Everyone knows what a ninja is.
A warrior in the shadows.
An expert at hiding, only revealing himself to slice the throat of some lord in his castle
before slipping back into nothingness.
What if I told you that it’s all wrong.
Ninjas didn't exist.
I’m not just talking about the ninjas in movies and TV shows.
Most of us understand that the fictional ninja in popular culture who can teleport, fly,
and eat a full bowl of ramen in 2 seconds is fantasy.
No, I’m talking about historical ninjas in medieval Japan.
That guy in a dark suit who infiltrated castles.
He never existed.
He’s a myth.
I’ll show you.
First, let’s define the historical ninja.
There’s surprisingly little research in English about the origin of ninjas, but there
is an excellent book by Stephen Turnbull called Ninja: Unmasking the Myth that analyzes the
ninja myth.
Check it out in the description.
The traditional ninja has 3 characteristics that must be true for ninjas to be real.
One, ninjas were an elite group of people in the Sengoku Period who were experts of
stealth techniques.
Two, their set of skills were unique to Japan during the Sengoku Period, and did not exist
in other countries.
And three, these people hailed from the areas of Iga and Koka (or Koga), and sold their
stealthy services to buyers all over Japan.
There is little evidence for any of these 3 claims.
Let’s tackle Number One.
Ninjas were an elite group of people trained in stealth.
It is true that we have many reports of people doing undercover operations during Japan’s
chaotic Sengoku Period, like scaling castle walls and secret assassinations.
Ninja proponents point to this as evidence for ninjas.
But just because someone once snuck into a castle, does not make him a ninja.
It just means he was a guy who snuck into a castle once or twice.
It doesn’t mean he was part of an elite guild of spies and assassins.
People throughout history engaged in secret warfare, we don’t call them all ninjas.
I had sex before, it doesn’t make me a porn star.
No, having intercourse on camera for money is why I’m a porn star.
There was a case of someone engaging in fantastic stealthy psychological warfare.
He infiltrated an enemy castle, stole its banner, and escaped, then raised the banner
in his own castle for the enemy to see what he did.
Bad.
Ass.
See?
The guy’s clearly a ninja, right?
Well, no.
Sure, he did something amazing.
He could’ve even been a man who regularly did amazing stealthy things.
Still doesn’t make him a ninja.
Did he train in an elite guild or clan?
Was his career based around secret warfare?
The account did not mention this at all.
He could’ve easily been a samurai who sometimes did some undercover work.
In fact, many cases of ninja operations were probably done by samurai, which contradicts
the ninja myth.
Ninja work must have been something that the average samurai could not do.
Otherwise, why would you need ninjas?
Stephen Turnbull suggests much of the confusion revolves around the words used in historical
texts.
Stay with me for a sec, you’ll get candy.
Brain candy.
This is the Japanese word for ninja (忍者), but it can be read in a different way.
The first written source where people read it as “ninja” was actually in 1955.
The word ninja took off in the West, probably because it was easier for Westerners to say.
Before 1955, the characters were read as shinobi no mono.
The first character, shinobi, can be translated as “to hide.”
The second character mono makes it a noun.
Together, they translate into “a person who practices secrecy.”
So ninja and shinobi are different ways of saying the same thing.
Because the word shinobi was often used in historical texts, it led people to believe
that they were talking about ninjas.
But if you look at contemporary writings in those days, this form of the word was not
used that often.
Most often, the second character was different.
Written this way made it more ambiguous, it didn’t have to be a noun.
In fact, most of the time, it was not used as a noun, but as an adverb.
It described how something was done instead of the person doing it.
For example, you’d have something written this way: shinobi iru (忍び 入る).
Iru means to enter.
This usually didn’t mean “the shinobi entered.”
It meant “to enter secretly.”
Knowing this, we now see the contemporary texts differently.
People in those days used shinobi to mean “secretly” as in doing something secretly,
they did not mean a trained spy-assassin.
Number Two.
Ninjas were unique to Japan.
This claim can be disposed of pretty easily, like my self esteem.
If you take out the pure fantasy elements like teleportation and magical hand signs,
you’re left with stealth techniques that were often used all over the world.
Japanese writings about ninja-like activities involved relatively mundane things like assassinations,
espionage, castle infiltration, intelligence gathering, things not unique to Japan.
