University of Birmingham Ninpo Budo
About the art
Roots
What we know about the ancient history of the Ninjutsu Schools is mostly form oral tradition, and it is often hard to distinguish between fact and fiction, between myth and reality. The oldest School in the Bujinkan, Shiden Fudo Ryu, is said to have been founded in 1113. That is nearly 1000 years of history, and unsurprisingly, after all that time little in the way of documentation has survived.
Different scholars and historians have different theories about the origin of Ninjutsu, and pinpointing an exact time and place is a pretty impossible task. This task is not made any easier by the fact that Ninjutsu began, and flourished, as a "highly illegal counter culture", and the kind of people who run illegal counter cultures don't tend to keep written records.
Almost certainly, Ninjutsu did not start out as an organized martial system. It was developed and practiced in isolated mountainous regions by peasant and farmer families, who did not refer to themselves as 'Ninja'. Dr. Hatsumi describes them simply as "practitioners of political, religious and military strategies that were the cultural opposites of the conventional outlooks of the times". It was only much later on that the practices of these families were grouped together and categorized as 'Ninjutsu'.
One thing that is almost universally acknowledged is that the original Ninja were most likely of Chinese origin. Warrior priests and mystics who fled to Japan to avoid oppressive regimes retreated to the mountainous Iga and Koga regions of Japan, and their martial and religious techniques were absorbed into the local culture. Even today the Japanese have a reputation for taking a good idea and improving on it, making it more efficient and practical, and this is exactly what these peasant families did with the techniques brought to them by the Chinese masters. Glen Morris notes in his Shadow Strategies that many fighting postures in Ninjutsu have striking similarities to postures found in the ancient Chinese Spider Kung Fu. He also notes that Gyokko Ryu, the second oldest Ryu in the Bujinkan, has Chinese roots that that can be traced back to the eighth century.
Image
History is written by the winners, and the losers are often demonized and criminalized. This tendency may well account for the reputation of these Ninja families as bandits and ruthless mercenaries. Throughout history, the Ninja have been portrayed as the bad guys. Hollywood has tended to reinforce this image, and the only time a Ninja is portrayed as a good guy is when he is fighting another, bad, Ninja (only a Ninja can kill another Ninja!).
Modern practitioners tend to distance themselves from this image, and deny the legitimacy of this account. They claim that the historical Ninja were an oppressed people, who developed their martial prowess as a means to defend themselves, their families and their lands. In a time where the Samurai elite would test their swords by rounding up peasants and cutting them in half, it is understandable that a people might have to resort to extreme measures of self defence. The Ninja used his martial skills to ensure the survival of his clan and his land. When they allied themselves with a particular daimyo they did so not out of mercenary motives, but as a means to maintain balance and harmony in the region which would otherwise spiral violently, and bloodily, out of control.
When the ninja did have to engage in battle, they were always severely outnumbered. This meant that the way they approached battle was very different to that of their opponents, and this probably accounts for much of the ninja's reputation as a criminal.
Traditionally the way of Bushido demands that honour be valued over life (it has recently been brought to my notice that this ideal might in fact be a corruption of Zen teachings. I'll look into this. Watch this space.) To fight honourably and to die was far better than to fight dishonourably and to live. When a samurai lost a battle, or was disgraced for any reason, he was expected to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). This involved the disgraced samurai arranging his clothes in a particular way, composing and reciting a death poem, kneeling down on his clothes and slicing open his abdomen in a half moon shape across the line of the rib cage. This would release his intestines (and was thought to severe vital energy channel that released the spirit) which would then fall out neatly onto his considerately laid out clothes. His best friend would stand by ready to cut off his head if things went wrong.
For the Samurai, battle was approached head on. You found your enemy, declared your intent to him, and fought to the death. This was the case with individual duels and huge battles between armies alike. This was the only way to fight. The honourable way. Even if you knew you would lose, you still went in head on and faced your death. If you won, you lived. If you were killed, you had an honourable death. If you were beaten but not killed, you must kill yourself very unpleasantly.
It is interesting to note that many Ninja may have been disgraced samurai who ended up on the losing side of a battle and did not commit seppuku. Daisuke Togakure is said to be one such figure, and founded the Togakure Ryu - one of the schools under the umbrella of the Bujinkan. It seems likely to be the case that many of the original Ninja clans were comprised of disgraced samurai, who were wandering the mountains at the same time as the Chinese warrior priests and mystics. The story goes that Daisuke Togakure met one such priest, and after studying with him for many years founded the Togakure Ryu.
