Modern Ninjutsu: a Definitive Guide to the Tactics, Concepts, and Spirit of the Unconventional Combat Arts

By J. Alaric Justice

Modern Ninjutsu: A Definitive Guide to the Tactics, Concepts & Spirit of Unconventional Combat Arts is a path guide to realistic training and mind-set development for combat situations wherever they may occur. J. Alaric Justice is a military combat veteran and former anti-terrorist, as well as a former law enforcement defensive tactics instructor and crisis negotiator. Perhaps most important to this work, he has survived many violent street encounters, fights, and attempted crimes in gang-infested areas. Speaking as someone who has been exposed to violence and opponent force in myriad forms, he offers a unique view to practitioners of any system of how to handle crisis situations and maintain realism in their training for generations to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504349369

J. Alaric Justice

J. Alaric Justice is a former military anti-terrorist, police negotiator, and survivor of numerous street-fights in gang territories. Here, in Modern Ninjutsu, he brings thirty years of ninjutsu training and combat experience together to help martial artists of all styles—traditional and unconventional—in battlefields and on violent streets.

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Copyright © 2016 John Carlos Johnson.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-4935-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4936-9 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 07/12/2016

CONTENTS

1 Ninjutsu: Historic Analysis Of A Culture

2 Defining Ninjutsu

3 Tactical Analysis: The Basics Of The Tactical Ladder

4 Ninjutsu Tactics: In Focus

5 Ninjutsu: Focusing On Modern Needs

6 Why Is Ninjutsu Needed Today?

7 On Training For Real World Threats

8 Michi & Shin: The Way And The Spirit In Focus

AUTHOR’S PREFACE:

INTRODUCTION TO THE MILITANT MIND

I am not a ninja. Despite all the oaths and creeds and vows I have made in ninjutsu training over the last 30 years, I am not a ninja. Unfortunately, nor is anyone else that has written books on ninjutsu in recent decades.

No noble lord directs my actions through a jonin clan leader. No chunin group sub-commander has ever trained me for, nor sent me on, missions for my clan or village. I have performed military operations in the field (as well as street operations of a completely different nature), but I am not a genin field agent. Though I have trained people for decades now, including in military and police positions, I am not a chunin myself. That is important to understand.

I am a military veteran of 3 different active duty tours, as well as a former law enforcement crisis negotiator and defensive tactics instructor. That is the viewpoint from which this book was written, more so than any years of traditional training. I do have various ranks in the martial arts and combative systems, but they really have very little to do with the information presented here. For only in fully understanding the combat foundation of the martial arts can we best guide our practice and its development for real-world applications, whether your implementation is for self-defense in the streets or military operations across the globe.

As a veteran, particularly from a family of veterans, I have a different view of the martial arts – especially of ninjutsu – than normal civilian martial arts instructors might. My perspective is more tactical in nature, meaning that I focus more on how to achieve a goal in direct action. This book does not represent mere hypothesis or theory, as is so often presented in martial arts books. Nor is it overly concerned with history or tradition, since tactics are concerned with the threats of the day, not those from the past. Much of what is typical in martial arts books will not be found in the pages that follow.

Virtually everything I have written here is from direct experience, from real-world applications. That means I’ve had the misfortune of knowing men to suffer serious injury or even death – whether from opponent force in battle or from their own inability to deal with pressures at home – for failing to apply some of the principles now offered here. With this in mind, you can expect a serious tone in my words, though I am normally a joking and jovial man. My experience and passion for these concepts will be quite clear as you read these pages.

This is not a how-to guide of any sort. It does not contain techniques, for it is wholly concerned with the tactics of ninjutsu, as well as the principles of human development required for achieving those tactics. Therefore, this book covers more information on training than it does on technical prowess. Far too many books have been written on techniques already, so there is no real need of another technique guide. As the current grandmaster of three different ninjutsu systems says, What is important is to throw away the technique… You want to get rid of the technique, not to show the same thing…

Again, my tone is somewhat severe here, since we are dealing with important issues. However, the tone of famous historic ninjutsu references like the Bansenshukai and the Shoninki are also serious in content and nature. In addition, coming from the streets and military, I speak from a common man’s perspective, not that of some doctorate or professional. My highest education is that of a registered nurse, serving now as an Occupational Health Nurse and Regional Safety Manager. Therefore, I will not write or speak formally at all times; older English professors may call my manner of writing vulgar or common. Proper mindset, very important to those older ninjutsu references, is perhaps the most critical thing I can convey here.

