And now for something completely different.
We have a special guests today guys and he promised to answer all your questions
about ninjas in the comments so leave lots of questions or just let us know if
you enjoyed the video.
He's a pretty prolific author but I'll let him introduce himself.
Hi everyone welcome to this video, I'm your host for today and
I'm Anthony Cummings.
I'm the official tourist ambassador for Wakayama
I'm an author and I'm a historical
researcher on the subject of ninja, shinobi, and the samurai of Japan.
Now what I'm gonna do today is take you through and tell you exactly what ninja
and ninjutsu is.
But we're doing this in support of my newest book which is this
one here and it's called Ninja Skills and it's by Watkins
Now this will tell
you all about the skills ninja used and it's based all of it is based on
original medieval documents
so you can get it by clicking the link below and
getting yourself a copy.
Now you may have heard you may have seen and especially
on this channel videos about "Did the ninja exist?" "Did they not exist?"
Well it depends how you define "ninja."
Originally they were called "shinobi no mono"
which is the same ideograms, it's just said in a different way.
The first appearance of
ninja comes in the year 1375 or around then when the Taiheiki was written and
it's the first time the word "shinobi" is used to reference somebody who does
something in stealth.
Now of course from there we get the Warring Period of Japan.
Now this is where the ninja come into their height and they're used the most.
However, we have next to no record of that, which makes people say,
"Oh, did they or didn't they exist?"
Now there are records from this date
however the records are contested because later on they were transcribed
or rewritten or added to or edited.
The problems that causes is they say,
"Okay they've changed some of the ideograms"
it changes so we can't count it.
But those documents do exist but they're not counted because they were in the wars
and there's lots of documents that are re-transcribed and they're just too old to
use and the originals are thrown away or burned.
That's why we have literally
nothing that talks about the ninja in that period.
But then you hit the period
of peace where everybody's writing and everybody's collecting information so
what we have is a really impressive document that appears in about 1612 to
1619 and it says the words.
It says "ninja,"
well "shinobi no mono," and it says shinobi are used.
They are used from
Iga, they are from Koka, it's called the
Gunpo Jiyoshu, and it was written by a
high-ranking retainer who had no interest in pushing forward the ninja myth.
He was not interested in that he wrote exactly what he did in the wars
and what was done and this was checked by none other than Tokugawa Ieyasu who said,
"This is a great book, let's give it to all my samurai."
So the first solid
evidence that is non-contested, nobody can say it's wrong comes from 1612
literally just after the wars and it says, this is a ninja, this is what they
do, and this is, you know, how they work.
So we know that shinobi existed in the
Warring States Period, but the problem is the information comes from just after it
and then we get this massive boost of information.
Thousands and thousands of
references to ninja, shinobi, and they all talk about you know they're from Iga
they're from Koka or they're from here or they do this, but they're usually not
written by ninja.
So where do we get the information for ninjutsu.
Now so the
kanji is here this is "ninja" or "shinobi no mono,"
which means person of stealth.
But then we get ninjutsu which is "skills of creeping" and "skills of stealth"
so where do we get this information from?
Well there's a collection of ninja scrolls in Japan.
They are either in public libraries, they're in private libraries,
or they're in personal collections.
However there are different various
levels and nearly all of them are from the Edo Period.
That's from about 1603 onwards,
and that's when people say,
"Oh maybe they didn't exist" because people will just write,
it's a period of peace, people are just writing it.
You know they write anything
so finding out what the ninja actually did is one of the most difficult tasks
because you have to check everything and check it against all the other ones.
Well this boils down to some of the main ninja scrolls.
So the first one, the biggest one, is called the Bansenshukai,
sometimes Mansenshukai.
Now this is the biggest ninja scroll that ever was.
It was written in 1676 and it goes through everything.
We've translated this into
English and it's over 500 pages long.
Now after this you get the Shoninki.
Now the Shoninki, which means True Account of the Shinobi, the Shoninki is a very
detailed, in-depth look at the ninja,
but it's very esoteric.
But it has been
used in Japan for a hundred years to outline what the shinobi are.
Now there's another one of what's considered the three great ninja manuals.
This is allegedly written by Hattori Hanzo in the 1500s, but lots of people dispute
that because they say, Oh Hattori Hanzo's too famous, or you know it becomes
problematic and they say, Oh that's not correct.
The problem is it comes in
multiple volumes and it is actually dated different dates on the volumes so
my theory is that what happened was in this family was passed on and people
wrote different things and it was later put together.
The best version we've got
for a beginner in ninjutsu is actually a set of scrolls from Chikamatsu Shigenori
Now Chikamatsu Shigenori was alive
in the 1700s and he was a samurai and he was like,
"Okay, I need to record this ninja information."
So he went and studied both Iga ninja and Koka ninja and
what he did, he studied from them and studied their ninjutsu and he wrote it all down.
Well actually, he wrote 70% down and he said the other 30% remained oral tradition.
He is one of our best examples of ninjutsu because he's got no reason
to lie about it he just goes in and says I'm gonna take from two ninja
masters, pull them together, and find out, you know, exactly what ninjutsu is.
So what is ninjutsu?
It's very very difficult to actually say what ninjutsu is.
It's more of an intent.
But it does have a set of skills.
So shinobi no mono in Japan
is a person from any social level, they can be local thieves,
they can be foot soldiers,
they can be samurai,
they can be high-ranking samurai,
and each one of them, if they are pushed into the world of the ninja
or they do a job as a ninja, even if it's temporarily,
they become shinobi no mono, they become ninja.
