Ninja (16 page)

This, he said, was where K
o
ga's ninja training started, here on Hando Mountain. There were two others nearby, Iwao (where they had held the fire ceremony) and Koshin, but this was his choice, because this was where the founder of Shugend
o
, En no Gy
o
ja, came to train in the early eighth century (though the same claim is made for the Forty-Eight Waterfalls; adepts say he jumped from that one to this, among others).

Though all around was greenery and silence, this had once been open and crowded. The undergrowth blanketed the shapes of ancient walls, the remains of a Buddhist temple, Hando-ji, a place of dozens, perhaps as many as fifty buildings, with several hundred priests. K
o
z
o
told its story, leading the way to a platform with a view over the valley below. With the mountain opened up by En and his trainees, the temple was built in 740, just before the emperor decided to create a new capital down there, in Shigaraki. He pointed out a small town, now famous for its ceramics. I had come that way into K
o
ka, driving past ranks of the Japanese equivalents of garden gnomes—owls, frogs, and supercute opossum-like
tanukis.

“So when work started on the new palace, the officials were pleased to discover that this temple was already here, stopping evil spirits from coming into the new capital from the northwest.” Shigaraki was a capital for only two or three years, when a fire (as some say) or disease convinced the court that the gods disapproved of the move, and they went back to Nara. The temple, which like most also included a Shinto shrine, stood for more than a thousand years, until the Meiji Restoration (1868), when the new government decreed that Buddhism and Shintoism should be separated. “So the Buddhist buildings were knocked down, leaving only the Shinto shrine. You will see. Would you like to wear these gloves?”

“Why? Is this a Shinto tradition?”

“No.” He laughed. “It's a difficult climb. You may need them to protect your hands.”

He led the way down a leaf-coated path, which got steeper and steeper until we had to rappel a few meters, using a chain hanging from a tree. We came to a crag, slung about with two chains. “There's a cliff on the other side,” said K
o
z
o
. “Very dangerous.” Well, perhaps it would have been in the old days, because the crag marked the edge of a precipice. Here ninjas and
shugenja
, their feet held by fellow trainees, lowered themselves backward over the abyss and “stayed there until the fear went,” as K
o
z
o
said. Once they had built up their courage, they were supposed to climb free-style across the face of the cliff (“I did it myself when I was a boy”). Today there is a metal bar set into the rock, and the traverse is only three or four meters, but back then barefoot trainees risked death, especially as they would surely do this in winter, just to make sure they suffered. And at speed, as Noriko reminded me. And chanting as they went.

Ahead was another crag, this one with a hole in it, through which the fitter, faster, and nimbler would have dashed. K
o
z
o
led the way up a near-vertical climb, clinging on to roots, leaving Noriko and me floundering in leaf mold in his wake. I hadn't bothered with the gloves, so my hands were sticky with pine sap and coated with soil. We emerged on the summit—more rocks sticking out of the soft ground, and another terrific view over rolling forest to distant mountains. “That's Hiei-san,” said K
o
z
o
. I was unfamiliar then with the use of the honorific
san
attached to a mountain, as in Fuji-san. “Mount Hiei,” he said as he saw my blank gaze. “You know—the mountain with the monastery Enryaku-ji, near Kyoto. The one destroyed by Nobunaga.”

I remembered: the one where twenty thousand perished in the flames.

“All children are told about it in school. We call it the Enryaku-ji Incident,” said Noriko. “This temple belonged to the same sect, the Tendai.”

“So did he come on here and destroy this as well?”

K
o
z
o
replied, “No, because he only destroyed those temples that opposed him.”

We stood for a while admiring the view, content in the soft autumn sun, then moved down to a nearby building, which turned out to be a Shinto shrine, the predecessor of which had been part of the old Hando temple complex. It displayed various unlikely creatures—a yellow-eyed tiger and a
kirin
, a sort of winged lion, after which the beer is named.

