iga. He decides to launch a full frontal assault on the local community that harbors these rebels. But these mountain passes are hard going for samurai, who wear complex armor and carry formidable but heavy weapons. Eventually, Nobuo's army converges on their target, an Iga village, where he knows that the local army have only half as many warriors. But what he doesn't know is that many of them are ninjas.

The samurai march noisily into the forest-lined valley, where their battle will take place, eventually settling in their ranks. It is eerily quiet. The eager forces gather to face them, but their numbers look even smaller than he expected. Then he hears a cry from the back of his ranks. Eager ninjas have moved silently in place from the rear, blocking the mountain pass behind. Now there is no chance of retreat. Suddenly there is a whistling sound and the samurai beside him falls.

He has been felled by an archer. Now the air is full of arrows, sickening thuds, and the screams of injured samurai. But Nobuo cannot see where the eager archers are even located. The ninja are hidden in the trees that lie in the valley, as usual, concealing themselves. He gives the command to attack the ground troops and his samurai advance. But suddenly, a thick fog descends on the valley. The samurai cannot see the enemy, who disappear into the mist. The warriors falter, and their lines fall into disarray. Nobuo screams commands, but his voice is lost in the confusion, running feet, clanking weapons, groans of injury and fear.

Warriors swing wildly, fearing ninjas appearing out of the fog. They continue to fight, but kill only their comrades. Some of the samurai, in despair at the humiliating events unfolding before them, commit seppuku, giving up their lives there on the battlefield as the terrifying shadow warriors run rings around them. Oda Nobuo manages to flee with his life and make his way back to his father, Oda Nobunaga. Upon hearing a report of the fiasco, the old man chastises his son for a tactical mistake. By failing to enlist ninjas to supply intelligence on the enemy, he went in blind. The offensive continues, but before Nobunaga completes his task to establish

a ruling shogunate, he loses grip on power and is betrayed by his own people. He commits a puku at the Honoji Temple in Kyoto. His death sends shockwaves through the whole country and forces his old ally Tokugawa Ayesu to go on the run. He flees from Osaka towards the safety of his homeland in Aichi Prefecture, but the route that keeps him off the main roads takes him through Iga and Koga territory, which are no longer friendly. Luckily for Ayesu, this is the homeland of Hattori Hanzo, his loyal sidekick and one of the most influential ninjas. His reputation preceding him, he goes by the nickname Oni no Hanzo, or the Demon Hanzo. Hattori Hanzo uses his powers of persuasion to sway local lords to let his friend pass. He even gets fellow ninjas to dress up as Aesu, providing decoys

to distract enemy assassins. After a perilous journey, during which Hanzo himself is stabbed in a skirmish and left for dead in a ditch, Ayesu reaches his own capital. Ten days later, an injured Hanzo arrives too, carried on a litter by fellow ninjas. Miraculously, he survived being stabbed ten times in the legs and is nursed back to health at his friend's palace. his friend's palace. By 1603, Tokugawa Ayesu completes his unification of Japan. Soon, he founds a shogunate, or military government, that rules the country for over 250 years. This is known as the Edo period and lasts until 1863, when the Meiji Restoration sees a return to imperial power and rule by a hereditary emperor.

But back in the 17th century, Tokugawa Ayesu seals his rise to power by building his own castle in the fishing village of Edo, with Hattori Hanzo leading the guard. In subsequent decades, every commander of the Edo Castle garrison will change his name to Hattori Hanzo, starting a myth that this particular ninja is immortal. The fortress at Kaminojo, where Hanzo first made his name, now lies in ruins. But Edo Castle puts on the map a settlement that grows into a much larger city, better known today as Tokyo. But with unification comes a fundamental shift for samurai and ninja alike. Unification meant that the whole way of life in medieval Japan became redundant. Samurai became redundant.

The only way that they could survive was by acting as servants to the government and pretending that they were the great warriors that they had been. The ninjas, as far as they existed at all, were police, basically, or secret agents. They were supported in some way by the state but that was their job they were no longer ninjas the legend of the ninja continues to circulate and be celebrated from the 17th century there is a movement to preserve the knowledge of so-called ninjutsu skills which are passed down by word of mouth several books appear

that record the techniques and philosophy of the shinobi the most important is known as the barn senshukai an encyclopedia of many volumes which is compiled in 1676 virtually no information exists about what the ninjas were what they they were doing, how they were defending themselves. So almost as soon as ninjas get into public consciousness, they're on their way out because the wars of unification have started already. It's only after that that they begin to reveal themselves because for the first time they need to look after their own survival in a changing world. And the way that they do this is to record, finally, their way of life. And they do so really because after unification, after 1600, when they become totally redundant,

they were after jobs as secret agents, perhaps working for a warlord, perhaps a secret service in the service of the government. And there were not many of them. And they realized that in order to get themselves a job, people had to know what it was that they actually did. So for the first time, after unification, they begin to write down what it is that they supposedly did. So now they produce books, sometimes presented as training manuals, that outline the way of the ninja, or ninjutsu. Some books do preserve a deep well of wisdom and endurance,

but some exaggerate the practical skills of Shigendo and turn them into magic tricks. You could disguise yourself as a wandering priest or a Shugendo or an actor, for instance. You could join those who were on the road in the going from town to town, and that would have been a good disguise. But of course, already you're getting into the world of legend because, for instance, I remember seeing some sort of a trick whereby you could tell the time of day by looking at a cat's eyes. Absolutely nonsensical. I mean, you can tell the time of day by looking at the sun and the stars and the moon. You don't have to find a cat and look into its eyes to tell the time of day.

