Answer the doorway on Halloween and every fifth nestling will be dressed as a ninja . There ’s just something about the legend of theninja — secretive assassins who move silently in black robes and cover faces , leaping from rooftops and kill with throwing stars ( shuriken ) — that captures our popular imagery , likepiratesor Robin Hood . But just like those other fabled figures , our picture of the stealthy Japanese warrior is based largely on nugget of historic truth swallow under mountains of myth .
But we may shortly have more cue to the real origins of the ninja custom . That ’s in part because in July 2017 , a Nipponese university announce the opening night of the macrocosm ’s first external ninja research mall . Mie University is located in Iga , in Mie Prefecture , about 40 miles ( 64 kilometers ) southwest of Kyoto , where the first and most famous ninja " school " may have exist in the 16th century . The new research center will house not only historic document associate to the ninja , but also 100 of novels , picture show and cartoons that have helped to forge the New epitome of the blackness - clad assassin .
Stephen Turnbull , a historian of Japanese military account , gave the inaugural lecture at the hatchway of the enquiry substance in Iga , and has write more than 75 book onsamuraiand Japanese war , include the forthcoming " The Ninja : unmask the Myth " , due in November . He explicate that everything we associate with the character of the ninja — the bleak costume , the weapons , the spycraft and secrecy — is all based on historical the true .
" What ’s made up , " Turnbull says , " is to give it to the ninja . "
The Myth of the Ninja
Like any good legend , the image of the ninja was craft over centuries of storytelling and colorful exaggeration . start out more than 300 years ago , Nipponese people in the Iga neighborhood start taking element of traditional warfare that exist in all cultures — spotting , blind and assassination — and assigning them to a closelipped brotherhood of Nipponese warriors calledshinobi . The characters for shinobi can also be show and pronounced asninja .
The origin of the word itself reveals a lot about ninja mythmaking , says Turnbull . In Japanese , shinobi intend " in cloak-and-dagger , " and the earliest known historical account of ninja - like activeness in Iga specifically use the word . In 1541 , a local monk wrote up a brief offence composition trace an attack on a palace by a dance band of mercenaries :
" This morning , the Iga - shū enter Kasagi palace in secret ( shinobi itte ) and fix fire to a few of the non-Christian priest ' fourth and so on . "
Back in the 16th hundred , the Scripture shinobi was used as an adverb to key out any activity carried out in secret . In the monk ’s account , the invaders could have been mercenary , common thieves or highly rail warriors . All we know was that they acted " in secret . " But as early on as the seventeenth century , Turnbull state , you start seeing enlarged story about Iga warrior in which shinobi the adverb becomes shinobi the noun .
" rather of saying that it was done in a ' shinobi ' way , in a secret manner , you say it was donebya shinobi , " says Turnbull . " They ’re taking something that ’s existent , these things that really befall , but instead of them being done in secret , the narration say they ’re being done by these special secret people . "
The Ninja Legend Spreads
The biggest challenge in separating ninja truth from myth is a deficiency of honest primary source . Turnbull says there are five total document housed at the new inquiry middle that are standardized to the Thelonious Monk ’s score . What ’s most remarkable about that fistful of documents is n’t so much the subject of the original texts , but how they ’ve been transform into these fabled tales . The commission of the new pith is to trace the path from a few garden - variety dark attack in the 16th century to what became a ball-shaped cultural phenomenon .
The birth of the ninja myth starts with those overdraw shinobi account of the 17th century , spread by members of the Nipponese warrior grade , who were feeling a little underappreciated since far-flung fighting in Japan largely ceased by 1615 . Next were a series of eighteenth - one C military manual of arms concerned withspyingtechniques , which mentioned the importance of operate on in disguise .
Around the same time , Nipponese artist created some famous woodblock prints of citizenry dressed in black carrying out assassinations . That ’s where Turnbull believe the musical theme of the shameful ninja robe assume hold , even though the prints were n’t specifically about ninja at all , just close attacks .
The throwing stars known asshurikenhave a similar source . They started as nineteenth - century bauble arm that bored Japanese gentlemen dabbling in the martial artwork would act around with . It took a couplet of enterprising Iga boosters to put the spiky star in the paw of ninja .
The Modern Ninja
In the mid-20th 100 , a Japanese martial humanities historiographer and military adviser identify Seiko Fujita team with the mayor of Iga to promote the region as the " heartland of the ninja . " One of their clever moves , Turnbull says , was to obtain old illustrations of throwing star in nineteenth - century warlike arts manuals and renovate them as ninja weapon system .
The two men built the first ninja museum in Iga in the 1950s . About the same time , they pop collaborating with novelist and filmmakers to forge the range of a function of what , in their minds at least , ninja " ought to be , " Turnbull says . " And because their estimate appear on celluloid , that became what the great unwashed regarded as the criterion of what ninja did . "
The modern ninja legend was sealed by the 1962 film " Shinobi no Mono , " which depicted everything we associate with the ninja myth : the ignominious gown and specialized weapons , a strict code of secrecy , almost " superhuman " warriorlike arts skill and selfless forfeiture .
" That ’s really where it all pop , " Turnbull say . " These two guy took these genuine historical sequence and other elements from Japanese history and acculturation , puzzle them all in a bighearted pot and gave it a stir . And the rest is story . "
That still does n’t explain Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles .
