Ninja (18 page)

But he lived and died in the seventeenth century, when no one needed ninjas anymore, so I think it's fair to ask—

Bash
o
the master

of enigmatic haikus

—a ninja or not?

By the mid-sixteenth century, the ninjas of Iga and K
o
ga found their services in demand across Japan. Thirty-seven areas are known to have employed ninjas from Iga and K
o
ga (as well as training their own). The following are typical examples of many incidents and raids employing mercenary ninjas from the heartland, untypical only in that they were well recorded, providing proof that the ninjas were working for hire, with no inherited loyalty to the lords involved.

In two raids
²
that took place in 1559 and 1561, roughly when Iga's leaders were updating their contract, ninjas operated both for and then against the same commander, scion of that famous family the Rokkaku, whose castle had been seized by the shogun, with ninja help, a century before (see chapter 7).

In the first episode, the Rokkaku clan have been betrayed by a retainer with the name of Dodo, who had seized a castle about forty kilometers north of K
o
ga on the shore of Lake Biwa. Rokkaku Yoshikata, the head of the family, determined to seize it back, but after several days without success he sent for an Iga ninja, Tateoka D
o
shun. Tateoka, much impressed by a diviner who predicted imminent success, arrived with a team of forty-four other ninjas from Iga and four from K
o
ga. Tateoka tricked an entry by stealing a lantern with Dodo's crest on it, copied it several times, and simply led his team through the gate pretending to be Dodo's men. Inside, his men set the castle on fire, Rokkaku attacked, and they won the day.

It happened that the Rokkaku clan were great rivals with their neighbor, Asai Nagamasa. The two families had feuded for three generations. Rokkaku Yoshikata had seized a castle, Fut
o
, also on Lake Biwa, just ten kilometers north of the one retaken from Dodo. In 1561, Asai resolved to take it back. He hired two generals, who in their turn contracted three Iga ninjas to plan a night attack. According to the plan, when the castle was ablaze, the two conventional assaults would follow. It all went horribly wrong, as the senior general, Imai Kenroku, saw with dismay from his hilltop headquarters. There was no night attack from the ninjas, no blazing castle. But Imai ordered—or allowed—his troops to advance anyway. When he complained about the delay to the ninja commander, Wakasa no Kami, Wakasa sent a scathing reply: Why hadn't Imai waited for the signal, which was the castle on fire? Okay it wasn't on fire yet. The ninjas couldn't be expected to explain their every move. They were a law unto themselves, and “a samurai from north of Lake Biwa could not understand ninja tactics.”

All was not lost. The thing to do now was for Imai to tell his troops to withdraw for an hour, allow time for the ninjas to attack and set the castle ablaze, and then Imai could order the conventional assault. If he didn't like it, the ninjas would pack up and go home. Imai agreed—but failed to brief his fellow general, Isono Tamba no Kami. As Imai's men withdrew, they came up against Isono's men, who assumed they were under attack. The result was a classic “friendly fire” incident. One of Isono's samurai, eager to be first into battle, charged Imai, who was facing his own men, presumably trying to restore order, and speared him in the back. Imai's force retaliated. Twenty men died before order was restored. Meanwhile, the ninjas had done their job (though no one recorded how). The castle was at last on fire. Isono, having regained control, refocused his men, followed through on the assault, and retook the castle, snatching victory from the jaws of what might have been a total disaster.

So it was that the Rokkakus regained a castle, thanks to the Iga and K
o
ga ninjas, then lost another, also thanks to ninjas from the same areas.

10

THE END OF THE OLD NINJAS

If the camp is the subject of a night attack or an infiltration by an enemy ninja, you should judge that it is the fault of your own men.

Ninja instructional poem

IN
THE
MID
-
SIXTEENTH
CENTURY
,
WHILE
MUCH
OF
THE
REST
of Japan fought, the ninjas of Iga and K
o
ga were doing very well for themselves. But the longer they proved successful, the greater the challenge for any leader aiming to build a nation. What of the authority of the emperor and of his deputy the shogun if local ninja communes kept on asserting their independence? Nobunaga, fighting his way to national unity, could never tolerate them. One day, the storm would break.