K
o
z
o
, meanwhile, explained his interest in the mountain. Actually, he had been doing this on and off during our climb. This is a collated version:

Until the time of my grandfather, my ancestors were
yamabushi
—mountain ascetics—and rice farmers, living close to this mountain, which belonged to three small communities. When my grandfather was a boy, the temple was destroyed and the mountain became overgrown. Then about sixty years ago, the mayor decided to restore the mountain and suggested that the descendants of the
yamabushi
families look after it. I started as a banker, then I worked for medical companies, before turning to farming rice, but when I retired I thought I should do some sort of community work. The founder of the Tendai sect, Saich
o
, said, “Kill yourself for others,” which he did not mean literally, but as “Do your utmost to serve others before yourself.” So I decided to help with the mountain. That was when I started taking part in Shugend
o
ceremonies, like the one you saw yesterday, and training my body and mind on the mountain. My greatest ambition”—he ended with a smile—“is to achieve world peace, and my smallest is to be a good person.

It was impossible to know from his words how to separate out the slurry of religious affiliations—different Buddhist sects, Shugend
o
,
yamabushi
, ninja. One thing seemed clear to me. The ninjas' reputation as sinister men in black who were happy doing the dirty work for their bosses should go. They were as committed to self-improvement and doing good as their priestly fellow trainees, with the proviso that this was part of their preparation for their main military purpose, which was spying.

I went to a tree-covered hill in Iga Ueno. On a flat space near the top is the ninja museum. The place is the architectural equivalent of a ninja, because it is much more than it seems at first glance. Its thatched roof and timbered rooms hide many tricks and devices and hidey-holes and hidden stairways that householders included to ensure they could vanish or fight back in case of attack: a door that pivots on a central hinge, a window that can be opened with a sliver of paper, a trapdoor and hinged floorboard that (if you know how) open to reveal swords. A model ninja, dressed rather incongruously in pink, stands on a dangling ladder, forever about to climb into the loft. But what the house really has to offer is underground, down twilit steps made mysterious by the sounds of a howling wolf and the call of an owl. Dug into the basement is a museum devoted to ninja life.

Here are all the tools and weapons used by the shadow warriors, far more than are mentioned in the
Shoninki
: grapples and ropes and folding ladders for climbing walls, knives, picks, borers, and saws for forcing ways through doors and fences, a fearsome iron claw for climbing trees and warding off swords, a knuckle-duster, a sickle and chain for snaring and slicing an opponent, four-pointed caltrops that could be scattered to pierce the feet of pursuers. Swords have broad hand guards that could be used to make a first step when climbing, plus a cord to pull the sword up behind you. There is even a little tube, which was supposedly used as a blowpipe to fire a poisoned dart as a means of assassination.

Most of the equipment is safely locked away in cabinets, but one item was hands-on, or rather feet-on: the
mizugumo
, a pair of wooden discs that (so they say) acted as the agricultural equivalent of snowshoes, used to cross bogs, or castle moats if they happened to be drying out. These “mud shoes” or “water spiders” looked suspiciously new. With me was Hiromitsu Kuroi, the closest you can come to a ninja these days. Having been practicing and teaching
ninjutsu
for thirty years, he is the inspiration behind the museum and adviser to publishers on ninja themes. One illustrated book in English,
Secrets of the Ninja
, has him on the cover and in scores of pictures inside, slaying opponents in freeze-frame.

“I have seen pictures of ninja using these to walk on water,” I said, nodding at the
mizugumo.

“That's nonsense. You would fall over, or sink.”

“Has anyone tried them?”

“I have. They work on mud, not water.”

I can believe it, sort of. But, like much information about ninjas, it is more than possible that this “fact” became a fact only later. There is an illustration of the water spider in one of the prime sources on ninja matters, a multivolume manuscript known as the
Bansensh
u
kai
, about which I would be learning much more. The drawing shows a single “shoe,” which when doubled makes a water spider like the one displayed in the museum. But take a closer look. There is no strap to hold it on the foot. How on earth are you supposed to lift it in order to walk on mud? You could of course add your own strap. But if the “spider” was meant for walking, the artist would surely have recorded a strap. If not for walking, how might it have been used? Here's a clue: Historically, life preservers were called “water shoes.” Another clue is that the
Bansensh
u
kai
shows a single water spider. The conclusion should be that a water spider was a simple float to get across water, not mud. You either sat on the central section and used a paddle or sat astride the central section and paddled with your feet. Now, that makes sense. Water is a more common hazard than mud, and it would be much easier to carry one of the spiders rather than two.

