Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, it's Christian segar. When you answer the door on Halloween, usually every fifth kid will be dressed as a ninja. There's just something about the legend of the ninja that captures our popular imagination. But just like those other legendary figures, are image of the stealthy Japanese warriors is based largely on nuggets of historical truth buried under mountains of myth. But we may soon have more clues to the real
origins of the ninja tradition. And that's in part because in July, a Japanese university announced the opening of the world's first inter national ninja research center. That's right MEA University is located about forty miles southwest of Kyoto, where the first and most famous ninja school may have existed in the sixteenth century. The new research center will house not only historical documents related to the ninja, but also hundreds of novels, movies, and cartoons that have helped to
forge the modern image of the black clad assassin. Now Stephen Turnbull, a historian of Japanese military history, gave the inaugural lecture at the opening of the Research Center, and has written more than seventy five books on samurai and Japanese warfare, including the forthcoming The Ninja Unmasking the Myth, which is due in November. He explains that everything we associate with the character of the ninja, the black costume, the weapons, the spycraft, and the secrecy is all based
on historical truth. The biggest challenge in separating ninja truth from myth is a lack of reliable primary sources. What's most remarkable about that handful of documents at the Research Center isn't so much the content pent of the original texts, but how they've been transformed into these legendary tales. The mission of the new center is to trace the path from a few garden variety nighttime attacks in the sixteenth
century to what became a global cultural phenomenon. The birth of the ninja myth starts with those exaggerated shinobi stories of the seventeenth century, spread by members of the Japanese warrior class who were feeling a little under appreciated since widespread fighting in Japan largely ceased by sixteen fifteen. Next were a series of eighteenth century military manuals concerned with spying techniques, which mentioned the importance of operating in disguise.
Around the same time, Japanese artists created some famous woodblock prints of people dressed in black carrying out assassinations. That's where Turnbull believes the idea of the black ninja robe took hold, even though the Prince weren't specifically about ninja
at all, just secretive attacks. The modern ninja legend was sealed by the nineteen sixty two film Shinobi no Mono, which depicted everything we associate with the ninja myth, the black robes and specialized weapons, a strict code of secrecy, almost superhuman martial arts skills, and selfless sacrifice. Today's episode of brain Stuff was written and researched by Dave Ruce, produced by Dylan Fagan, and for more on this and other topics, please visit us at how stuff works dot com.