With these things in mind, this book may be something new and different to martial arts circles, and is certainly needed for maintaining realism in modern practice. So many MA schools and teachers of today are preaching and touting reality-based martial arts, but then never consider what the real world may require. Many such people are focusing more on sport applications than even their own traditional methods, both of which are often contrary to what reality dictates. Therefore, we will also explain this idea of realism in order to progress in your understanding of a truly tactical or reality-based system.

Truly, I hope that you enjoy this work. More important, I want to hear back from readers, especially those with real experience in these matters, that they may share their views with me on each issue covered here. Only by sharing and communicating with open hearts and minds can we grow mentally and spiritually as people and communities.

– J. Alaric Justice

1

NINJUTSU: HISTORIC ANALYSIS OF A CULTURE

Before we get too deeply engrossed in the topic of ninjutsu itself, we have to achieve a certain understanding of the Japanese culture and its development. Any truly great nation becomes such by adapting to the times, and few countries have more consistently done that than Japan. According to Toshio Kuroda’s The Discourse on the ‘Land of the Kami,’ Japan has been officially referred to by various chroniclers since the 8th century as The Land of the Gods. Even with this lofty sounding description, her people have never held themselves as being too great or too pure for learning from outsiders’ ways. It has almost always been receptive to trade and cultural exchange with other lands, both to its Eastern neighbors and to outside Western forces. This is one of the defining elements of Japanese culture, making it so rich and diverse, and so also lends itself to the evolution of ninjutsu.

When you look at the history of a people, and open your eyes to more than just the who and where and when of various events, you get a glimpse of the culture specific to the times in that study. It is an opportunity to observe the political and economic pressures that a people may have experienced, as well as how they responded. Therefore, one cannot simply read a single history book to obtain a clear idea of what transpired. You must look at a number of books from a variety of authors presenting a spectrum of different angles. However, this is where most martial arts books fall short, in failing to present critical information that show the motives and defining elements of ancient practitioners, and how their arts were shaped by forces at work in their specific times.

With that in mind, as we view the basic history and growth of Japanese society -— especially leading up to the feudal times that made ninjutsu famous -— we find that the Japanese people, from the Proto-historic Age on, had a cultural tendency toward immediately making use of virtually any effective practice they observed in others. Following the invasion of western Japan by the Yamato tribes, an escalation of organizing powers soon led to the legendary invasion of Korea under the leadership of a supposedly pregnant shaman-Empress Jingo, soon to be mother of emperor Ojin (who would later be deified as Hachiman, according to The Samurai and the Sacred, p. 8). Korean writing is officially introduced to Japanese nobles less than fifty years later, marking the beginning of recorded history in Japan. Upon being defeated in Korea, by a culmination of exhausting the forces both at home and in held hostile lands, focus is immediately shifted to the Chinese. Before all of the military powers had even been ousted from Korea, Buddhism has made its way from China to Japan, the Chinese calendar has been adopted and the first formal ambassador envoy is sent to China…again all in less than fifty years according to some records.

Beyond mere religion, it was actually the official policy or Imperial dictate to tolerate the ways of others. Prince Shotoku (593-622 A.D.) actually instructed his people, from the highest nobles down to the lowest peasants, to Respect Harmony; it was the first article of what might be considered the original constitution of Japan. (Shotoku, incidentally, is considered by many to have been the first known official of Japan to employ ninja for intelligence gathering and infiltrating enemy lands.) Nonetheless, this simple principle seems to have guided much of the evolution of Japan, and the greatest mistakes and atrocities known to her history were in direct violation or contradiction to it.

Despite great friction from powerful families and influential nobles supporting adherence to older ways, the start of the Nara period sees Japanese bureaucracy almost completely patterned after the Chinese model by 710 AD, about 100 years after the first official entourage was sent to China’s mainland. A sudden growth of formal noble records and public gazettes is then observed, increasing access of information to the general populace during a time when Buddhism began to flourish in Japan, bringing a new level of sophisticated philosophy to the people. (It is interesting to note here that the rise of Buddhism would seem completely at odds to Imperial interests, since the royal traditions were uniquely supported by Shinto assertions that the Imperial family was descendant of the Sun Goddess). Yet, within thirty years, we see the results of that increased public intelligence in the form of various peasant revolts and the rise of Buddhist hierarchy to near-militant levels, rivaling that of many powerful clans. Before the end of the Nara period, less than twenty-five years after the first organized political clash opposing the rising power of a Buddhist monk in the Imperial court, abbot Dokyo is appointed Prime Minister by Empress Koken.

