• Q&A: YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
HISTORY’S GREATEST CONUNDRUMS AND MYSTERIES SOLVED
What were the origins of the ninja?
• SHORT ANSWER
The ongoing wars of feudal Japan needed fighters willing to do things the samurai wouldn’t
• LONG ANSWER
There are some elements of the typical movie ninja that have to be discarded. The real warriors of feudal Japan were masters of disguise, so dressed in whatever the job needed rather than the cliché all-black attire and masks. While they certainly dabbled in assassination, they were mostly spies, scouts and infiltrators – and were for hire, doing it for cash instead of honour or some sort of ancient code.
As the ninja were mercenaries recruited from the lower classes; trained in their own brand of guerrilla tactics, commonly known as ninjutsu; and blended Japanese and Chinese styles, they were less honourable than the likes of the samurai. That’s what made them useful: they would be hired, including by samurai, to do the dirty work of deception, ambush and sabotage.
Since their deeds were clandestine, it’s hardly surprising they don’t appear in many historical records. Accounts of spies that could be said to be nascent ninja go back as far as the sixth century AD, but it was not until the Sengoku period in the 15th century that the ninja emerged as their own entity, the shinobi, and formed their own clans. From the 17th century, they fell into obscurity and became more myth than reality, imbued with superhuman skills of invisibility, shapeshifting and control over the elements. No wonder they appealed to moviemakers.
18,728
The number of people in Ecuador named Stalin between 1950 and 2015. He was not the only Soviet leader to prove popular: there were also 18,464 Lenins.