The first hint of trouble came from Iga's neighbor to the east, from the province of Ise, the site of Japan's holiest shrines. So far, this part of Japan—K
o
ga, Iga, Ise—had escaped the violence unleashed by Oda Nobunaga's rise. In the words of Ueda Masaru, the old man who kept a dozen ninja suits of armor in his attic: Iga, with its three hundred or so strong communities, “was like the eye of a typhoon, with winds raging all around the outside, and a still point in the center.” That was about to change, because Ise was controlled by a certain Kitabatake Tomonori, a former governor who had built himself up as a warlord.

Ambitious to extend his mini-empire by taking Iga, he had commissioned a castle in the middle of Iga, on a hill called Maruyama. Such ambitions brought him to the attention of Oda Nobunaga. As part of his campaign to unify Japan, Oda seized two castles in Ise and sent his second son, Nobuo, to become the adopted son of Kitabatake. This was not an offer Kitabatake could refuse, but it was also in effect a takeover. When in 1576 Kitabatake died—murdered, so it was said—Oda Nobuo inherited Ise. Understandably, other Kitabatake family members objected, and revolted. Nobuo crushed the uprising, but the rebels fled into Iga, and appealed for help to one of Oda's greatest opponents, M
o
ri Motonari. To forestall him, Nobuo had to take Iga, so in early 1579 he ordered his troops into the castle at Maruyama, the one left empty and unfinished by his adoptive father. The local Iga commanders saw the danger and took preemptive action. They knew exactly what to do, because their ninja spies were acting as laborers in the castle. They “forced their way into Maruyama, and the keep, the towers, the palace and so on all went up in smoke. They demolished the gates and the walls until nothing remained in any direction” (today a memorial stands on the spot).
¹

When the survivors reported what had happened, Oda Nobuo was so appalled he wanted to attack immediately. Some of his officials advised restraint, reminding him that “from ancient times the honor of the Iga warriors has delighted in a strong army. Because they are not imbued with ordinary motives, they take no notice of death, and are daredevils when they confront enemies. They neither experience failure, nor allow for it, which would be an eternal disgrace.” But the survivors included Nobuo's humiliated commander, Takigawa Sabur
o
hei, much to the dismay of the Iga men: “a mortifying situation,” they said, “and a very sad affair.” Takigawa insisted on instant action, and Nobuo backed him, with disastrous consequences.

Nobuo's three-pronged invasion, with some twelve thousand troops, came in mid-September through the three main passes of Iga's eastern mountains. Oda Nobuo led one column along the main east-west road between Iga Ueno and the coast. “Ten thousand banners fluttered in the autumn breeze, and the sun's rays were reflected off the colours of armour and
sashimono
[the banners attached to the soldiers' backs].” Having camped overnight, Nobuo's troops woke in fog, and pushed on through “the steep and gloomy valley” toward the village of Iseji, right into the arms of the waiting Iga warriors.

They had established strong-points, and fired bows and guns, and taking swords and spears fought shoulder to shoulder. They cornered the enemy and cut them down at the entrance to the rocky valleys. The army of Nobuo were so preoccupied with the attack that they lost direction, and the Iga men, hidden in the western shadows on the mountain, overwhelmed them easily. Then it began to rain, and they could not see the road. The Iga warriors took the opportunity, and aware of the others lurking in the mountain, raised their war-cry. The band of provincial samurai, hearing the signal, quickly gathered from all sides and attacked. The Ise samurai were confused in the gloom and dispersed in all directions. They ran and were cut down in the secluded valley or on the steep rocks. They chased them into the muddy rice fields and surrounded them. . . . The enemy army collapsed. Some killed each other by mistake. Others committed suicide. It is not known how many thousands were killed.

Nobuo's second column, coming through a pass to the south, met the same fate, with one special prize. Riding with the column was the general who had supposedly murdered Kitabatake Tomonori. In the late afternoon he was surrounded by several hundred soldiers and stabbed to death, the victorious Iga men withdrawing into a misty, moonlit night. The third column, too, was ambushed, cut off, and destroyed—in Turnbull's words, “the end of one of the most dramatic triumphs of unconventional warfare over traditional samurai tactics in the whole of Japanese history.”

