The Ninja: An Invented Tradition?

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective Volume 9 Number 1 Interdisciplinary Reflections on Japan Article 3 March 2015 The Ninja: An Invented Tradition? Stephen Turnbull Akita International University, Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/jgi Part of the Asian Studies Commons, International Relations Commons, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Turnbull, Stephen (2015) "The Ninja: An Invented Tradition?," Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective: Vol. 9 : No. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/jgi/vol9/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contact . Stephen Turnbull Journal of Global Initiatives Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014, pp. 9-26 The Ninja: An Invented Tradition? Stephen Turnbull The ninja is a well known phenomenon in Japanese military culture. The popularity of the tradition is centered on the neighboring areas of Iga and Kōka where ninja are a profitable tourist attraction. This paper examines the historical sources on which the ninja tradition is based to see if the pre-eminence claimed by Iga and Kōka is justified. It is shown that they were no different from several other places in their geography or their politics and that only one reliable account of secret warfare can be identified before 1581, the year when Iga Province ceased to exist as an independent self-governing entity. Secret warfare was practiced throughout Japan but this tiny area of Japan claimed a particular expertise in it and thereby invented a tradition that is still resonant today and now has all the hallmarks of a cult. The ninja has become a familiar figure in popular Japanese culture as the world’s greatest exponent of secret warfare. He infiltrates castles, gathers vital intelligence, and wields a deadly knife in the dark. His easily recognizable image is that of a secret agent or assassin who dresses all in black, possesses almost magical martial powers, and is capable of extraordinary feats of daring. He sells his skills on a mercenary basis and when in action, his unique abilities include confusing his enemies by making mystical hand gestures or by sending sharp iron stars spinning towards them. There is much popular support for the historical truth that is supposed to lie behind this familiar image. It is reminiscent of the passions displayed by the members of a religious cult, because like any cult the ninja’s loyal followers staunchly defend both his worth and his authenticity. Yet even the most devoted fans of what might be called “the ninja cult” will acknowledge that a certain amount of exaggeration has probably taken place. Similarly, only the most dogged ninja skeptic would dare to argue in an equally passionate manner that the idea is a total fabrication. The usual approach, even among scholars, is simply to accept the original ninja myth as a genuine historical phenomenon that has for centuries been greatly romanticized and, more recently, highly commercialized. This modern exploitation of the ninja has proved highly profitable, eclipsing anything derived from Japan’s other great warrior tradition of the noble samurai, to whose example of loyalty the ninja provides a dark antithesis of secrecy and deception. The samurai have also been subject to exaggeration and commercialization in recent years, but whereas examples of the samurai tradition are to be found all over Japan, the modern ninja cult has one unusual feature in that its exploitation is concentrated in a very small area. This is the former province of Iga (now part of Mie Prefecture) and the place with which it shares a border, an area of modern Shiga Prefecture called Kōka. The two places once had much in common and are often linked in the historical narratives. Nowadays Iga-Ueno City has by far the most developed ninja-related infrastructure, making it is the best place in Japan to 10 Journal of Global Initiatives visit a ninja house and a ninja museum, to enjoy martial arts displays, and purchase a wide range of ninja souvenirs. The worldwide acceptance of an underlying reality for ninja has meant that is now almost impossible to read even an academic text about Iga or Kōka without finding some reference to its most famous sons. For example, Yūki’s account of the medieval castles in Kōka includes references to ninja (1988, p. 121), and Yokoyama’s study of Oda Nobunaga’s campaigns in Ise and Iga notes that in the latter area “the name of the Iga ninja is celebrated” (1992, p. 29). More recently, Ferejohn and Rosenbluth’s War and State Building in Medieval Japan begins with a paragraph about ninja who “existed sometime in the mists of Japanese history” (2010, p. 1). Its authors clearly take them for granted because they regard the ninja of Iga as, … one manifestation of fierce and extensive resistance to encroaching armies in the dying years of medieval Japan. Local farming communities, particularly those in mountain valleys, armed themselves with simple weapons and guerrilla techniques to forestall the trend towards territorial consolidation and centralized taxation. (Ferejohn & Rosenbluth, 2010, p. 1) This is a perfect summary of an important political trend of the times, but to link it to the existence of ninja must not remain unchallenged, and such challenges have indeed been mounted in the past. As Sugiyama (1974) reminded everyone, “Nowadays ninja are regarded as the stars of Sengoku battles. However, there are very few authentic historical records [about them]” (p. 205). The aim of this present study is quite modest. The Iga-Kōka ninja tradition as it is understood today began to take shape when Japan’s civil wars started to come to an end during the early Tokugawa Period (1603-1868). There is no space here to trace its subsequent development into a modern cult that involved the appearance of so-called ninja manuals and ended with superheroes. I shall examine instead the historical sources that relate to the Sengoku Period (conventionally 1467-1603, the time of Japan’s great civil wars) to see if they provide any justification for the ninja tradition beginning in the first place. I shall explore the issue in the light of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) classic notion of an invented tradition, which they define as: … a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seeks to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable (...truncated)