8. Ninjas Didn’t Wear Black Catsuits
James Bond, Bruce Lee, and Jackie Chan would all have you believe that ninjas sneak around wearing an all-black catsuit, whose plentiful folds enabled the ninja to hide his or her weaponry and loose-fitting fabric enabled martial arts. However, if you are a spy, the last thing that you want to do is stand out. So if real-life ninjas really wore those outfits, they might cause a note of dread to rise in their opponents’ throats, but they would lose their secrecy and stealth. No, true ninjas often dressed as farmers, merchants, pretty much true to what they would wear to their day jobs. People couldn’t tell who they were, or at least what their alter ego was.
In fact, the whole idea of wearing black in order to sneak around at night is counter-intuitive, as black actually stands out when you are hiding in the shadows. Ninjas who worked at night often wore dark, navy blue. If you go to the ninja museums of places like Iga and Koka, you will see navy outfits, not black. The black catsuit was popularized in Japanese kabuki theatre, where ninjas were depicted as terrifying but easily discernible assassins. The idea, however, has proved captivating to pop culture.