An end, but also the beginning of something far more destructive for Iga, K
o
ga, and their ninja fighters.

Twice bitten, twice humiliated. Two years later, Oda Nobuo was embarrassed a third time, by his own father. “It was a mistake to go to the boundaries of Iga, and an extreme one,” he said, as terrible as it would be if the sun and moon were to fall to earth. It was unpardonable that Nobuo should have allowed a general to be killed. Obviously, wrote Nobunaga, as if trying to find some mitigating circumstance, Nobuo's “youthful vigour” had led him astray. His error had been not to use ninjas, he went on, urging his son to go back to basics. Remember Sun Zi! “To break into an enemy's province which is skilfully defended inside and out a strategy should be devised in a secret meeting place. It is essential to get to know the weak points in the enemy's rear. When war is established, get
shinobi
[ninjas] or treacherous samurai prepared. This one action alone will gain you a victory.”

He knew what he was talking about. Two “treacherous samurai” from northeast Iga had just presented themselves to him, offering to act as guides should Nobunaga decide on a revenge attack. They suggested a main assault through K
o
ga, because the mountains there were less formidable than elsewhere. Nobunaga's headquarters would be his own castle, Azuchi, on the eastern side of Lake Biwa—a glorious seven-story structure with the top two floors inside a unique octagonal tower (nothing remains of it now except a stone base; it was burned in 1582). It lay just thirty kilometers from Iga's border. He did not intend to repeat his son's mistakes; he would lead the assault from the north, but there would be five other columns driving into Iga from the north, east, and west, avoiding only the impenetrable southern mountains—impenetrable to him, but not so to the ninjas of Iga. And his invasion would muster not 12,000 men but 44,300, almost four times the force led so disastrously by his son. As it happened, when the campaign opened in August 1581, he was struck by some sickness. Sweaty and dizzy, he pulled back to Azuchi to recover.

A month later he was fit enough to rail against Iga's democratic ways, in words that sum up precisely why Iga's culture had been so successful, and (it seems now, with the advantage of hindsight) so charming:

The Iga rebels grow daily more extravagant and presumptuous, exhausting our patience. They make no distinction between high and low, rich and poor, all of whom are part of carrying out this outrageous business. Such behaviour is a mystery to me, for they go so far as to make light of rank, and have no respect for high ranking officials. They practise disobedience, and dishonour both my name and ancient Court and military practices. Because they have rebelled against the government, we find them guilty, and will punish the various families. So let us hurriedly depart for Iga, and bring the punishment to bear.

Iga. This is all to do with Iga. It was Iga that was the focus of Nobuo's ire, Iga that he attacked, Iga that became Oda Nobunaga's target. Why not K
o
ga, which was equally egalitarian, equally without respect for high-ranking officials? Lacking any documentary answer to the question, I put it to the half dozen local historians who formed the K
o
ga Ninjutsu Study Group.

It was clear from Oda's words that there was more to his ruthlessness than a mere desire to avenge the humiliation dealt to his son and the death of a general. Iga's whole way of life was an affront and a challenge. As a future unifier of his nation, he would never tolerate people who refused to allow for large-scale landowners and insisted on the right to govern themselves. That's what they believe in Iga, as I understood it: It was because they were a democracy that he didn't like them. On top of that, they were followers of Tendai Buddhism, and Oda was pro-Christian, so he hated them.

“It's a big lie!” That was the gently spoken Toshinobu, in surprisingly forceful English. He had a rich but long-dormant academic knowledge of the language, which ventured out of hibernation when he wanted to make a point. He hesitated, opted for speed, and went on in Japanese: “There are more Tendai shrines in K
o
ga than in Iga, so it was nothing to do with being Tendai. And actually, Oda didn't hate democracy. The reason he attacked Iga and did not attack K
o
ga was that K
o
ga decided to work with him.”