In Search of the Niinja (14 page)

The Iga group undertook
Onmitsu no Tantai
espionage and received
Gonaimei
or secret orders directly from the lord. To add to this, if needed, the lord would give them secret orders and they could be told to infiltrate a distant province at short notice.

Hattori Hanzo I was the father of the famous Devil-Hanzo and was a man of Iga retained by the future Tokugawa family of Mikawa prefecture, making him and his son samurai retainers. (His son was of a very high rank and personal friend to Tokugawa Ieyasu.)

From these examples, it is obvious that being a ninja did not mean being part of a counter-culture, in fact it was quite the reverse. A ninja was an integral part of medieval Japan and was a recognised part of samurai life. However, this being said, it must not be forgotten that historical documentation is most often created by the social elite and we must not fall into the trap of imagining that all shinobi were of samurai status. Whilst the shinobi from the foot soldier class did not leave manuals or documentation, we can infer that the position of ninja was one based on training and ability, not social standing. With this in mind, and with the understanding that the ninja were samurai and that they were an accepted part of Japanese life, we must ask the question, where did the negative image of the ninja come from?

Generally, ninja manuals based in the teachings of the Sengoku period or even military manuals which deal with battlefield conditions, speak of the ninja in two ways. Firstly, they either expand on the importance of the shinobi and their usage and the proper method of employment or, alternatively, they talk about defending against the shinobi and highlight how poor defences against the ninja can lead to disaster or at least the penetration of the camp. Remembering that the literature was brought to us by a select group, it can be understood that these elites had good reason for discussing the use of the ninja, however, they always use a syntax which talks of the ninja as ‘lower’, of a low status. This has been interpreted by most to mean the ninja were low in social position, which is an error. The authors of these prestigious battle manuals were the samurai elite, highly educated and usually employed as tacticians and generals or even clan warlords; therefore, by definition they are of higher status than any ninja and will naturally talk of them as lower class people – not people of the lower class. Records show that some ninja were a part of the lower samurai class, which puts them towards the top end of the social ladder when observing Japanese society as a whole, making even the lowest of the samurai an ‘officer’ in the army, distinguishable from the
Ashigaru
troops. Furthermore, we can assume that some of these
shinobi-samurai
were in command of troops of lower level shinobi, who were
Ashigaru
foot soldiers, still considered men of war and not at the bottom of the social scale.

There is a blank in the recorded history of the ninja and that blank is what the average person thought of a shinobi. Doubtless the shinobi would have been hated by many and even feared. It was a ninja’s job to lie, kill, deceive, cheat, steal and burn people’s property and root out conspiracy. The basic nature of their job elicits hatred in others and it is no wonder that an undercurrent of fear and even contempt has followed the shinobi
throughout history. The ninja themselves were aware of this, the
Bansenshukai
and the 100 ninja poems, amongst others, discuss this fact and reassure the ninja that lying and cheating are seen in a positive light by the gods when used in the service of a lord. However, when not in such service, then their actions are seen as base. This is the point at which the evolution of the ‘heroic samurai’ and the ‘evil ninja’ begins.

The modern myth of samurai versus ninja is a mixture of the echoes of Edo period literature and the (sometimes perhaps wilful) misunderstanding of those in the modern media. In the early 1940s – which was before the modern ninja craze hit the world – authors such as Tamabayashi stated that the ninja were of samurai stock and that a ninja could come from most levels of society:

Ninja were common ranking samurai such as
Soshi
, or even
Ashigaru
(foot soldiers) or
Doshin
‘half-samurai’, also they sometimes came from more humble backgrounds, and were part of the
Toppa
,
Suppa
and
Rappa
groups of bandits.

The class issue in relation to the people of Iga was a touchy subject. Up until 1582 Iga was an independent state of samurai families, who governed their own lands. But after Oda Nobunaga brought Iga to its knees, the samurai of the domain were replaced or displaced. When the wars ended, the people of Iga were placated with an ‘in-between’ status, not samurai and yet not peasant. They were known as
Musokunin
and were classed as village leaders under their new samurai lords, a situation that must have been painful to endure, yet a transition that some modern scholars have ignored, defining the once-proud samurai of Iga as merely lower class people.

