12. Iga And Koga Were Ninja Strongholds
The mountainous regions of Iga and Koga, located in what is now respectively the Mie prefecture and the Shiga prefecture in the modern-day southern part of Honshu, were the central place for ninja activity. The mountains allowed for this area to be decentralized rather than connected to a central daimyo (a form of imperial administration) under the shogunate, so the towns were run by local councils, which were mostly democratic. In this political and geographic landscape, the ninjas were able to rise to power by practicing the arts of stealth, deception, weaponless combat, poison, and use of explosives. They protected the people from the nearby Samurai wars.
However, this means of self-governing and self-defense was anathema to the daimyo, to whom the distinction between rich and poor was an essential means of seeing the world and interacting with it. The warlord Oda Nobunaga, who lived in the sixteenth century, set about to create a united Japan, one state under the shogunate. This movement led to the Iga Revolt when Nobunaga attacked the Iga and Koga clans with a force of 40,000 men. He forced the ninja to engage in open warfare in fields, something that they were not trained to do. The ninja power bases of Iga and Koga were destroyed, and the fighters had to flee to the mountains. However, their abilities were so indispensable that they continued to be hired by nobility and some were even in the service of the shogun.