The sheer speed of these national events is stunning when one truly thinks on it. The first permanent capital existed in Nara for barely more than seventy years, but so much happened in that time. So it is with most of Japanese history, chronicled drama unfolding at a pace unmatched in most other parts of the world.

This may be difficult to comprehend for the Western mind, certainly here in the United States when we still have senators and so-called representatives in 2015 debating over issues that were presented during the Kennedy administration over fifty years ago, or where racism rooted in ancient slavery practices still finds its way into public forum, practice and treatment even today. The idea of a nation moving and changing so alarmingly swift would seem implausible to us. Yet, history is clear on this matter: Where the people maintain open minds and the hearts to make things happen, much can change in a very short period. More importantly, where the general public is committed to see more than mere petty debates and select special interests guide the nation and government, much WILL happen quickly and decisively.

Are we beginning to see the pattern? I am no historian, nor have any aspirations for such, but any intelligent person can recognize that the strength of the Japanese mind is their willingness to bring new ideas and options to the masses and their way of doing business. It is found in their religious supermarket mentality, seen nationwide today, which has Shinto sects and Buddhist temples side by side with Christian churches and shrines to Confucius. It is also evident in their industrial and entrepreneurial evolution, which took them from a primarily agrarian society to a manufacturing and technological giant in less than 100 years. (Following the start of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan’s accelerated industrialization program led to its rise as a world military power by 1905, less than 40 years later; the production of raw and refined materials from 1868 to 1914 rose, in many cases, from 1200 to 3500 percent.) That is what many martial artists of today, especially in our narrow-minded West, are missing in their considerations of their systems… and ninjutsu is no exception.

Military & Martial Aspects

As I’ve said before, I am not a historian. If anything, as a military veteran who served in more than one service, both Cold War and Post-Cold War, I am more of a tactician than most martial artists are used to. Therefore, I remind and urge readers to do their own research into all that I say here. I won’t have my words misleading people in the same way that Nitobe’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan has done.

That in mind, let’s continue…

The now-famed term samurai, meaning those who serve, did not gain common or official usage in Japan until the 10th century. This was the Heian period, considered a time of intrigue, when some of the noble houses and military powers scattered about the land began to challenge the centralized authority of the Imperial line. Although this may seem significant to some martial artists, the reality is that Japan had already been around for about nine centuries before this. The Emperors had already guided the nation through several major changes and Japan was already in the midst of a great spiritual shift from Shinto to Buddhism, which would prove to be one of the greatest obstacles to the centralization of military authority in the land.

In contrast to their later divisions and devious strategic calculations, the rise and eventual exalted status of the samurai class may actually stem from seemingly humble beginnings, dating back to the 6th and 7th centuries. At least 2000 Koreans took refuge in Japan after the fall of the Paekche dynasty in the final days of Japan’s attempted seizure of Korea. They settled into the Kanto plain (a place that would later mark the rise of the Taira clan and the coincidental emergence of the first known organized samurai), where they continued their practice of raising horses for hunting. Some 200 to 300 years later, journals reported these people as being completely unlike others in that area, in that they dressed differently and carried archery gear on horseback, a skill that some samurai clans would later develop to famous levels. Whether they were Korean descendants or not, these equestrian archers were hired by the emperor as mercenaries to combat the rising threat of emishi (barbarians). These ancient cavalry warriors came to be called mononofu, and were influential in the development of the samurai and the way Japan fought its early wars, as coordinated archery was the second of three major military weaponry tactics employed by their forces in the feudal era.

Of some importance is the fact that mounted cavalry soldiers could not easily move into a territory until it was properly, and discreetly, scouted by less noticeable foot-soldiers of some sort. Obviously such personnel could not go in wearing full military gear, nor could they go in as a single massive regiment. Instead, such personnel would go into new areas as small units, teams as small as two men that might operate in concert with several other small elements to obtain as much information as possible. Modern espionage agents and military special forces members alike still make use of such basic human intelligence tactics to this day, even in the midst of our modern sophisticated technologies.

