Day of the Ninja

Modern Ninjutsu is Nothing Like the Medieval Form. Ninjas Were Actually Called Shinobi. The first records of ninjas are from 1375. The word ninja comes from how the Japanese kanji characters were read in Chinese and were not used until much later in the 21st century. The most professional ninjas came from one of two clans. In the 15th century, villages in two regions, Iga and Kōga, began to specialize in the ninja ways.

Ninjas were hired to perform a wide range of tasks, ranging from spying and surveillance to raiding and arson, infiltration, deception, ambush, bodyguarding. They did anything that would strike terror into their enemies, including psychological warfare. The wider their range of skills, the easier they could infiltrate enemy lines.

Female Ninjas Had Unique Weapons. Kunoichi, also known as female ninjas, often turned what they had at their discretion into weapons. One example of this was their ornate hairpins, or kanzashi, which they could sharpen to a point or dip in poison. They also used neko-te (which means cat hand), which were nail accessories that acted as metal claws. Samurai and Ninjas Often Worked Together.

Throwing stars, or shuriken, were certainly used during the period that ninjas were more historically active, but there’s little to no evidence they were even used by ninjas – at least according to surviving ninja manuals.