On May 21st, I had one of the most entertaining days on the entire study abroad trip, where I got to go to an hour and a half class on Japan’s ninjas and learn about their techniques and briefly go over their history during their prime. As for what I did, we started off the class by doing a traditional bowing to show respect to our instructor. Then, we learned about the hand signs that ninjas made before embarking on their missions. These hand signs acted as sort of a meditation and prayer that the mission will be successful and to ensure ones’ own safety. After getting our minds and bodies calm and in the headspace for stealth, we started by learning how to walk like a ninja. This walking technique keeps your upper body completely still while scowling lifting your legs one at a time in a crane pose before slowly stepping toes first getting the smallest amount of surface area to make contact in order to limit the amount of noise generates. Once we learned how to walk like a ninja, we learned about the smaller sword that ninjas have with many functions. These functions include a tip that can be used as a throwing weapon, the sword can be used as a small stool, the sheath can be used as an observation tool and even as a pseudo whip like weapon. All of these uses packed into a regular looking sword and its sheath amazed me, as almost every purpose seems to have been accounted for to ensure that a ninja can infiltrate any building that will be necessary for their mission. After learning about the sword and all of its uses, we then learned how to throw ninja stars accurately at a target. Throwing ninja stars was a lot like throwing a dart, just you have to make sure to add some extra spin so that it is able to stick onto its target. Lastly, we covered how to shoot blow darts by using blow dart tubes and deep breaths. Surprisingly, these blow darts were the easiest thing to get the hang of for the whole class because of their relative accuracy and ease of being able to shoot them with little breath.
When discussing the ninja, it is essential to present the point that their primary purpose is espionage, and that everything in their tool kit is meant to get them in to gather information then get out with the least amount of blood spilled possible. There are exceptions of course, but generally ninjas are primarily meant to avoid conflict, remain undetected, and stay alive to report back to their lord. As Zoughari states in his book, “the ninja was, and remains, in the fullest sense of the word, a specialist a veritable combat expert, fluent in the handling of a variety of weapons, a remarkable scout, tracker, acrobat, and illusionist” (Zoughari, 20). While it is easy to imagine these figures in your head as figures clad in black with an unlimited arsenal of gadgets, ninjutsu in reality was much more grounded. To address the clothing, the idea of ninjas being clad in black is actually a recent depiction, as real ninjas would dress much more mundane-like as to blend in more with the social surroundings of their mission (Zoughari, 21). Ninjutsu instead was an art where secrecy was key, so having weapons hidden in mundane objects was the most useful because ninjas would often work as a commoner while on long term missions for their lord, so they must dress this part and rely more on their training than any specific clothing or tools. Attending the class and learning more about ninjas in the book that I found helped me identity truth from fiction on the art of ninjutsu in Japanese history and how these legendary figures actually lived to get a better mental picture of them.
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