Course description
The End of the Ninja
Between 1467 and 1598, Japan was a very dangerous place to live. Different areas of the country were always fighting with others and powerful leaders often used the poor as soldiers. Many, many died because nobody cared about their lives or their families. They were poor; they had no land; and they were powerless.
But there was one group of poor people, the ninja (also called yamabushi), who were not ready to die like animals. They usually lived in the mountains where it was difficult for their enemies to follow them. These areas were called Iga and Koga.
The ninja were experts at many things: spying, medicine, assassination and war. They also had a very different way of living than people in most other parts of the country. Powerful men did not manage their lives: they managed these themselves democratically. This was something that the samurai and the lords hated. They just could not understand it.
A mighty warlord, Oda Nobunaga, who lived from 1534 to 1582, decided to destroy the ninja and their democratic, 'un-Japanese' way of living. He sent his son, Oda Nobua, to govern Ise province, but the lords there fought against him. Oda Nobua destroyed their armies and the lords escaped to the ninja land of Iga. Nobua decided to attack Iga too. First, he took a castle called Maruyama and built up its walls and brought in many guns. He needed a lot of workmen to do this but he did not realise that some of them were ninja.
The worker-ninjas passed the message about the castle to their people and, one night, the ninja army destroyed the building before it was ready to use. Nobua then attacked Iga with more than ten thousand soldiers. There were only about 4,000 ninja in the village of Iga. However, the ninja were ready for him and attacked his soldiers from the front and the back. Many thousands of Nobua's soldiers died but Nobua himself escaped. It was a very important win for the ninja against an army of professional samurai.
Nobua's father, Nobunaga was very angry with his son. He told him to take ninja in his own army. Nobunaga went to Iga with an army of forty thousand - some of these men were ninja from Koga. He destroyed the village of Iga and killed most of the Iga ninja. Some fled to different parts of Japan but Nobunaga's dream of one Japan at peace became a reality and there was no place for assassins and fighters in this newly calm country. The ninja died and their skills died with them.
If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.
If you want to answer questions on this article to test how much you understand, you can click on the green box: Finished Reading?
Videos :
1. What was the Life of a Ninja Really Like? (5:35)
2. The Secret of Iga Ninja (8:56)
3. Japanese Ninja does Bizarre Trick with his Body (3:08)
4. Oda Nobunaga : The first Unifier of Japan ( Japanese History Explained) (18:55)