Almost all of the tools were originally no more weapons than a kitchen knife is. Like the water spiders, they were bits of farm equipment that were adapted for fighting. Perhaps this is why the
Shoninki
makes no mention of them—there's really nothing very special about them. Even the ninja “uniform,” which in popular imagination turns them into “men in black”—loose jacket, loose trousers bound just below the knee, a slipper-and-sock combination with soft cotton soles, leg wraps, mask, and hood—was modified peasant clothing, such as would be worn in summer, when a fieldworker wished to keep mosquitoes from exposed flesh. Black seems to be a post-ninja imposition. As Hiromitsu puts it in his introduction to
Secrets of the Ninja
: “In fact dark blue was the colour of choice. In the bright moonlight, black stands out like a sore thumb.”

One type of weapon, the
shuriken
or throwing star, is both well known and problematical. Made in all sorts of shapes, from simple crosses to many-pointed stars,
shuriken
are undoubtedly fun to use, because almost any throw at a wooden target gets them to stick in with a satisfying smack. And they would undoubtedly cause a nasty cut in exposed flesh. But they are puzzling things. You cannot sheath them, except by putting them in a bag. But imagine reaching into the bag, especially in the dark, while fighting—wouldn't you risk cutting your fingers? Was it worth the trouble, for a weapon that, as Hiromitsu admitted, “did not have the power to kill, or even do much harm”? Some claim that they were smeared with poison; but wouldn't that make them even more dangerous to the user?

Frankly, when delving into the historical realities of the ninja, there is a problem with authenticity. Purists may be surprised to discover that there is not a single authentic tool or weapon in the museum. All were made recently. Should this bother us? The arguments for and against have many buts. Some of the designs were recorded, but only after the heyday of the ninjas—but not
that
long after.

One other example: The ninja museum (and countless books) insist that one of the ninjas' secrets was to tell the time of day by checking the eyes of a cat, because the pupils dilate and contract with the changing light: narrow at midday, wide at dusk. For a moment, the “cat's-eye clock” sounds resourceful. But give the matter a moment's thought. First, of
course
a cat's eyes dilate and contract with the changing light.
All
eyes do. You might as well tell the time by staring into a mirror. Second, do you really need a cat to tell you the time of day? Third, the amount of light and thus the size of the cat's pupil depends not only on the time of day but also on the season and the weather. And once you spot your cat, how on earth do you get close enough to get a good look at its eyes? The more you think about it, the sillier it gets.

Noriko also planted doubts about the significance of the so-called anti-ninja “nightingale” floors, made of teak boards that squeak when you walk on them. Just south of Kyoto's Nij
o
Castle are the remains of the older Imperial Palace, a house known as Nijo-jinya, which (in the words of my guide book) offers “a thrilling glimpse into a treacherous world—the seemingly ordinary house riddled with trap doors, false walls and ceilings, ‘nightingale' floors, escape hatches, disguised staircases and confusing dead ends to trap intruders.” Elsewhere, too, nightingale floors are part of the standard tour-guide spiel.

Not so fast. The
Shoninki
makes no mention of them. When I was in the Tofuku-ji temple in Kyoto with Noriko, we walked over nightingale floors by the acre. “They say the squeaking wood is to deter assassins, but it's not true,” said Noriko. “All corridors made of this certain wood over thirty years old squeak like this. My house corridor makes the same noise.” That set me wondering: Why “nightingale”? The sound is nothing like nightingales, more like armies of mice being squashed beneath one's feet. In fact, the Japanese bird (
uguisu
) usually translated as “nightingale” is a bush warbler, traditionally the herald of spring. The translation was coined by the English in the nineteenth century, simply because both birds sing. So let us consider spoiling a good story by inverting it: The floors squeak naturally, but when the rich started to build ninja-proof houses, ordinary folk, impressed by their ingenuity, granted them even more of it, by giving them credit for an entirely natural effect. Teak floors sang before ninjas walked.