Among the flowers - cherry, among people - a samurai.
Medieval Japanese proverb.
The samurai's path was as straight as an arrow fired from a bow. The path of the ninja is winding, like the movement of a snake. Samurai tried to be knights, and fought openly under their banners. Ninja preferred to operate under the banner of the enemy, under cover of night, mingling with the enemy's warriors. However, skill is always skill and one cannot help but admire it. Admiration for ninja skill is visible in old Japanese stories here and there, and it turned out to be simply impossible to hide it.
For some reason, the "garlic" of the ninja was more complicated than the European one …
For example, this is what Buke Meimokusho says about how ninja usually acted during the war: “Shinobi-monomi were people used in covert operations; they climbed the mountains, disguised as firewood collectors, and collected information about the enemy … They were unsurpassed masters when it came to moving around the enemy rear in a different guise."
There was no problem for them to penetrate the enemy's castles. To do this, it was enough to shave his head and disguise himself as a komuso - a mendicant monk playing the flute. The Ashikaga Shogun Chronicle provides documentary evidence that ninja from Iga or Koga acted in a similar way: “As for the ninja, it is said that they were from Iga and Koga, and freely penetrated enemy castles. They watched secret events and were perceived by those around them as friends. Recall the feature film Shogun, where a former Christian monk, who returned to the religion of the fathers and became Blackthorn's translator, went on an exploration disguised as a monk. The only test he was subjected to was that he was forced to take off his hat and look at his hair.
It also tells how the people of Yiga acted in the war. So in the army of shogun Yoshihisa under Magari there were several famous shinobi. And when he attacked Rok-kaku Takayori, the Kawai Aki-no-kami family from Iga, who truly deserved his gratitude under Magari, again proved to be very skillful shinobi. Everyone admired the actions of the people from Yiga and that's how fame and fame came to them. In "Shima kiroku" you can read that "shu * from Iga secretly climbed into the castle and lit it, and this was the signal for the beginning of the assault, and" Asai San-diki "reports that shinobo-no-mono from the province of Iga were specially hired to set fire to the castle.
From these texts it is clear that the samurai, or rather, let's say, the commanders of the samurai, could hire shinobi to set fire to the castles that the samurai were going to storm, and … openly admired their skill. And there was something to admire! So, when the samurai besieged the Sawayama castle, ninjas in the amount of 92 people freely entered it, presenting passes … in the form of paper lanterns with the images of the mona of the owner of the castle inscribed on them. Before that, one of them stole one such flashlight, on the model of which its copies were made. And so, holding them in their hands, these ninja freely passed the main gate of the castle, and no one stopped them. It is clear that those who saw them could not even think that they were "agents of the enemy." But inside, without attracting attention to themselves, the ninja set fire to this castle at the same time in many places, and this caused not only a severe fire, but also panic among the samurai who defended it!
There are few depictions of ninja attacks in Japanese painting. Apparently, the Japanese themselves believed that there was nothing to be proud of.
But the "people from Iga" were not at the same time in vassal dependence on anyone, but were precisely mercenaries who were paid for the service, and not like the samurai, who, as you know, received rice rations for the entire time of their service, but for concretely performed work … True, in what form these payments were made - in money or in the same rice koku, it is not known, the samurai considered it indecent to talk about money and never discussed this topic aloud.
In addition to arson during the Sengoku period, war chronicles of that time are noted, shinobi or ninja were invited to perform other tasks. For example, they acted as kancho (spies) behind enemy lines, acted as teisatsu (scouts) who acted in the "front line", and kisho (ambush attackers), that is, secret killers whose victims were people from the commanding staff of the enemy. Among them were even such people as the Koran ("sowers of rumors") - a kind of agitators of antiquity. However, it is necessary to distinguish professional ninjas who passed on their skills from generation to generation, such as the ninja from Iga, from ordinary samurai, who, on behalf of their overlords, carried out various secret missions in the enemy's territory and, in particular, played the role of "sent Cossacks".
