The Most Famous Ninjas In History

Disentangling fact from legend can be a tall order when looking at many people, groups, and events throughout history; when it comes to ninjas, it's nearly impossible. Ninjas have become a ubiquitous presence in their customary black outfits (largely derived from 19th-century portrayals). They're an easy Halloween costume, a popular figure in comics, film, and video games, and an inexplicable opponent to pirates in internet memes. In Japanese folklore, they were said to hold supernatural powers that aided them in fantastic strikes against their opponents. But the historical ninja could be more accurately called the assassins and spy networks of their time.

Clashing warlords had plenty of need for such services during the Warring States Period. Ninja as organized clans and forces developed in the Iga and Kōga regions (per John Man's "Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior"). The most prominent clans (ikki) were commanded by family patriarchs (jonin). Ninjutsu as a distinct martial art — albeit one that stressed deception, loyalty, and disguise over any particular fighting prowess — followed, becoming established by the Edo Period. Before the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, ninjas were held in low esteem but were in high demand for infiltrating enemy territory, gathering intelligence, and covertly murdering opponents.

Spies of any sort lose their value the more is known about them. Many ninjas were anonymous, and many famous names associated with ninjutsu may well be fictitious. But there are remarkable — and authentic — ninjas to be found in history books.

Fact and fiction have become so well-blended in accounts of many ninjas that a complete separation of the two isn't possible. So it is for Kirigakure Saizō. Years of folk tales and children's stories have made him the equivalent of Zorro or a Western cowboy hero in Japanese culture. He's been incorporated into the Sanada Ten Braves, a group of particularly fearsome ninjas who supposedly served the samurai Sanada Yukimara at the end of the Sengoku era. But the real Saizō's fame seems to rest on a failed assassination attempt, and just what he did and how he failed is unclear.

It's generally agreed that Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered Saizō to take some action against Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Ieyasu's chief rival for Oda Nobunaga's legacy of unification. In one version of the story, presented by Stephen R. Turnbull in "Warriors of Medieval Japan," Saizō managed to enter Hideyoshi's home and slip underneath the floor. But before he could strike, a guard pinned him to the ground with a spear, and another ninja put a flamethrower to him.

Another version of the story paints Saizō in a less flattering light. As recalled by Donn F Draeger in "Ninjutsu: The Art of Invisibility," Saizō was a spy, not an assassin, and he gave away his own location on the floor by not using mosquito repellent. The buzzing of insects above him let the guard stab him through the shoulder, which ironically ensured that Saizō was taken captive instead of killed.

While researching his book "Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior," John Man was told a story about the siege of Takino Castle by the forces of Oda Nobunaga. Among those in Nobunaga's camp were three ninja chiefs: Hattori Hanzō, Sandayu Momochi, and Nagato no Kami, also known as Nagato Fujibayashi. Man noted that Hanzō and Momochi were legendary names in Japan, but that there was almost nothing known about Nagato, other than his name in connection with the siege.

It was good business on the part of ninjas to maintain anonymity, but there may have been another reason for Nagato's obscurity. It's been suggested that Nagato Fujibayashi wasn't a real person, but a pseudonym used by Momochi. This, it is held, was in keeping with the art of yomogami no jitsu, the maintaining of multiple disguises to confuse enemies. Momochi allegedly carried this so far as to have two bands of ninjas, one under his own name and one under the guise of Nagato, that directly competed with one another. For good measure, he was said to have three distinct marriages and households.

The Nagato name disappears from records after Nobunaga turned against the ninjas of Iga, in part due to their alliance with Buddhist priests. Momochi, on the other hand, was recorded as fighting bravely, and no records exist as to his death. Two of his three homes (under his own name) still stand today.

At what point does a thief become a dashing and heroic highwayman? The earliest historical records that exist put Ishikawa Goemon down as a bandit, nothing more. Centuries of folklore, theater, and film have made him into a Robin Hood figure, a champion of the poor and the enemy of authority. Along the way, he acquired a reputation as a ninja to boot. Never mind the lack of documentation for his being a ninja, or the conflicting accounts of how and in what direction the career path from ninja to bandit went. If, unlike Robin Hood, Goemon can at least be confirmed as having existed, his life story is just as varied as the many legends around his Western counterpart.

One version of Goemon's story (via Andrew Adams' "Ninja: The Invisible Assassins") puts him down as turning bandit after a failed assassination attempt. Supposedly, he targeted Oda Nobunaga himself, managing to get into his house and hide in the attic over Nobunaga's bedroom. He tried to poison him by dropping poison down a thread hung from the ceiling over Nobunaga's mouth, but Nobunaga was somehow alerted to the attempt and escaped. In this story, Goemon became a thief after the ninja clans were forcibly broken up.

Other stories claim that Goemon served in the Momochi clan of ninjas and went criminal when he couldn't cut it in legitimate lines of work. The stories generally agree that when he was finally captured, he was boiled alive.

Ninjas were sometimes alleged to have supernatural powers, and Katō Danzō's reputation largely rested on his purported sorcery. Some of his feats, like swallowing a live bull whole in front of 20 people or making an entire tree grow from a seed in minutes, can be chalked up to hyperbole. His manipulation of people through hypnosis is an anecdotal claim. But there is some documented basis for the stories that he could fly, stories that won him the nickname Tobi (Flying) Katō.

Danzō convinced friend and foe alike that he could fly through a simple deception, though when and against whom it was perpetrated vary in the telling. According to one account, described by Joel Levy in "Ninja: The Shadow Warrior," Danzō knew that a house he wanted to break into was prepared for him. As a distraction, he dressed a dummy in his clothes and threw it over the garden wall. The dummy was on a rope, so that Danzō could swing it about. His enemies took it as Danzō himself, flying about in the garden.

Danzō's reputation is supposed to have contributed to his downfall. After capturing a halberd and a servant girl on behalf of the daimyō Uesugi Kenshin, Danzō came to be seen as a threat by his master. He defected to the service of Takeda Shingen, but he fell under suspicion again. This time, his tricks did not avail him; Danzō is said to have died at Shingen's hands.

Ninjas, or at least large and well-organized clans of ninjas, lost their value to Japan's feudal lords in the long and peaceful Edo Period. But the practice of ninjutsu as a martial art endured. Texts on ninjutsu were prepared during this time, and schools in the Iga and Kōga regions handed down skills. Besides those directly related to espionage and murder, these included basic survival skills, map reading, and medicine.

In Japan today, very few claim to be authentic ninja masters. One of them is Jinichi Kawakami, described by the Ninja Museum of Igaryu as "the last living modern ninja" (Kawakami is an honorary director of the museum). He told the BBC in 2012 that his earliest introduction to ninjutsu came at the age of six, though he thought he and his master were only playing games. He was taught stealth, pharmacology, and explosives-making before being given a set of scrolls at age 18 and becoming the 21st head of the Ban family of the Koka clan. Ninjutsu isn't an all-encompassing passion with Kawakami, however; he works as an engineer.

Kawakami has some competition for the claim of last living ninja from Masaaki Hatsumi, who runs the martial arts group Bujinkan. But neither man intends to have anyone follow them as a designated master. So far as Kawakami is concerned, the ninja's time has passed, and there's no sense in carrying it on.