Many of these likely came from China.
The Japanese during the Sengoku era were well-versed in the Chinese military classics like The
Art of War, which talked plenty about spying and secret warfare.
Worse, we don’t even know the set of techniques that ninjas used.
There is no credible record of a single scroll or document in the Sengoku Period listing
a set of ninja techniques.
They needed something like that to train ninjas, didn’t they?
Now you could say, “Well of course we can’t find them, they were secret.”
Really?
Not even a few got out?
No one holding on to the documents made a mistake?
A fair response would be that these techniques were passed down by word of mouth, by teachers,
and nothing was written down.
This is perfectly fair.
But then how do you tell the difference between something so secret that you have no record
of it, and something that never existed in the first place?
Proponents will say, “Wait, we do have ninjutsu manuals.”
It’s true, these are manuals that detailed ninja techniques and philosophy, but they
were not written in the Sengoku Period, they were written in the subsequent Edo Period.
As we’ll see later, in a later video, writings about ninjas during the Edo Period cannot
be trusted.
Edo writers intentionally embellished the past and were responsible for spreading the
ninja mythos.
And the ninjutsu manuals also include impossible things like hand gestures that conjure up
magical powers, so...not credible.
And finally, Number Three.
Ninjas were mercenaries who came from the regions of Iga and Koka.
First off, the mercenary aspect is hard to believe.
Japan didn’t have mercenaries.
Sure there were exceptions, like small bands of ronins hurting for money, and there were
Japanese mercenaries outside of Japan.
But within Japan, it was mostly nonexistent.
Warlords wanted loyalty and commitment above all else, not people who could turn on a dime,
or a gold piece.
Plus Iga and Koka were relatively small regions, it’s hard to believe they could ship warriors
all over Japan.
During the Sengoku Period, Iga and Koka resisted invasion from the powerful warlords around
them.
Fighting against stronger foes, they had to use guerilla tactics.
This may have caused people to associate them with ninjas.
Iga and Koka were not special, there were other regions who tried to maintain independence
and resisted outside rule.
There were also accounts of secret warfare all over Japan, done by men who were not from
Iga or Koka.
Proponents seem to engage in confirmation bias.
Whenever Iga or Koka men did something sneaky, they were ninja.
Whenever ordinary men did something sneaky, they were just ordinary men who did something
sneaky.
Okay, so secret warfare was not exclusive to Iga and Koka, but Iga and Koka could still
have been experts at it, right?
Better than everyone else.
If so, then you would expect many contemporary reports of Iga and Koka men doing all kinds
of shadowy things.
But Turnbull only found five, and they were not convincing.
These accounts do speak of secret warfare, but they mostly use shinobi as adverb instead
of noun.
They are spoken of more like soldiers part of a military unit who were tasked to do things
in the night.
There is no indication that they were men who dedicated their lives to ninja work.
These accounts do speak highly of Iga warriors and their aptitude for secret warfare.
But when you look at other accounts of Iga warriors, they were praised for all kinds
of things like archery and swordsmanship.
It seems like Iga was good at warfare in general, not just secret warfare.
This makes sense because they had to maintain their independence in an aggressive environment.
The idea of the Iga and Koka being ninja clans is not supported by evidence.
Now I want to be clear that I’m not poo-pooing ninjas in popular culture.
I’m not saying you should be that guy who shouts in the middle of a ninja movie, “Oh,
I can’t watch this, ninjas aren’t real” and stomps away in a huff.
That guy’s a jerk.
I like ninja movies and shows just as much as the next dork, but we can’t let that
bias our thinking.
Many aspects of popular culture turn out to have dubious origins.
Just add this one to the list.
The fact that this myth has become ubiquitous and a huge part of Japanese culture, even
spawning off its own legitimate martial arts, makes it a cultural phenomenon
(doo doo doo doo doo)
that deserves respect.
What I’m saying is,
you can still watch Naruto.
Hey guys!
This is the first video of a series on ninja myths, I hope you'll like it.
I got a lot of my information from this exxxxcellent book, it's called Ninja: Unmasking the Myth
by Stephen Turnbull.
It's great.
Link in the description, check it out!
Much love guys, byeee!
Also, say hello to our new patron Emmanuel Macronée.
Thank you, Manu, I mean Monsieur Presidente, I’m honored.