Ninja - darts.
By the way, it is not at all difficult to answer the question why there were so many people from Iga and Koga among the ninja if you look at the map of Japan. Both of these territories are an inaccessible region of mountains and forests, where it was difficult for army units to reach, where it was difficult to fight, but to defend from the enemy and hide, on the contrary, is very easy! It should also be noted here that there have never been many professional ninjas. Tokugawa Ieyasu once hired 80 ninja from Koga to sneak into the Imagawa clan's castle. Known units of 20, 30, and even 100 people, but not more, while in many works of art, be it a novel or a movie, ninjas are attacked by almost whole crowds.
Samurai weapons vs ninja weapons.
By the way, Tokugawa Ieyasu himself would never have become a shogun if not for the ninja from Iga. It was the ninja from Iga, led by Hattori Hanzo, who led Ieyasu on secret paths through the lands of Iga to the province of Mikawa, where he was safe, and thereby saved his life. But with the advent of the "Tokugawa Peace" in Japan, the demand for their services immediately fell sharply, and their art began to decline. And although in the military legislation of the shogunate from 1649 there was even an article allowing a daimyo with an income of 10,000 koku to hire ninjas to his service, there was no particular need for this. But it was at this time, by analogy with the glorification of its samurai past, that the most ridiculous myths about ninjas who supposedly knew how to fly and walk on water "like on dry land" began to spread in Japan.
Typical "water spider". One on one leg, the other on the other and … forward, across the river, leaning on a pole!
Known, for example, the book "Bansen Shukai" (translated, this means "Ten thousand rivers flow into the sea") - something like a ninjutsu manual with numerous drawings provided with explanations. However, it is necessary to treat what is written in it critically, and to a greater extent than the same British historian Stephen Turnbull allowed himself. For example, in one of his books, he provides an illustration from this book depicting a device called the "water spider" (mizugumo), allegedly allowing ninja to "walk on water" without much difficulty. In fact, it is enough to remember the school physics course and Archimedes' law to understand that the one who invented it never used this device himself.
There were people who conducted experiments with him and they all ended in failure. And the point is not that they did not know any "subtleties" of handling this "water spider". It's just that the lifting force of this wooden mini-raft is very small and it is only enough to hold an object weighing no more than 2.5 kg on the surface of the water. But in this case we are talking about an adult man, even if it is a Japanese ninja! And the conclusion is unambiguous: this device is not suitable either for moving on water or for crossing swamps.
But why then did the author of "Bansen Shukai" write all this and put a drawing of the "spider" in his book? This is a mystery over which historians are struggling to this day. Maybe he himself did not check the work of the "water spider", and maybe even just decided to joke, although outwardly everything that he wrote looks very impressive.
Equally unsuccessful is the way to force the water obstacle by thrusting the legs into two wooden gangs - taru-ikada, connected with a rope so that the legs do not part in them. Stephen Turnbull points out that this floating craft “must be quite unstable,” but in reality it just doesn't work the same way as mizugumo!
On the other hand, this book has a number of interesting and easy-to-implement suggestions for cryptography, flag communication, and intelligence in general. But isn't Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the scout movement and the author of 32 books on scouting, writing about the same thing in his time? You can only use his advice, but alas, you cannot use the amazing and outwardly spectacular mizugumo of shinobi scouts!
There are simply amazing books on ninjutsu that provide impressive lists of the various gadgets that the ninja supposedly used. These are all kinds of lanterns, night lamps, "fiery candles", arrows, long-burning torches, pipes to breathe under water and eavesdrop through the wall, boats, some could be disassembled and installed on them weapons, that they had all this in their arsenal, on a campaign a whole caravan of equipment would have to follow them. And it would take so much time to do all this that it would take a ninja a whole factory (and more than one!) To produce all these "secret" gadgets! But this was not enough for the authors of other books! In 1977, a certain Hatsumi Masaaki wrote a book "About Ninja", and there are such outlandish types of weapons and devices that they no longer exist in any ancient text. It is believed that it is designed for children, and it may be that he just came up with something like a fairy tale. However, the trouble is that many gullible people took his work seriously so that the American Donn Draeger, a researcher of Japanese martial arts, fell for his bait. He also wrote the book "Nin-jutsu: the art of being invisible", where without hesitation he "inserted" many devices invented by Mr. Hatsumi. Well, after that this "valuable information" was borrowed from him, unfortunately, by a number of our Russian authors. In any case, there are all these "discoveries" on the Internet!
