I didn’t think Ninjas were real, just spy’s and sometimes assassins but no one you’d specifically call “ninja”
Ninja is something of an affectation from later eras being backwards projected onto history. However, there were a number of groups that specialized in infiltration, sabotage, assassination, espionage and other “irregular warfare” tactics, often passed down in familial lines. The Iga clan of the Tokugawa period is a notable example.
The general distinction for the historical ninja groups as opposed to someone who just performed irregular warfare (like a guerrilla or a spy), was that the ninja in question had to be a mercenary, operating outside of the feudal hierarchy, and had to be a professional, so no slitting throats as a side-hobby.
Hey, wanna know why the modern idea of ninja is “wears black clothes”?
These are “Kuroko”.
Kuroko are men and women fully dressed in black and that wear tabi on their feet. They are Kabuki theater stagehands. When they are on stage, the audience is supposed to ignore them, pretend they aren’t there, as they are “special effects”, not people per se on the stage.
Well, see, some Kabuki plays liked to play with this idea.
In certain plays, a notorious character will suddenly get stabbed by a Kuroko and die. This is shocking to the audience because Kuroko are just straight up not supposed to exist as people or characters in the play, but suddenly, one of these special effects just murdered someone. Then, they’d remove the face covering veil and reveal they were one of the characters all along.
It was a meta manner of narrative, basically. A plot twist, if you will.
That’s why the modern image of Ninja was derived from Kuroko: Unexpected Assassins, striking when no one is supposed to strike, and gone like the wind, just like that.
“Ninja” actually looked like this:
Just your regular run of the mill peasant.
That was the entire point.
To not be noticed. To be one with the crowd.
Espionage history !
As both a ninja AND a theater kid- this pleases me
I love the picture from the stage up there – your eyes do sort of just slide right over the Kuroko helping the actress stand and show off.
I’ve seen this concept before and it is SO MUCH better with pictures
