The regions of Iga and Koka are most popularly associated with ninjas.
The ninja myth holds that these regions trained ninjas and hired them out as mercenaries.
But the truth is much more interesting, and bloody.
When Japan was thrust into the Sengoku Period, order broke down and provinces began breaking
away from the central government.
It was a time of unrest and opportunity, and the regions of Iga and Koka seized this opportunity.
It used to be that the shogun, the military dictator, appointed governors to rule each
province.
Provinces had mostly peasant farmers, but they also had people called jizamurai, which
can be translated as samurai of the land or country samurai.
These were small-time landowners, lords of rural areas.
There were jizamurai who owned castles, but usually they were as poor as the peasant villagers
around them.
They often farmed alongside fellow villagers and married them.
They had samurai heritage, so they considered themselves samurai, but the upper class either
did not see them as real samurai or looked down on them with disdain.
At samurai cocktail parties, high-ranking samurai would upturn their noses and ask who
let in these jizamurai hillbillies, then proceed to flog a peasant.
During the Sengoku Period, relations between provincial governors and jizamurai crumbled.
Imagine for a second that you are a jizamurai.
You have samurai heritage, but you have none of the prestige and power that a samurai deserves.
You’re poor and forced to farm like a serf, working under people who don’t recognize
your worth.
When the chaos started, it must’ve been tempting to break free of the system and become
independent.
In many regions, jizamurai rose up together to create confederations called ikki.
This happened in Iga Province.
Mountains and rivers isolated Iga from its neighbors.
It was a good spot to be free.
The Iga Confederacy formed to repel invasion from the various warlords going around Japan
being obnoxious.
Like other ikki, the Iga Confederacy was not a hierarchy, its leaders were equal.
They were very organized, they even wrote a constitution.
The constitution promised that, in the case of invasion, all members would defend the
province as one.
They also declared that they would cooperate with their neighbors, the Koka.
We’ll talk about them later.
There were probably other stuff too.
Iga’s military came to be called Iga-shu, and we started to see this name pop up in
contemporary accounts.
People have mistakenly taken Iga-shu to mean a ninja unit, but it was a normal military
unit.
They operated mostly within Iga Province, occasionally tiptoeing into neighboring provinces.
There’s no indication that they did this as mercenaries, it looks like their primary
goal was protecting their homeland.
The Iga-shu took part in the full range of military activities, which of course included
secret warfare.
In fact, they seemed to be badass at secret warfare, though you didn’t wanna mess with
them at other kinds of warfare either.
Now we do have many accounts of ninja activity, but most of these were written after-the-fact
in the Edo Period.
That’s a problem because by the time of the Edo Period, the ninja myth had already
taken root in the culture.
We need to look at contemporary accounts, and Stephen Turnbull only found 5 such accounts
of secret operations, accounts that mostly used the adverb form of shinobi instead of
the noun.
The accounts do suggest that Iga had expertise in stealth operations, but there’s no evidence
of a secret society dedicated to secret warfare.
Iga warriors were very much members of an organized military unit.
And Iga and Koka were not unique.
Similar communities sprung up all over Japan.
Higo Province jizamurai displayed similar badassery in battle and secret warfare.
They did masterful things like sneaking into a castle and beheading its commander.
If these acts were done by Iga men, people probably would’ve called them ninjas.
A few steps out of Iga landed you in Koka District, a region on the southern edge of
Omi Province.
Koka’s situation was opposite that of Iga’s.
While Iga was secluded and remote and had terrible cell phone connection, Koka had a
major road cutting right through it, the Tokaido.
Koka, and the greater Omi Province, was a crucial strategic location for communication,
troop movements, and trade.
The people of Koka formed their own confederacy, but couldn’t exert influence over the entire
province.
There were biggers players in the region.
Omi Province had two daimyo vying for power.
In the south laid the domain of the Rokkaku clan.
The Koka Confederacy allied themselves with the Rokkaku and liked to join them in battle.
Remember that Iga’s constitution made them BFFs with Koka, so they often fought together.
The north was ruled by the Azai, led by Azai Nagamasa.
Nagamasa came from a long line of people who fought the Rokkaku.
His father fought the Rokkaku, his grandfather fought the Rokkaku.
It became a thing.
So when are you fighting the Rokkaku tonight, son?
Koka’s alliance with the Rokkaku was no joke, the Azai often encountered Koka and
Iga men in battle.
It was berry annoying for the Azai, and a fruitful partnership for the Koka and Rokkaku.
The earliest record of this Koka-Rokkaku alliance dates back to 1487, near the beginning of
the Sengoku Period.
At the time, the Rokkaku were being jerks and bullying their neighbors.
To set a good example for his son, the shogun at the time went down with an army to start
an anti-bullying campaign there in Omi Province.
Both Koka and Iga joined the fight, in return for the Rokkaku recognizing their sovereignty.
Iga and Koka troops did their part by executing hit-and-run night tactics.
The shogun was forced to abandon the campaign, then went home to teach his son the benefits
of being a bully.
The Rokkaku honored 21 families from Koka for their part in the fight.
This account has been popularly called the first ninja operation, but that’s inaccurate.
Iga and Koka men were part of a military unit, hit-and-run tactics are common when fighting
a larger force, you don’t need the additional explanation of them being ninjas.
In the mid-1500s, the Rokkaku clan head was a daimyo by the name of Rokkaku Yoshikata,
who became a Buddhist priest and took the name of Shotei.
In the midst of their rivalry with the Azai, Shotei decided it was a good idea to kick
a hornet’s nest.
In 1565, the shogun was assassinated and a succession dispute ensued.
Are you surprised?
Eventually, the former shogun’s cousin, Ashikaga Yoshihide, rose to power, and Shotei
of the Rokkaku clan declared his support for the new shogun.
This invited the ire of a man who was marching towards the capital of Kyoto to install a
rival candidate, a man with soaring ambitions,
a man named Oda Nobunaga.
Hey guys, a lot of the information in this video and the future videos in this series
comes from Stephen Turnbull’s excellent book, Ninja: Unmasking the Myth.
He goes through what’s true and not true about ninjas, he analyzes a ton of primary
sources, it’s amazing how much info is packed in this book.
If you’re interested in this stuff, go buy this book, check out the link in the description.
Thanks for watching, guys.
Much love.
Now go out there and spread the knowledge.
Help me make this a catchphrase.