From Iga With Love

-- Susan, every other Sunday.

During my research trip to Iga (the setting of my upcoming mystery, Betrayal at Iga), I visited the Iga Ninja House & Museum:

Iga Ninja House & Museum Entrance

Although a single admission ticket covers both, the "ninja house" is a restored 16th century home containing many of the special architectural elements real ninjas (shinobi, in Japanese) designed into their homes as added protection against capture or attack.

Since I couldn't squeeze all of them into the novel, I thought I'd share a few of them here. If nothing else, they prove that in some cases, the truth really is more interesting than fiction.

The entrance to the ninja house is a standard ninja-era door that measures 4' high and about 24" wide. Even short adults must duck to enter, limiting the use of swords or other weapons by anyone attempting to force an entry:

Watch your head, and check your sword.

Inside the house, a number of secret panels lead to passages hidden inside the walls, as well as a number of secret rooms:

Light enough for tiny ninjas to operate.

Additional hidden spaces in the attic offer not only a secret refuge but a place to spy on (and, if necessary, ambush) unwitting visitors:

The symbol on the left is a variant on the Hattori crest - symbol of the long-time leaders of the Iga ninja clans.

Access to this overhead space was located in the closet, where a hidden panel slid away, exposing the space above the ceiling:

Nothing to see here but a harmless shelf and ... oh. Right.

Better still, that harmless-looking shelf just under the access hatch is actually a hidden ladder. It drops to the ground with a quick-release latch on the right-hand side, exposing the steps cut into the upper side of the "shelf" - along with a handle ninjas can use to pull the stairs back into place before concealing themselves in the roof:

That shelf isn't quite so harmless after all...

Bolt hole with quick-release latch ... for when you REALLY gotta go...

Every corner seems to have a hiding place, a secret storage rack, or a bolt-hole to the outside of the house -- the one above (the small, brown wooden square in the far corner) is spring-loaded, allowing a practiced ninja to exit the house completely without a sound in under three seconds.

(Note: the photo above is the one I tried to shoot as our tour guide exited the house through the hole. She told us to "get ready" - and was already gone by the time my shutter snapped. It really is that fast.)

Not every ninja home necessarily utilized all of these special features. People chose the ones they needed (or could afford the time and lumber to build) and omitted the ones they didn't think they needed. Eventually, some of these features even found their way into non-ninja homes and castles, generally where ninjas were hired to help protect the family from harm.

Many Americans think of ninjas as tricksy assassins in black pajamas, but real ninjas were actually highly trained spies as well as assassins, versed in escape and espionage. Their architecture reinforces this notion--as well as the intelligence and resourcefulness of ninja architects.

It's interesting to consider what life was like in a ninja village - and though I'm glad I live in the twenty-first century, part of me wishes I had a ninja bolt-hole available now and then, myself.

A Visit to the Iga Ryu (and a Ninja Lunch)

-- Susan, every other Sunday.

Last summer, I traveled to Japan to research the next three books in my mystery series. Since my detectives depart from Kyoto at the end of The Ninja's Daughter (which just released this week) I planned for them to spend two books' worth of time in Iga--my ninja detective's birthplace--and spent a delightful time in the home of one of Japan's most famous ninja clan(s), the Iga ryu.

Iga lies in the mountains, roughly east of Kyoto. It was difficult to get to in the 16th century--and not exactly easy, even now.

Iga from the train.

From Kyoto, you take an express train, followed by two local trains, and finally board a ninja train for the final trip to Iga-Ueno.

No, it really is a ninja train.

I kid you not when I say there were five people on the ninja train along with me -- one was my son, two more were Westerners on some kind of ninja-fueled pilgrimage, and the last was an elderly woman who looked confused and bemused by our presence in equal measure.

Upon arrival, we found the station opened into an empty square large enough to hold hundreds of people but filled with exactly five of us . . . the ones who just got off the train.

After a half-mile walk through the town, which remains fairly small and provincial despite its attempt to encourage "ninja visitor" tourism, we reached the hilly park where the town's primary attractions lie.

First, we visited the Iga Ninja Museum:

Iga Ninja Museum.

Learned about the secret passages often built into ninja architecture:

Even tiny ninja disappear in seconds!

And toured an astounding display of genuine ninja weapons:

Shuriken (aka ninja stars) actually came in many shapes.

And artifacts:

16th century lockpicks.

We strolled up the hill to Iga Castle--which didn't exist at the time of my novels, but which I decided to use as the location of another important building in my novels--the home of Hattori Hanzo, the historical head of the Iga ninja clans. (He's real, and since I couldn't figure out where his house was really built, why not use the best location in all of Iga?)

One wing of Iga castle

Unrelated historical note: Iga castle's mascot is a tiger. I have no idea why.

Iga castle tiger loves you.

The castle itself is another museum, filled with samurai artifacts. Many of these also date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, providing even more details for upcoming novels...

How could I not use this in a novel?

