In Search of the Niinja (40 page)

After Ieyasu’s crossing of Iga [the samurai] Miyata Gonemon,
121
Yoneji Hansuke and others were hired and also other men of Iga wanted to serve Lord Ieyasu and thus gained employment [as described above]. However, the crossing of Iga by Ieyasu soon faded from his mind, so he made [the Iga] men on foot
Doushin
[which is a rank slightly lower than samurai], but [this did not sit well with them] because some of them were of good samurai stock back in their hometown. This was a problem because Iwami-dono [Hanzo III] was from a lower class Hattori line, a line lower than their own ancestors and therefore Hanzo’s men rebelled, they said that Hanzo III was of a lower class, the Hattori family had come to Mikawa earlier and were given large fief and it was only in this manner that he took control of the Iga people under him, who were [once samurai] but were treated now as low people [
genin
].

This a great insight in to workings of the Iga men employed under Ieyasu and the Tokugawa clan and a good example of the problematic nature of the class upheaval in this period, especially in Iga. The author is writing in a post-Sengoku period and as a third party. He uses the word
Hyakusho-samurai
, which is a form of peasant-samurai, on the border between the samurai class and those who are not, but still samurai. This is not an official term and holds derogatory connotations, showing that the Iga people did not perceive themselves in this way. Further on the text describes the higher samurai of Iga as
Kuni-samurai,
or provincial samurai. It reaffirms the fact that
Iga no mono
or
Iga shinobi
were predominantly lower level samurai who lost their status in the war with Oda Nobunaga in the late sixteenth century.

Notes

119
  This quote is paraphrased from Ikeda’s article, where he directly quotes the document.

120
  Hanzo I is the Sengoku period
Iga
no
mono
who moved to work with the Mikawa clan, soon to produce the Tokugawa regime. This Hanzo was the father of the famous Devil-Hanzo, who here is Hanzo II, in turn the father of the troublesome Hanzo III.

121
  This warrior was later sentenced to commit ritual suicide due to his involvement with a rebellion against his Lord Hanzo, which was motivated by the class difference.

O
ne word has become mainstream in the ninja world and has been taken up by many female martial artists around the globe; the word is
Kunoichi
or ‘female ninja’. To some extent, it has become adopted by females who wish to identify themselves as followers of the path of ninjutsu and wish to connect with a strong female character from history. This sentiment is a positive one and meaningful, however, the story of the female ninja or
Kunoichi
is often misunderstood.

The image of the
Kunoichi
female ninja agent was mainly created in the mid-twentieth century. The researcher Yumio Nawa did much to create this
Kunoichi
female ninja, a seductive counterpart to the male infiltration agent.

A female model posing for one of Yumio Nawa’s books, portraying the romanticised
Kunoichi
figure.

The primary concern when dealing with the
Kunoichi
is the fact that only a single ninja manual (to date) uses this term, the
Bansenshukai.
This would suggest that the title originated with the author Fujibayashi in an attempt to codify the differences between male and female agents. The Chinese ideogram for woman is
and is made up of three parts when broken down –
‘Ku’
‘No’ and
‘Ichi’ which make the symbol for woman
. Many people consider the ideogram
to read as ‘
Kunoichi
’, however this is not the case, as when the three components are put together in this manner it cannot be read this way and simply means ‘woman’ or ‘female’. The
Bansenshukai
manual never uses the single ideogram
at any point in its description of the female ninja, nor does it use the modern breakdown as displayed above. The actual writing in the manual is
, here Fujibayashi uses the older version of
instead of
. What does this mean? It means that from a native speaker’s point of view he never actually says female; but it is obvious from the use of the phonetic spelling of
Kunoichi
that it is a reference to the ideogram for woman and it can be considered that the word
Kunoichi
is actually a codeword for undercover female agent. Interestingly, a second ‘codeword’ appears but this time for male ninja, this is
Tajikara,
this is made up of
‘Ta’ and
making ‘
Chikara
’ which when put together form the ideogram for man –