This Samurai way of life seemed like madness to the Ninja. Their Taoist roots meant that they valued life, and it should be protected at all costs. To die over a matter of honour - of saving face - was a pointless waste. Any samurai who 'became ninja' clearly shared this view.
If one could win a battle by sneaking into a castle at night and assassinating the commander then this is what the Ninja would do. This had the dual advantage of avoiding a prolonged and bloody battle - thus conserving as much life as possible (on both sides!) and it meant that they need not expose themselves and their families to more danger than they had to. This was seen a dishonourable and cowardly by the bushido following samurai, but to the Ninja it just made sense.
When they had to engage in full on battle, they did so using guerrilla tactics. They would ambush and surprise, making deadly lightening raids under cover of darkness, or sneaking into castles at night and killing the enemy as they slept.
Even by today's standards, this might seem a bit on the sneaky side, but considering the alternative they really had no choice. We have to remember that generally, a well trained Samurai was a very competent warrior and swordsman. A Ninja, who had only tertiary training in sword work, would be hard pressed to beat a samurai in a one on one duel if he stuck to the rules. The Ninja had tricks up his sleeve that would enable him to triumph over the technically superior Samurai, but when he had to face multiple samurai the odds of winning with the sword were reduced even more dramatically.
The Ninja were outnumbered, had sub-standard weapons and could not move about openly. Their only chance of survival was to fly in the face of accepted and traditional standards of behaviour and warfare. They had to be sneaky.
Unsurprisingly, some Shogun and Daimyo saw the effectiveness of the Ninja's methods, and would employ groups of Ninja to carry out military missions on his behalf. It is this practice that fuelled the mercenary image of the Ninja, and few deny that this did go on. I have heard two explanations - both plausible. The first is that these mercenary practitioners were renegade Ninja, who chose to sell their services for military or criminal activity. The second is that the families did hire out their services as a matter of course, but only when they thought it was right to do so. They had to earn their living somehow, and they did so that way. They did, however, choose their missions carefully so that they did not end up helping a Shogun or Daimyo who would bring oppression and imbalance to their region.
Eventually, the Ninja families were beaten down by overwhelming opposition. The men who used the Ninja's skills also saw that they could threaten their own position, and decided that allowing the Ninja to continue was too much of a risk. In the early 1600's, a series of bloody purges by the warlord Oda Nobunaga, which earned him the reputation of the arch-enemy of the Ninja, scoured the main regions where the families resided. Many of the surviving Ninja rallied and sided with Nobunaga's opponent, Ieyasu Togugawa, who eventually went on to defeat Nobunaga and his other opponents, and rise to overall power as Shogun. Following this success Tokugawa realised the threat his allies could come to pose to his regime, and cleverly decided to neutralise this threat through absorption, rewarding those who had helped him with secret police and bodyguard roles in his dynasty. As a result, over a period of time, the Ninja families were all but wiped out as an independent entity, and their skills became largely diluted. However, a few isolated groups evaded these diverse threats and secretly continued the training which had become their culture. Luckily for us, they were successful and were able to pass on their legacy.
It was easy for the samurai elite to demonize and criminalize the Ninja, and it was quite natural to do so. To the Samurai, the Ninja really were morally reprehensible. Their guerrilla tactics that flew in the face of convention really did make them criminals to the Samurai, and because they survived and the Ninja didn't, it was this view of the Ninja that prevailed.
Myth
Ninja are also often regarded as being super human warriors, possessing amazing and magical abilities. Whilst these powers have certainly been exaggerated over the years, it is usually the case that there is no smoke without fire. The truth is certainly less magical than the myth, but no less amazing.
One skill commonly attributed to the ninja is the ability to vanish and reappear at will. It is likely that this is an exaggeration of the Ninja's superb taijutsu skills, which enable him to drop to the ground, roll silently, and stand up again metres from where he was. If, as you fought a Ninja, you went in for a strike and he suddenly dropped out of your field of vision and 'appeared behind you', it might well seem that he had disappeared and reappeared. In fact, all he did was drop and roll very quietly. After the Ninja's opponent had told the story, and it had been re-told a couple of times, the Ninja suddenly turns into a magical being that can vanish and appear at will. You've all played Chinese whispers.
Ninjas could reportedly fly - an exaggeration of their jumping and leaping skills, and read your mind - an exaggeration of their ability to feel an opponent's intent and read body language. Many other mythical skills of the Ninja have a basis in fact that has simply been exaggerated.
Of course, this exaggeration of their skill was actively encouraged by the Ninja. If your opponent thinks you can vanish, read your mind, fly, have superhuman strength, and take over his body with your spirit, then you have an impressive psychological advantage. Why tell your enemy that he is only fighting a man when he thinks he is fighting a God?