But each one of them has a different form of job to do.
So if you go to battle and you go on to a military campaign and you go
into enemy areas, what you do is you find the local thieves and you say to them,
"Instead of stealing from our man, instead of breaking into our camp, or instead of
breaking in back home,
join us, we'll give you money and you go and thieve from the enemy.
Go and attack the enemy household, go and make a problem.
So you get your local thieves or bandits to become shinobi and they go out and do
their job, they get paid for it and they steal and they're very happy.
But ancient documents tell us that you don't mind these people because if they die, nobody cares.
And that they're not robbing from you, they're robbing from the enemy,
which is great.
Next you get foot soldiers, now these guys they will go band together
and if they're trained in the ways of the ninja they'll go into the enemy
castles, they'll grappling-hook over, they'll do night raids, they'll do ambushes.
Now of course then you get people who are specialized,
they've got only one job and that's a warrior, and they're samurai, and they're
from a shinobi family, they're from a family that studied shinobi full-time.
Now these guys are brilliant.
These are the guys who have learned everything they can.
They are very intelligent, they speak multiple dialects, they're
good at disguise, they've got good memory
they're robust, it says that a shinobi should look stupid but be robust,
meaning that they can survive nights in the wilderness, they can sit in the snow for
days, and then when people see them they like, Oh he looks stupid you know big ears
and often nobody cares.
He pretends to be an idiot, nobody cares.
But inside he's very clever and he's capturing everything that's being said.
Now shinobi no jutsu, the Way of the Shinobi, divides into two sections, you get
IN no shinobi, which means shinobi of the dark,
and YO no shinobi, shinobi of the light.
General terms, this means in no shinobi means those who do
everything you imagine, they're creeping, they set fires, they kill people, they
kill guards, they get over walls, they're digging under, they're creating tunnels
they're doing all this type of thing to get into the enemy.
Now shinobi of the light
are those who go in disguise, they change their hairline, they change their facial
hair, they put things in their mouth to look different, they dye their teeth, they
will starve themselves a week on end, they'll cover themselves in crap, they'll
do all sorts of stuff just to walk among the enemy and not be seen by them.
You know, not be like a threat.
Or these shinobi of the light also will go and work in
the enemy area for years in advance.
They'll become shopkeepers,
they'll become samurai on the enemy payroll, they'll become you know hired by the
enemy, and then when war comes they will not be thrown out because everybody's
used to, you know, Bob at the corner who sells like sweets to children
everybody's used to him so they just leave him where he is, because his Lord
knew they were gonna go to war in two years so he puts him in place.
To counter this, many people say get rid of them anybody who's not been there as a
generational retainer get rid of them.
They say to stop ninjas infiltrating,
instead of spending on gold and luxury items, just hire your solid standing army
and make sure they stay there, otherwise you're always going to get a ninja,
so what we've got there is two types of ninjutsu, two types of shinobi no jutsu.
You've got disguise and infiltration.
Now the disguised people learn how to change
their appearance, they learn how to do different dialects and blend in, they
learn all the local spots of all the different areas, they have a great
capacity for mental imagery, they will map how everything in their mind go home
and write it down, they have great memory, they copy
handwriting, they will learn the different ways that the different Lords
speak or what they say so that when they make fake letters they can use the same
words that they would use so it looks plausible, and they bring all this
information back to headquarters.
Now the other guys, the ninja of the dark, they are skilled in different things.
They could swim really well, they can
climb walls really well, they have a great knowledge of burglary, breaking and
entering, lock-picking, sawing, they can as I said dig under things, they know
how to poison dogs or how to befriend dogs, they track the moon in the sky
and they check when is the best time to infiltrate, they listen for people
snoring, they check for example how much work has been done.
If it's a hot day and
people have been working really hard they'll infiltrate, but if the day is
cool and people have not been working hard, they'll stand back and they're
masters of fire tools, they love fire.
They've got explosives, they've got tars,
they've got lots of things to bring about destruction on the enemy or ways
to infiltrate them.
So when we look at shinobi of history, what you're looking
at, guys, is a collection of people from different levels of society who will
then fit into different jobs inside of the samurai army and at different times
they go out.
Before war, the people who have planted at agents go out.
Just before war, just before you send out long-distance scouts and shinobi.
In the war, the shinobi check just past the horizon to make sure that nothing bad is
going to happen.
They go further than the scouts, and when you get to the enemy
castle or the enemy fortifications or camp, those are the people that creep in
at night, set fire, burn it down while everybody else jumps in and attacks.
That is basically what shinobi do.
Now I hope you enjoyed the video.
Please if you
want to know how to perform shinobi no jutsu, ninjutsu, get a copy of the book
which is Ninja Skills and if you'd like to follow me there's some links below
and of course here on the screen are my details.
I'm very happy and very
privileged to have been your host today for this video and I'm excited to look
at your comments.
I'm gonna read them all and I'll answer when I can.
Thank you very much guys and hopefully I'll see you again in a different video.
Hey I hope you all enjoyed that.
I have some minor disagreements with Antony Cummins
about the ninja myth, but I mostly agree with him.
I'll have a post
for patrons on the Patreon page soon with some inside baseball.
Check out the link in the description to Antony's latest book called Ninja Skills which
contains what the ninja manuals written in the Edo Period said about ninja
techniques and such, and there are pictures.
Some fun stuff in there if you're interested.
Please please please leave some
questions in the comments and let me know if you liked this collab.
Much love, guys.
Now go out there and spread the knowledge.