The Origins of the Ninja

Villagers who needed to defend themselves against feudal Samurai spawned what we know today as the Ninja.

Many of the tactics of the ninja needed to be very different than those used by the better armed samurai. This led to the development of their excellence in guerilla tactics and espionage. Ninja needed to be able to conceal their weapons and quickly defend themselves against samurai. This is why many of their weapons often bear a resemblance to farming tools of the time such as sickles and threshing tools.

While the Ninja practices of guerilla warfare and secret espionage operations has a much longer history we begin to see written documentation of the Ninja in 15th century feudal Japan. These martial organizations were predominately seen in the Iga and Koga regions. Guerilla warfare was at that time being seen as a valid alternative to frontal assault by the clans of daimyo during the time. A daimyo of the time could not ask his own troops to perform such tasks as espionage, selective strikes, and assassination as they were forbidden by the samurai code Bushido. This meant that they would need to hire ninja to perform these tasks.

We have some documentation of people and groups of people who are suspected ninja from the time. The ninja have been described as a "manifestation of a unique set of cultural, economic, religious and social pressures" by Stephen K. Hayes, an American Ninjutsu instructor.

Ninjas were often true warriors in every sense of the word, although they have been classified as assassins. We must be careful when reading about the history of the ninja as all the accounts have been written by those on the outside looking in and only tell a small fraction of the story.