moon. You don't have to find a cat and look into its eyes to tell the time of day. But this is the sort of thing which was being written down by imaginative ninjas, ex-ninjas who were trying to look after their own profession, their own way of life. But when the ninjas were beginning to promote themselves, ninja museums were founded, ninja houses suddenly emerged, which were supposedly full of all the tricks that ninjas used in order to disguise themselves. But these houses were built later. They were then incorporated into them were the famous ninja techniques, supposedly things like the false trap doors and what were called nightingale floors, which you couldn't possibly

walk over without them squeaking, which were, again, invented after the event in order to promote ninjas. Even if knowledge of the true way of the ninja is lost, the necessity for their style of espionage only increases over the centuries and into the modern era. increases over the centuries and into the modern era. In 1937, Japan establishes the Nakano School, an elite training scheme designed to produce operatives to carry out sabotage, propaganda, and black ops. Graduates of the highly selective program

function outside the usual structure of the army. In an era of Japanese imperialism, they are stationed overseas, working undercover in an embassy or as journalists covering the war effort. Nakano school training draws on many historical approaches to warfare, including that of the mysterious shinobi. What happened was that in the Second World War, when Japan's empire was building up, there was obviously a samurai tradition in the military,

but there was also a tradition whereby there had to be those who would have ninja-like qualities. They had to exercise great intelligence and authority, be interested in languages, be interested in the people that they were supposedly contacting. And they were like ninjas. They were supposed to be survivors and also come back with information that would be of use. And it was from this school, the last of the ninjas, Hiru Onoda, who was the character who was left in the Philippines and remained in the jungle for 30 years. 30 years!

And he used all the techniques that he'd learned in the Nakano spy school to survive. That was his order. He was ordered by his superior always to survive and come back with the right information. That was why he managed to survive for 30 years in the Filipino jungle and came back a complete hero, a ninja hero, to Japan and indeed the rest of the world. The story of a World War II soldier who survives on ninja skills for 30 years in the jungles of Southeast Asia is a long way from the idea of black-robed assassins that has developed over many decades in popular culture. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a series of Japanese adventure books

make the character of Sarutobi Sasukai into a household name. This fictional hero is a Koga shinobi with almost supernatural powers. The Japanese word Sarutobi means monkey jump and refers to the extraordinary athletic ability of the main character who is a prototype superhero. But his fame is limited to Japan. A second wave of popularity comes in the mid-20th century with the rise of cartoon books known as manga. Although the art form dates back to the

19th century, it takes off after World War II, when the American occupation of Japan exposes its people to Western comic books. The Allies censor Japanese texts, but that only leads to a boom in artistic creativity, including manga depicting the historic heroism of the ancient ninja. In turn, Western audiences are exposed to more Japanese culture, not only manga but films and TV shows featuring ninjas. The first Hollywood outing comes in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967, which features ninja commandos improbably abseiling into a volcano. Manga and video games also depict female ninjas, known as kunoichi. In the same way that male ninjas would disguise themselves as monks or merchants to walk the

streets unnoticed, popular culture has kunoichi dressed up as geisha in order to seduce their targets or gain entrance to a palace. The most famous female ninja is Mokizuki Kiyomi, but there is no evidence of her in any history book until she first appears in a fictional story in 1971. The scant records of the time of the ninja make no mention of any real-life kunoichi, though it is possible that women were active in espionage then as they are today. By the 1980s and beyond, ninjas go mainstream. They appear on screens in shows such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill includes a character called Hattori Hanzo, who shares his knowledge of weapons and the art of ninjutsu. It is also during these periods that the lines between the truth and

fiction of the ninja story are blurred almost beyond recognition. The black robes, superhero-like powers, and James Bond-style gadgets are superimposed onto the real ninja, whose skills were extraordinary but nonetheless based on wisdom and training. Some say the ninja are figments of folklore, but history books show that ninja spies did exist, albeit in the margins. And it is perhaps fitting that a group that prided itself on the utmost secrecy remains, even today, in the shadows. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Industrial Revolution.

I think economic historians, particularly over the last 20 years, have basically reached some kind of an agreement that it was in fact, you know, a watershed event, not just in British history, but in world history. It wasn't an efflorescence in the sense that this was kind of an event, you know, like the printing press. There's a big deal that comes and then once it's there, you know, fine, we can print books now and that's it. Whereas the Industrial Revolution really is more than that. It changed our lives forever in ways that nobody imagined. That's next time.