What we know about the ancient history of the Ninjutsu Schools is mostly form oral tradition, and it is often hard to distinguish between fact and fiction, between myth and reality. The oldest School in the Bujinkan, Shiden Fudo Ryu, is said to have been founded in 1113. That is nearly 1000 years of history, and unsurprisingly, after all that time little in the way of documentation has survived.
Different scholars and historians have different theories about the origin of Ninjutsu, and pinpointing an exact time and place is a pretty impossible task. This task is not made any easier by the fact that Ninjutsu began, and flourished, as a "highly illegal counter culture", and the kind of people who run illegal counter cultures don't tend to keep written records.
Almost certainly, Ninjutsu did not start out as an organized martial system. It was developed and practiced in isolated mountainous regions by peasant and farmer families, who did not refer to themselves as 'Ninja'. Dr. Hatsumi describes them simply as "practitioners of political, religious and military strategies that were the cultural opposites of the conventional outlooks of the times". It was only much later on that the practices of these families were grouped together and categorized as 'Ninjutsu'.
One thing that is almost universally acknowledged is that the original Ninja were most likely of Chinese origin. Warrior priests and mystics who fled to Japan to avoid oppressive regimes retreated to the mountainous Iga and Koga regions of Japan, and their martial and religious techniques were absorbed into the local culture. Even today the Japanese have a reputation for taking a good idea and improving on it, making it more efficient and practical, and this is exactly what these peasant families did with the techniques brought to them by the Chinese masters. Glen Morris notes in his Shadow Strategies that many fighting postures in Ninjutsu have striking similarities to postures found in the ancient Chinese Spider Kung Fu. He also notes that Gyokko Ryu, the second oldest Ryu in the Bujinkan, has Chinese roots that that can be traced back to the eighth century.
Image
History is written by the winners, and the losers are often demonized and criminalized. This tendency may well account for the reputation of these Ninja families as bandits and ruthless mercenaries. Throughout history, the Ninja have been portrayed as the bad guys. Hollywood has tended to reinforce this image, and the only time a Ninja is portrayed as a good guy is when he is fighting another, bad, Ninja (only a Ninja can kill another Ninja!).
Modern practitioners tend to distance themselves from this image, and deny the legitimacy of this account. They claim that the historical Ninja were an oppressed people, who developed their martial prowess as a means to defend themselves, their families and their lands. In a time where the Samurai elite would test their swords by rounding up peasants and cutting them in half, it is understandable that a people might have to resort to extreme measures of self defence. The Ninja used his martial skills to ensure the survival of his clan and his land. When they allied themselves with a particular daimyo they did so not out of mercenary motives, but as a means to maintain balance and harmony in the region which would otherwise spiral violently, and bloodily, out of control.
When the ninja did have to engage in battle, they were always severely outnumbered. This meant that the way they approached battle was very different to that of their opponents, and this probably accounts for much of the ninja's reputation as a criminal.
Traditionally the way of Bushido demands that honour be valued over life (it has recently been brought to my notice that this ideal might in fact be a corruption of Zen teachings. I'll look into this. Watch this space.) To fight honourably and to die was far better than to fight dishonourably and to live. When a samurai lost a battle, or was disgraced for any reason, he was expected to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). This involved the disgraced samurai arranging his clothes in a particular way, composing and reciting a death poem, kneeling down on his clothes and slicing open his abdomen in a half moon shape across the line of the rib cage. This would release his intestines (and was thought to severe vital energy channel that released the spirit) which would then fall out neatly onto his considerately laid out clothes. His best friend would stand by ready to cut off his head if things went wrong.
For the Samurai, battle was approached head on. You found your enemy, declared your intent to him, and fought to the death. This was the case with individual duels and huge battles between armies alike. This was the only way to fight. The honourable way. Even if you knew you would lose, you still went in head on and faced your death. If you won, you lived. If you were killed, you had an honourable death. If you were beaten but not killed, you must kill yourself very unpleasantly.
It is interesting to note that many Ninja may have been disgraced samurai who ended up on the losing side of a battle and did not commit seppuku. Daisuke Togakure is said to be one such figure, and founded the Togakure Ryu - one of the schools under the umbrella of the Bujinkan. It seems likely to be the case that many of the original Ninja clans were comprised of disgraced samurai, who were wandering the mountains at the same time as the Chinese warrior priests and mystics. The story goes that Daisuke Togakure met one such priest, and after studying with him for many years founded the Togakure Ryu.
This Samurai way of life seemed like madness to the Ninja. Their Taoist roots meant that they valued life, and it should be protected at all costs. To die over a matter of honour - of saving face - was a pointless waste. Any samurai who 'became ninja' clearly shared this view.
