@fudgepie1

2 years ago

Your version of who the "ninja" actually were and what they actually did is remarkably similar to what I heard from Grandmaster Shoto Tanemura nearly 30 years ago. He is the ancestral head of the Tanemura clan and also said that mostly the shinobi were samurai. The specialised weapons were generally just common agricultural or carpentry tools or other items which field operatives would have had available to them in an emergency. The fundamental weapons system was the same as the samurai which varied from region to region depending on terrain, predominant style of armor, whether or not they were expected to fight in massed ranks etc. The unarmed combat system of Ninpo Taijutsu was introduced to Japan from China , was not unique to the so called "Ninja" and was used by various Samurai clans as well depending on how and where they lived and predominantly fought. For example most systems of Ju Jutsu developed around the necessity to be able to fight in crowded areas and limited space which restricted movements while wearing armor but Taijutsu was favored in environments such as steep unstable terrain or ships where heavy armor was a liability and greater reliance was placed on evasion and maneuverability. You are incorrect in the assumption that the Japanese have only started seriously translating the ancient scrolls. Professor Roy Ron of the Tokyo University's history department has been working on them for many years together with Kotoro Tanemura. Some of the challenges are that there are a lot of scrolls, which are not readily available to foreign researchers and many of which are written in dialects that nobody speaks anymore.

250 |