Ninja Training
I’ve always been fascinated by the ninja. On a recent trip to Japan, I found the very authentic Ninja Dojo and Store with an excellent ninjutsu master in Kyoto, Japan’s former capital.
Before I experienced my entry-level hour of training, I read up about the famous assassins. Interestingly, the ninja were not just assassins. This smashed my stereotypical view of ninja prior to visiting Japan, which mirrored the fantastic (and terrible as in its plot) movie Ninja Assassin. The ninjas’ primary role was more of a secret service field-agent gathering intelligence about the enemy. The other point of interest was in the down times between missions, they had normal jobs such as farming or laboring. This ability to blend into the every day population was useful on their missions. Ninja would infiltrate enemy territory by disguising themselves as anyone that would allow them to carry out their objectives – priests, merchants, dancers, geishas to name a few.
http://benjaminkuttner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/video-1508974603-1.mp4
My ninja star/shuriken throwing techniques was actually okay in a controlled environment. If I was using it as a distraction in a combat situation I’m sure it would be very different. I was focusing on repeating the same movement each time and at 00.29 I actually knocked off one shuriken with the other.
The ninja sword was shorter than a samurai sword and straight, not curved, for stabbing in an enclosed spaces where a longer Samurai sword would be unwieldy. I had the impression that a ninja versus a samurai in a straight sword fight would not end well for the ninja. However, the ninja had so many other weapons in their arsenal, like the shuriken above, which evens things up considerably.
The sword also came with a very useful scabbard that could rest almost fully unsheathed on the tip of the sword giving an extension to the length. This was used in dark rooms, the ninja swept it from side to side until it touched an unfortunate, then the sword was pulled from the last little bit of scabbard and used to stab. The scabbard could also be used as a snorkel and a way to climb walls where the ninja used it as a leg up then pulled an attached cord to pull the scabbard and sword up after them.
The houses ninjas lived in looked like any other. However, they were filled with secret passages, hidden staircases, booby traps, and hidden weapon caches. In the above photo I’m just about to push on a hidden wall panel with my right hand. The wall panel will rotate round and I will disappear in a blink of an eye leaving just an empty section of wall.
My wife is holding an antipersonnel weapon here. This caltrop was left so warriors who stepped on them were injured by the sharp spikes penetrating through the soles of their shoes. This particular caltrop is actually a dried seed, others were made of metal.
Probably my favorite weapon outside of the shuriken and sword was the chain-sickle pictured above. Used by swinging the waited chain around your head then releasing it to tangle around an enemies weapon or their arms or legs. Once the enemy is tangled then the ninja can use the sickle to strike them down. The ninja used a varied array of weapons, you can see below weapons for entanglement, daggers, claws for slashing, and so on.