Now, one of the most overlooked aspects of Japan’s military and martial arts history is found in the nation’s earliest practices of compulsory military service, another concept borrowed from the Chinese. In 689 AD, Empress Jito decreed that one-fourth of all able-bodied men in every province would serve an allotted time in military training. The very next reign, that of Emperor Mommu, saw the ordered number of trained citizenry increased to one-third of the fit male populace. Although the notion met with little success and brought much misery and suffering to the people, it also introduced the skills that would later allow peasants and clergy alike to present such powerful opposition to the government in various violent revolts. The fact that virtually every province seemed to have its own military specialty later -— something that is also observed in early ninjutsu history -— hints at how the emperor intended to produce quality soldiers: each province would be given one central skill to focus on initially, with the best and brightest to likely serve as trainers in their specialties to other provinces later. Again, that concept came to be used in ninjutsu, and is mentioned in the Shoninki, one of the most important historical theses ever written on this art: This is why we lend our assistance when a shinobi comes from another province…If I visit another province, the person [that practices ninjutsu] living in that area will show me his province. If this person visits my province, I will show him the secrets of the area and reveal to him the secrets of my house [system], thereby putting the marvelous doctrines of this method to work. May the value of this art be recognized!

Therefore, as the samurai class began to rise in power, a significant percentage of the citizens had access to military-based training, and had been refining that training for various purposes for up to three centuries. As mentioned before, scouting (a.k.a. reconnaissance) is a crucial aspect to military operations, particularly to the cavalry tactics that became the cornerstone of Japanese military forces for the entirety of the nation’s feudal warfare history. Even today, the similarities between military scouting and ninja core skills are crystal clear; modern Marine Corps snipers start off as scouts and the training of the two specialties are uniquely bound together, pretty much inseparable. Suffice it to say that it would be very easy to understand if Imperial dictates ensured that the training of several provinces focused on scouting.

Looking to other nations’ historic methods, we find that scouting and combat spying are intimately connected. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), along with masterfully using indirect tactics in a variety of situations against larger forces, was a cavalry officer that recorded how indigenous peoples could be used as scouts. He assigned certain talented officers to be scout-masters, granting them the responsibility of collecting all manner of information on the enemy and hostile terrains, using both scouts and spies. From this position, one could easily manipulate helpful natives into progressively more intimate – if not questionable – roles that would bind them more surely to your own interests, while also alienating them from those of their own peoples. This was a tactic later used considerably in the North American colonies by the French and British, and further south by the Spaniards against the ancient natives before them. In such manner, especially effective scout-masters could also become spy-masters.

No matter what the weaponry tactics of the day, scouting was an essential foundation role to Japanese feudal military operations. Despite the glorified depictions of samurai in single combat wielding swords as their primary weapons, the reality is that the evolution of Japan’s military tactics presented first spears, then bows, and then crude firearms as the successive historic front-line forces that determined success in battles. As the intrigue of military power-houses came to a head in the 16th and 17th centuries, this last weaponry tactic was to be a deciding factor in the remainder of Japanese history, as well as that of ninjutsu itself.

Contrary to the Imperial ideal of being open to all religions, the military hierarchy of Japan was somewhat at odds with the growth of Buddhism among the masses, especially among its soldiers. This is most clearly seen in daimyo Oda Nobunaga’s direct and violent opposition of the ikki (a word originally meaning riot, which came to be better known as a league of people acting as a mutual protection association), the most powerful of which were the Ikko-ikki (single-minded league) whose faith promised that heavenly paradise was the immediate reward for death in battle. This in mind, members did not shrink from the idea of fighting, but rather relished it. More important to the daimyo, however, ikki cut across the vertical vassal structures that their military thrived on, pitting some samurai against the efforts of their own clan lords by association and support of the ikki they belonged to. This was a situation that simply could not be allowed.

Buddhism, and the ikki culture in particular, presented something no military authority can abide: democratic ideals. Each individual was a volunteer to the sects, with no chance of drafts or compulsory service. Although there was some considerable charisma among the known ikki leadership, the foundational concepts of every ikki would appeal to grass-roots movements even today. Although sociologists would argue that one may become subject to a mob-mind mentality when in such groups, the success of the ikki groups depended on first gaining willing volunteers through the presentation of publically acceptable ideals, and those offered by ikki gained followers from most every walk of life, to include many military personnel. This was the generation that produced some of the fiercest and consistent public riots and revolts of the feudal era, paradoxically lending credence and impetus to the rise of military powers in Japan.

