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      But as political turbulence and war increased after the battle of Onin no Ran in 1467, there was more call for the ninja’s deadly skills throughout Japan. They were employed by powerful rulers such as Shogun (military dictator of all Japan) Yoshihisa Ashikaga, and many lesser warlords. The mystics of the mountains began to stress military tactics, and emerged as a force to be reckoned with. No longer content to remain aloof in their secret villages, performing at the whim of others, the ninja extended their own influence in Japan by assassinating hostile lords and attacking their forces.

      One result of this increased activity was the blossoming of popular tales about the ninja, which portrayed them more as sorcerers than as commandos. Able to walk on water, pass through solid walls, read minds, know the future, disappear at will, or transform themselves into wolves or crows, the ninja of the sixteenth- century legends seemed fearsome and invincible foes to their adversaries.

      The tales were the result of a mixture of imagination, exaggeration, and deception. The original ninja were mystics, in touch with powers that we would describe as psychic today. Their ability to tune into the scheme of totality and thereby become receptive to subtle input from beyond the usual five senses was strange and terrifying to the common foot soldier. Thus, confronted by a single ninja with fingers entwined in one of the mystic kuji-in (energy-channeling hand positions), a superstitious opponent might indeed feel weakened by his own subconscious fear. The opponent naturally attributed this weakness to ninja magic. Furthermore, by using their knowledge of the laws of nature and the character of an adversary to anticipate the outcome of a series of events, the ninja developed the reputation of being able to know and guide the future. Unique and imaginative weapons and tools, special methods of walking and climbing, and completely unorthodox combat techniques all intensified the awe in which the ninja were held.

      THE DECLINE

      The avowed enemy of all ninja was the powerful general Nobunaga Oda, infamous because of his high regard for forceful and usually violent action as a means of attaining his goals. A cold pragmatist, Nobunaga detested the mysterious and occult teachings of the ninja mikkyo, and even went so far as to protect and encourage the budding Christian religion in Japan to combat the influence of mysticism. The Christian church structure, with its hierarchy of European priests and bishops to control the followers, seemed ripe for use as a tool to Nobunaga. The esoteric ninja beliefs, in which every man was his own priest, were just an obstacle to the ambitious general’s plans to become shogun.

      Legend has it that while riding through Iga with his samurai one time, Nobunaga was thrown from his horse for the first time in his life. The haunting desolation of the eerie, fog-enshrouded forests of Iga, coupled with the unprecedented fall from his horse, planted in Nobunaga a feeling of apprehension that culminated in his ordering his son Katsuyori to attack the ninja stronghold.

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      13. One of the ninja’s 81 mystic hand positions.

      In the battle of Tensho Iga no Ran in 1579, Nobunaga’s samurai troops under the command of Katsuyori were soundly defeated by ninja of Iga led by Sandayu Momochi. Infuriated, Nobunaga retaliated by himself leading a massive invasion of Iga in 1581. This time, outnumbered by more than ten to one, the men, women, and children of Iga were slaughtered by their enemies. The ninja, the legendary invisible ones, had been crushed by the brute force they so despised.

      A few ninja survived, to scatter and go into even deeper hiding than before. Families like the Tarao, Hattori, Togakure, and Momochi took their remaining members and withdrew to regroup in new mountain retreats. The training of ninja slowly began again, and a new life unfolded for the outlaw families.

      With the 1582 murder of Nobunaga in Honnoji, his ally Ieyasu Tokugawa had to move safely from Sakai in the Osaka area to his stronghold of Okazaki Castle near present-day Nagoya, without passing through the dangerous Honnoji territory. The only route left was through the treacherous mountains of Iga and Koga. Ieyasu left his fate in the hands of Iga-ryu ninja Hanzo Hattori. Hanzo successfully organized several ryu in Iga, as well as their one-time rivals in Koga, to afford protection and safe passage to the man who would become shogun in 1603 and whose family would rule Japan for the next two and a half centuries. Some of the ninja families were happy to assist Ieyasu, simply because of their joy at the death of Nobunaga. Some families saw it as a chance to secure a more stable future for themselves. Some remained silently apart from the action, keeping warily to themselves and neither attacking nor assisting.

      Ironically, it was peace, not defeat in battle, that caused the final demise of the ninja clans. The rule of the Tokugawa shoguns -Ieyasu and his descendants-brought peace and civil order, which cut off demand for the ninja’s services. With less opportunity for work in the ryu, many chunin and some genin struck out on their own, but without the philosophical direction of the jonin their wisdom and effectiveness declined. Some found applications for their unique talents in police work, and others in the military. Many turned to crime, so that the right amount of money, regardless of purpose, could hire men who had once been ninja, but had become mere thugs in ninja clothing. Others cut a more romantic figure as outlaws or guerrilla fighters. The deeds of ninja bandit heroes such as Sasuke Sarutobi, Saizo Kirigakure, and Goemon Ishikawa are glamorized in the children’s tales of Japan, just as the stories of Robin Hood, Zorro, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are told in the Western world today.

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      14. A modern reconstruction of the Hakuhojo ( White Phoenix Castle) in Iga. The original castle was established in 1581 by a vassal of Nobunaga to help control the ninja ; seized by the ninja after Nobunaga’s death, it was later enlarged by Ieyasu, and destroyed by a typhoon in 1612.

      After becoming shogun, Ieyasu hired a number of ninja and gave the Hattori family the job of organizing them into a secret police force to protect the ruler and his family members. Former Iga and Koga ninja assumed the roles of gardeners and caretakers on the estates of the shogun and his chief retainers in order to be close at hand at all times. However, security and comfort brought about the downfall of the descendants of the original ninja. Without the threat of war or the need to employ ninjutsu skills, their role gradually declined over the years, until the men who had once been deadly ninja agents had deteriorated into little more than glorified security guards. Their pay was miserably low, their status was degrading, and their official duties were restricted to such activities as opening doors and posing as targets for snowballs thrown by the girls of samurai families.

      The few ninja families that remained in the mountain wilderness outside the old capital of Kyoto shrouded themselves in total secrecy, staying completely concealed from the Tokugawa shoguns in their new capital, Edo (today’s Tokyo) . Meanwhile, the ninja under contract to the shoguns decayed into ineffectuality. The Shimabara rebellion of 1637-38, in which Christian peasants living near Nagasaki revolted against religious and economic oppression, provided an opportunity for the shogun’s ninja to go back into action. A group of ten former Iga ninja, the oldest of whom was 63, was resurrected from decades of retirement and sent to the site of the battle to gather intelligence. The aged ninja were able to steal food supplies for the government troops, but since none of them were linguists, they were unable to imitate the Kyushu dialect necessary for slipping into the rebels’ fortress and obtaining information. The mission was not considered successful, although the government troops did quell the rebellion.

      The last activity of the Tokugawa ninja occured with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s “black ships” in 1853. The ninja Yasusuke Sawamura was ordered to board Perry’s ship secretly and search for information that would reveal the intentions of the foreign barbarians. To this day, the Sawamura family archives in Mie Prefecture’s Iga-Ueno City still contain the two documents purloined by their stealthy ancestor-two letters containing a Dutch sailor song extolling the delights of French women in bed and British women in the kitchen.

      NINJUTSU IN THE MODERN WORLD

      As Japan emerged from the devastation of World War II, all martial arts were banned from practice for a time by the American occupation forces that ruled the conquered nation. Ninjutsu came to be seen as a pointless antique by the Japanese people themselves as they adjusted to a role of international

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