24. The False Depiction of Ninjas in Popular Culture
Say “ninja”, and you conjure up an image of masked warriors, all in black, scaling building walls and assassinating people all over feudal Japan. In modern popular culture, people think of ninjas as covert killers, using exotic blades, throwing stars, and smoke bombs to carry out assassinations, all while locked in a feud with the more honorable samurai. In reality, those kinds of super cool ninjas never existed. The ones who did exist looked and acted nothing like popular perceptions of what ninjas are supposed to have acted and looked like. Far from having any feud with the samurai, many ninjas were themselves, samurai.
Ninjas did not go around in black outfits as part of a group uniform getup. At least no more than the average Japanese people of the period wore black clothes. What we consider ninjas were simply scouts, spies, and mercenaries, hired by various armies in feudal Japan. To carry out their tasks, they blended into the local population. They did not use throwing stars but did use thrown poisoned darts known as bo shurikens. They did not have a blood feud with samurai. Indeed, there was nothing to prevent a samurai from being a ninja, and quite a few ninjas were actually samurai.
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