Therefore, Nobunaga’s eventual progressive push to destroy various Buddhist temples – as well as his support of Christianity (versus the native Shinto that would have provided more support to the Imperial line than to his own interests as military ruler) – was geared more toward strategically increasing his own growing influence than to merely asserting support of any particular religion. After all, his first known clash with the Ikko-ikki came about when some 3000 armed members of the sect appeared to aid his enemy Miyoshi Yoshitsugu in 1570, forcing Nobunaga to retreat. Soon after, they delivered a more personal blow when they forced his brother Oda Nobuoki to commit seppuku at the siege of Ogie castle. Later, in the winter of that same year, another Buddhist sect – in the form of Enryakuji sohei (warrior monks) from Mount Hiei – attacked his flank as he was embattled against the Asai and Asakura armies. This led to the warlord’s assault of Mount Hiei, one of the most notorious military massacres in the history of Japan.

It is important to understand that this was not some sword-clashing event here. Nobunaga (1534-1582) was a true tactician, and no records indicate him being a master of any traditional martial art. His rise to fame was in his revolutionary adaptation of group firearms tactics, using mobile protective walls for his marksmen to keep shelter behind as his force was progressively advanced forward. These gunnery personnel were supported by gun-loaders (minimizing time between fired volleys) and spearmen that protected the rolling battle-walls and gunners from attacks by either mounted cavalry or footmen. This was a considerable leap from the tactics used by the Europeans, and those used by any Japanese enemies that were likely trying to make use of European-based firearms tactics themselves. Therefore, Nobunaga and his forces rolling in on a village or temple was about the equivalent of modern SWAT teams storming an apartment building filled primarily with unarmed women and children, or four LMPD police – fully armed with batons, chemical sprays and tasers – choosing to empty pistol clips on a single man bearing nothing more than a hammer…or worse, choosing firearms against an underweight elderly man after hand-cuffing him behind the back, and claiming that his alleged possession of a box-cutter warranted such excessive use of force.

Another important note to add here is that the Japanese acceptance of the firearm as part of the military arsenal is one of the shining examples of how quickly the people there took on ideas from other cultures and improved upon them. The first known match-lock to be owned by Japanese was purchased by a noble from a Portuguese sailor shortly after Portuguese traders landed at Kyushu in 1542. Within a few years, Japan had not only begun industrial manufacturing of the weapons, but had also quickly improved the design in various ways, such as by covering the touchhole so that the weapon could be fired even in the rain. By 1570, less than thirty years after the weapon was introduced there, Japan had the best-armed and best-trained infantry in the 16th century world. By 1575, peasants had amassed enough firepower to decimate a better-trained samurai army; Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) quickly learned that peasants armed with firearms were too dangerous to coexist with their samurai superiors (a realization that would later lead to a formal separation of the warrior and peasant classes). For, with only a musket, the lowest peasant-farmer could kill the bravest and most skilled of samurai… or even his noble lord.

Therefore, the level of lethal military action employed by Nobunaga at Mount Hiei had never been seen before in Japan, and it became a foreboding warning of menace to the Jodo Shinshu Ikko-ikki, leading to a long and bitter conflict with the warlord that was to last a full decade. Being something of a tactician-genius, Nobunaga systematically and progressively eliminated every support group he could find for his rival militant cultists. By November 1575, Oda had, by his own account, wiped out several tens of thousands of the villainous rabble in Echizen and Kaga. The daimyo’s biographer reported that in only 5 days, from the 15th to 19th of the eighth lunar month of 1575, some 12250 were apprehended by Nobunaga’s forces. After which, he summarily ordered the execution of the prisoners and had his troops take countless men and women (and no doubt children as well) to serve the retainers in their various home provinces… effectively scattering the cult remnants and sealing the loyalty of his men in a single move.

In the midst of all this political wrestling for control of the nation, Oda Nobunaga’s efforts brought about one of the greatest romantic delusions of feudal Japan, that the samurai and ninja were inherent enemies. The reality is that some samurai were also trained as ninja, and vice versa. Ninja, being spies and infiltrators of virtually every level of Japanese social strata, had successfully penetrated and developed potential hidden sleeper agents into most major bushi clans long before Nobunaga came into power. Of importance here, however, is that those individual ninja not directly associated with a noble warrior organization were free to support Buddhism and the ikki groups however they liked. This is why certain clans came to be targeted by Nobunaga.