How do you like, for example, a submarine with a huge dragon protruding above the water? The ballast is made of sandbags, people row on it with oars, the air supply is designed for several hours, so that you can approach the enemy ship and drill holes in it. For this purpose, even a special airlock is provided on the "dragon submarine"!
But the kagyu is the "fiery bull", and this is even more interesting. In the picture we see a wooden bull, set on wheels, from the mouth of which burning oil is spewed out by the pressure of the air supplied by the bellows. The bull is being pushed by two ninjas. But how, where and how the ninja could have the opportunity: firstly, to build this "fire-breathing miracle", secondly, to deliver it to the wrong place of action, and, thirdly, to use it?
A huge stone, if hung on supports, should have been pulled back by pulling the rope so that it would go forward like a pendulum and hit the wall of the enemy castle. The strongest structures would not have withstood his blows. But look at what arc this stone had to move, and from what distance and how high it should fall. It turns out that this "machine" should have been simply unrealistically huge.
Hatsumi Masaaki reported that ninja tied themselves to yamidako kites and hovered over enemy territory, studied its location, and even fired at ground targets from a bow! They could also disembark unnoticed from such kites behind enemy lines. Indeed, the Japanese were adept at flying large kites. And it is logical to assume that they could design a snake that would be able to lift a person into the air to watch the enemy. So in the Russian navy at the beginning of the twentieth century, snakes with an observer on board were launched at sea. But why all this was required ninja, to whom any gates were open in the clothes of monks, is not clear?
They also reportedly had lightweight gliders that were launched using flexible bamboo poles and ropes - that is, it was something like a huge slingshot. As a result, the glider, together with the pilot, took off into the air and flew over any high wall. Moreover, in flight, the ninja allegedly could also throw bombs at enemies.
Finally, it was the ninja who invented the prototype of the tank, about which Draeger, based on Hatsumi's book, wrote that to quickly penetrate the enemy camp located in a deep ravine or at the foot of a mountain, the ninja used the "big wheel" Daisarin - a cart on high wooden wheels. A gondola with loopholes was suspended between them, through which the ninjas in it could shoot from guns or, again, throw grenades. And if not one, but dozens of such "tanks" unexpectedly rushed down from the slope of the mountain, then even the most courageous fighters lost their heads. The carts crushed people with their wheels and hit them with fire - here are the first tanks, even without an engine!
Well what can I say? This is not even a story or a fantasy, but … a clinic! The samurai would have found out about this - so they probably would have died with laughter, although today there are people who believe in all this nonsense, after all, who wrote it? Japanese and American! And they, of course, know everything!
Well, seriously speaking, it is known that ninja were last used by the Japanese government in 1853, when a squadron of Commodore Matthew Perry approached its coast with 250 guns on board to "open" it for the benefit of foreigners. Then the ninja Sawamura Yasusuke sneaked onto Perry's flagship, who was supposed to get the secret papers of the aliens there. Although he obtained the papers, it turned out that all his works were in vain: they contained not secret orders, but frivolous verses that a gentleman considered indecent to read in a circle of decent ladies, and it was then that it turned out that the American Commodore kept these verses much more reliable than important documents …
It should be remembered that the very first samurai, Prince Yamato-Takeru, who put on women's clothes and with the help of this masquerade went and killed the two Kumaso brothers, can rightfully be considered the very first Japanese ninja …
* Military unit (jap.)
The author expresses his gratitude to the "Antiques of Japan" company for the provided photos and information.