If one could win a battle by sneaking into a castle at night and assassinating the commander then this is what the Ninja would do. This had the dual advantage of avoiding a prolonged and bloody battle - thus conserving as much life as possible (on both sides!) and it meant that they need not expose themselves and their families to more danger than they had to. This was seen a dishonourable and cowardly by the bushido following samurai, but to the Ninja it just made sense.
When they had to engage in full on battle, they did so using guerrilla tactics. They would ambush and surprise, making deadly lightening raids under cover of darkness, or sneaking into castles at night and killing the enemy as they slept.
Even by today's standards, this might seem a bit on the sneaky side, but considering the alternative they really had no choice. We have to remember that generally, a well trained Samurai was a very competent warrior and swordsman. A Ninja, who had only tertiary training in sword work, would be hard pressed to beat a samurai in a one on one duel if he stuck to the rules. The Ninja had tricks up his sleeve that would enable him to triumph over the technically superior Samurai, but when he had to face multiple samurai the odds of winning with the sword were reduced even more dramatically.
The Ninja were outnumbered, had sub-standard weapons and could not move about openly. Their only chance of survival was to fly in the face of accepted and traditional standards of behaviour and warfare. They had to be sneaky.
Unsurprisingly, some Shogun and Daimyo saw the effectiveness of the Ninja's methods, and would employ groups of Ninja to carry out military missions on his behalf. It is this practice that fuelled the mercenary image of the Ninja, and few deny that this did go on. I have heard two explanations - both plausible. The first is that these mercenary practitioners were renegade Ninja, who chose to sell their services for military or criminal activity. The second is that the families did hire out their services as a matter of course, but only when they thought it was right to do so. They had to earn their living somehow, and they did so that way. They did, however, choose their missions carefully so that they did not end up helping a Shogun or Daimyo who would bring oppression and imbalance to their region.
Eventually, the Ninja families were beaten down by overwhelming opposition. The men who used the Ninja's skills also saw that they could threaten their own position, and decided that allowing the Ninja to continue was too much of a risk. In the early 1600's, a series of bloody purges by the warlord Oda Nobunaga, which earned him the reputation of the arch-enemy of the Ninja, scoured the main regions where the families resided. Many of the surviving Ninja rallied and sided with Nobunaga's opponent, Ieyasu Togugawa, who eventually went on to defeat Nobunaga and his other opponents, and rise to overall power as Shogun. Following this success Tokugawa realised the threat his allies could come to pose to his regime, and cleverly decided to neutralise this threat through absorption, rewarding those who had helped him with secret police and bodyguard roles in his dynasty. As a result, over a period of time, the Ninja families were all but wiped out as an independent entity, and their skills became largely diluted. However, a few isolated groups evaded these diverse threats and secretly continued the training which had become their culture. Luckily for us, they were successful and were able to pass on their legacy.
It was easy for the samurai elite to demonize and criminalize the Ninja, and it was quite natural to do so. To the Samurai, the Ninja really were morally reprehensible. Their guerrilla tactics that flew in the face of convention really did make them criminals to the Samurai, and because they survived and the Ninja didn't, it was this view of the Ninja that prevailed.
Myth
Ninja are also often regarded as being super human warriors, possessing amazing and magical abilities. Whilst these powers have certainly been exaggerated over the years, it is usually the case that there is no smoke without fire. The truth is certainly less magical than the myth, but no less amazing.
One skill commonly attributed to the ninja is the ability to vanish and reappear at will. It is likely that this is an exaggeration of the Ninja's superb taijutsu skills, which enable him to drop to the ground, roll silently, and stand up again metres from where he was. If, as you fought a Ninja, you went in for a strike and he suddenly dropped out of your field of vision and 'appeared behind you', it might well seem that he had disappeared and reappeared. In fact, all he did was drop and roll very quietly. After the Ninja's opponent had told the story, and it had been re-told a couple of times, the Ninja suddenly turns into a magical being that can vanish and appear at will. You've all played Chinese whispers.
Ninjas could reportedly fly - an exaggeration of their jumping and leaping skills, and read your mind - an exaggeration of their ability to feel an opponent's intent and read body language. Many other mythical skills of the Ninja have a basis in fact that has simply been exaggerated.
Of course, this exaggeration of their skill was actively encouraged by the Ninja. If your opponent thinks you can vanish, read your mind, fly, have superhuman strength, and take over his body with your spirit, then you have an impressive psychological advantage. Why tell your enemy that he is only fighting a man when he thinks he is fighting a God?