We can safely say that the shinobi have been misrepresented to a modern audience and that they were a functional part of any army. It was only after the coming of peace that the ninja were ‘blacklisted’.

Notes

41
    Literally, ‘lower officials’.

42
    Literally, ‘spare’ but the latter part of the quote establishes that you need it to change your guise into a different social class.

43
    You should not travel in luxury but place yourself in lower quarters and mix with dubious people to display that you are not a member of the government, helping to strengthen your cover as a lowly traveller.

44
    This is made up of two classic ninja elements, ‘
togiki
’ meaning listening scout and ‘
nawa
’ or rope. To ‘carry a
togiki
’ would make no sense, therefore it appears to be a tool as yet unknown, some kind of a rope that is either used for listening by scouts, or to detect listening scouts.

45
    Often misnamed
Kishu-ryu.

46
    This mention of
Doushin
comes from the 1844 listing, however, the men of Iga probably were
Doushin
, just below samurai level, a status they assume after the loss of their territory in Iga.

When you construct your camp and you have to raise the watch towers, lay Kusa ambush [scouts] to watch the opponent’s camp

Medieval War Poem

T
hroughout all of my work concerning the shinobi I am always referring to ninja ‘scouting skills’. Whilst a high proportion of a ninja’s role was indeed scouting, there are some fundamental differences between the work of the ninja and the work of a ‘conventional’ war scout.

The term ‘scout’ in Japanese is translated as ‘
Monomi
’
and has a different application to the word ‘shinobi’. In short, the art of the
Monomi
is predominantly mounted scouting, taken up by groups or individual samurai, who are sometimes accompanied by foot soldiers or samurai on foot, who observe the enemy up close but at a ‘safe’ distance.

The
Monomi
rode into no-man’s-land with the intention of getting within visual range of the enemy to record and bring back information about the enemy forces and their activities or to scout out an army route and acquire topographical information. These
Monomi
scouts are ‘external scouts’, who do not penetrate the enemy’s position but observe from a distance.

On the other hand, shinobi,
in general, gather information from either very close by an enemy position or from inside the opponent’s camp or fortress. Whilst a
Monomi
may discover the general outlay, position, route and strength of an army, a shinobi will gather passwords, detailed positions, names of commanders and their command team, code words, secret signals and information in detail; information that normal scouting would never garner.

Whilst the above distinction is a simplified one, it shows how the two are distinct and provides an ‘anchor’ to hold on to, as often the two concepts of
Monomi
and shinobi merge.

There is no way to establish if the shinobi and the
Monomi
scouts were the same people performing two separate jobs, or if they were separate individuals, or if there was an overlap between the two, meaning that some people were specialists in either shinobi or
Monomi
and that some individuals were trained in both. Whilst there is evidence to show that shinobi used horses (which is discussed later on), the general lack of documentation about shinobi using mounted tactics leads to the conclusion that it was rare. In addition, a shinobi may not have been paid enough to support a horse and gear, keeping him on foot. Logically it seems that shinobi were a separate group to the
Monomi
, with a small margin of cross-over. Fujibayashi, author of the
Bansenshukai,
argues for the use of shinobi over
Monomi
, implying an actual distinction in qualified personnel as opposed to a distinction in employment of the same person. The
Rodanshu
military secrets scroll appears to provide some evidence for a mixture of
Monomi
and shinobi forms of scouting, but we cannot know how many people shared shinobi and
Monomi
skills.

There are four main types of scouting (with some minor variations), normally found in samurai armies, using the term ‘
Monomi
’.

Large Scouting Groups (
O-monomi
)

Up to 100 men (out of 1000) can make up an
O-monomi
group, if not more. The military tactics appendix found at the end of the
Bansenshukai
states that this form of scouting party can be made up of mounted samurai, each with up to five
Ashigaru
or foot soldiers accompanying them. On the whole, this group was sent out before the army moved out and would scout ahead, checking the route and lay of the land. This is a large armed group who are not trying to hide their activities. In some cases an
O-monomi
group was said to reach the level of 1000 mounted warriors.

To-monomi
,
To-miban
and
To-me
all mean ‘far reaching scouts’. It is unknown if this was a large band of mounted warriors or only a few in number.

Middle-sized Scouting Groups (
Chu-monomi
)