One of the recurring names throughout all of Nobunaga’s actions against the Ikko-ikki was Mori Motonari, who happily and consistently supplied the militant cult throughout the entire convoluted conflict. In addition, the Mori clan is one of most well-known for employing ninja during the feudal era. To suppress and scatter that support, the daimyo deployed approximately 50,000 armed troops (outnumbering the known populace of the area by nearly 10 to 1) into a civilian area with no major military or clergy organizations nearby to offer aid, a slaughter by any known association of the term. Therefore, the massacre known traditionally as the Battle of Tensho Iga no Ran, was not so much an overt display of fear and hatred toward ninja specifically – as so many so-called ninjutsu historians would have us believe – but was only one of the final steps Nobunaga took to cut off all support to the most powerful leader of the Ikko-ikki revolts. It was not truly intended to destroy ninjutsu, as such a goal would have also required a similar assault on nearby Koga province as well. Outside of this single incident, nothing really suggests that there was any true or mutual enmity between ninja clans and samurai families.

In fact, each famous politico-military act at Japan’s national level during that era represented carefully thought strategies that reached far beyond the limits of battlefield tactics. The famed sword hunts that followed Nobunaga’s machinations were intended only to legally disarm the general populace and reduce the impact of militant cults or peasant revolts on the political powers of that time. The original Report Edict of 1590, then, was meant to monitor the movements of potential political dissidents and their supporters by requiring that village councils report any changes in families or individuals that moved into or from that particular area. The Separation Edict of 1591 then strictly divided the bushi warriors and the heimin peasants, firmly preventing the peasant farmers from ever achieving warrior status again, as Hideyoshi himself had done (as well as weakening the link between peasant and military that had allowed the ikki movements to be so great a threat for so long). The fact that these political controls also restricted many ninja was only a side bonus.

The reality, as further history dictates, is that ninja were still employed by Ieyasu Tokugawa, the last surviving member of the Nobunaga triumvirate (consisting of Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa). All three of these men had employed spies at various points of their careers, but it was Tokugawa who finally made use of them with official status. Ninja became his secret police, assisting with the quell of the Shimabara Rebellion (1637-1638) that preceded his eventual expulsion of all foreigners (apparently feeling that foreigners promoted revolts after the Christian leaders had led a peasant rebellion very much akin to the Boston Tea Party in opposition to the taxes incurred for the construction of a new castle). Once total control of the nation had been assumed by the shogun, however, those few known ninja remaining in official positions were pushed into tedious duties as bodyguards or security personnel, if not as laborers and gardeners (under the pretense of acting as secret security personnel).

In the final known play of ninjutsu implementation by the shogun, ninja from Kii province were brought in to replace agents from other clans. This particular area produced agents known to specialize in firearms and munitions use, tactics Nobunaga had employed to masterful effectiveness. Strangely enough, this was the same immediate area that housed the last two militant Buddhist sects that were defeated by Toyotomi, known as the Saiga Ikko-ikki and the Negorodera sohei. Therefore, this Kii ninja group was perhaps one of the few trusted and proven ninja clans to have possibly served the trio throughout the entire time of the Nobunaga-Hideyoshi-Tokugawa ascendancy. Under the whim of Tokugawa, they became the new secret police of the capital, and likely became the primary agents for operations in other parts of the realm as well.

Yet, this was ultimately the beginning of the end of ninjutsu as it was practiced in feudal Japan. A long period of peace followed, and successive lines of ninja lost their focus on guerilla warfare and espionage tactics by training with bushi primarily in bushi arts. Further, training with samurai in secondary combat systems – rather than the true combat tactics that actually won the nation – altered the way in which both samurai and ninja adepts practiced, thought of and passed on their respective systems. Japanese ninjutsu did not die in some tragic battle or massacre or car crash, as some would tell the tale. Instead, it simply faded into apparent obscurity, losing touch with its own roots during some 200 years of disuse.

The Japanese capacity for accepting new ideas and improving upon them to the best of their ability proved time and time again to be a pivotal force in the development of the nation. Following a period of over 700 years of near-constant civil war and internecine conflicts (Heian period [794-1156] to the end of the Momoyama period [1467-1600]), Toyotomi Hideyoshi effectively and immediately disarmed the nation with his Sword Hunt edict of 1588, which declared that the people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short shorts, bows, spears, or other types of arms; this move made it easier to collect taxes and prevent civilian revolts. Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542-1616) followed suit by systematically assuming greater control over the country in short order: establishing shogunate authority in Imperial-held Edo (1603); eliminating his most likely potential rival, Toyotomi Hideyori (son of Hideyoshi, whom Ieyasu had formally sworn to protect in earlier years) in 1615; formulating the Buke Shohatto (Laws of the Military Houses, intended to provide a singular guide to all military clans), also in 1615; forcibly expelling the Spaniards (1624), the Portuguese (1639) and all other foreigners (1640); closing off Japan’s borders to