4. Samurai Sometimes Doubled As Ninjas
One of the people to formalize the art of ninjutsu was himself a disgraced samurai. Daisuke had been forced to surrender his lands and title as a samurai when he found himself on the losing side of a feudal battle. Usually, a disgraced samurai would commit suicide, a practice called seppuku, but Daisuke instead wandered through the mountainous countryside until he met the Chinese warrior-monk Kain Doshi. Daisuke renounced his samurai ways and worked with Kain Doshi to develop a new, comprehensive style of guerrilla warfare that would become known as ninjutsu.
That said, during the shogunate, the samurai were of the ruling class. Though bound by a code of honor called Bushido, similar to the European knight’s code of chivalry, samurai were often lazy drunkards who were only dependable for collecting taxes from their subjects. They couldn’t always be relied upon to win open battles, so they often hired ninjas, as did their opponents. They would serve as spies and assassins, causing the samurai to both disgrace them and fear them. However, if samurai were forced to commit suicide because their honor was disgraced, they would often choose to become a stealthy ninja instead.