...  though some were too improbable even for fiction:

My son and I call this helmet the "puddle jumper." Someone actually wore it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, although it passed too quickly for my liking. After several hours of research, my son and I decided to stop for late lunch/early dinner . . . and discovered that we'd arrived on a day when almost everything in the town was closed. We couldn't find a single restaurant open.

Considering that the return trip to Kyoto would take almost 3 hours, and that we'd seen no sign of a restaurant on the way in that morning (almost the entire trip consisted of mountains, forest, and rice paddies...beautiful on a stomach full of breakfast, but far less so for a tired and hungry traveler) it wasn't the happiest moment of our trip.

We started back to the train station--trying to put a decent face on the prospect of a 3-hour journey back to Kyoto with empty bellies and tired feet--and discovered the formerly empty square was completely filled with people--and food stalls selling every conceivable local specialty. Somehow, we had stumbled onto a local food-based festival (perhaps the reason all the stores were closed).

I have no clue what happened to the other Western people who arrived on the train with us that morning, but my son and I were the only non-Japanese people at the party, and everyone else seemed both surprised and delighted to see us there. Many of the merchants brought us samples, and they took enormous, visible delight in watching us eat their food.

ALMOST as much delight as we had eating it.

The street fair ended about an hour after we arrived, and we hopped the last train back toward Kyoto with full bellies and happy hearts.

The view from Iga castle.

It didn't occur to me until much later that not only had we toured the Iga ninjas' ancestral home ... we ended up eating a "ninja lunch" as well. And it was awesome.

Ninja Codes and Colored Rice - the History of Goshikimai

Susan - every other Sunday

During the medieval age, ninjas—(also called shinobi)—were known and feared throughout Japan for their skills as spies and assassins. 

Sneaky, sneaky.

Most people know ninjas only from Hollywood movies, where men in black pajamas appear out of nowhere, throw a shuriken or two, and disappear in a cloud of smoke. In reality, ninjas did far more than assassinate unsuspecting victims (though they did their share of that as well) and they developed a remarkable arsenal of tools to aid them with every aspect of medieval espionage.

All ninjas trained in combat skills, but many were not primarily assassins. Far more often, the shinobi acted as spies and undercover agents, gathering information for their clans or for samurai who hired them to spy on rival warlords. 

No one suspects the man with a basket on his head.

Note: in medieval Japan, a group of itinerant monks (called komuso) who followed the Fuke school of Zen Buddhism did, in fact, wander the roads with baskets on their heads.  The baskets were intended to help them separate themselves from the world--and also made convenient disguises for ninjas hoping to pass on the roads unnoticed.

In order to pass information to other agents, the shinobi developed several systems of passing secret information, known as “dentatsu-jutsu.”

One of these secret methods of communication, known as goshikimai, involved an elaborate code and grains of dyed or colored rice. 

Colored rice in bamboo tubes. Text messaging, medieval style.

Shinobi (or their female counterparts, called kunoichi) dyed or painted grains of rice in five different colors: purple, black, red, yellow, and blue. 

Different combinations of colored grains represented the various phonetic sounds of the Japanese language. When combined, the sounds formed words and messages which other ninja spies could understand.

Memorize this and you're ready to go.

The colored rice was left by roadsides or in other pre-arranged locations--generally outside, where colored rice was less likely to draw attention (though, between you and me, I'm not sure bright red rice would ever fail to draw a glance). 

Birds and animals left the rice alone because the dye, which was also water-resistant, was designed to taste unpleasant. Even so, rice breaks down quickly in Japan's humid climate, making goshikimai an effective short-term method of secret communication. Once received, the messages were normally scattered and left to decompose naturally, under a bush or in a river, leaving no trace of the message and no evidence for the recipient to carry away from the scene.

I haven’t yet had the chance to use goshikimai in my novels, but it has a scheduled appearance in an upcoming story. Frankly, it's just too cool to leave out. 

So tell me...what's the coolest ancient or medieval spy tool in your arsenal of knowledge?

Smoke Bombs and Ninja Stars

-- Susan, every other Sunday

For many people, talk of “ninjas” inspires visions of black-clad supermen who leap from rooftops to silence enemies with a single stroke of a sword or the swish and thump of a flying metal star. 

In truth, real ninjas—(shinobi, in Japanese)—were master spies as well as assassins, and employed a wide variety of weapons and tactics. Many, if not most shinobi (and their female counterparts, the kunoichi) operated as undercover spies, instead of assassins, and their clans developed a number of specialized tools to aid in these endeavors.

During the 16^th century, the two most active shinobi clans operated from bases in the mountainous regions of Iga and Koga (sometimes written “Koka”). 

Iga's mountains, as seen from the train.

Today, the little town of Iga is home to a ninja museum that displays a variety of unusual weapons, many originals from the days when shinobi operated throughout Japan. The journey to the museum--a 2.5-hour trip from Kyoto, involving four changes of trains and a brief trip on the "ninja train" into Iga-Ueno station--underscores the area's isolation. It isn't easy to reach even now--let alone when horses or travel on foot was the norm.

A ninja train. (The other one is blue.)

Most people know about shuriken, the “throwing stars” made famous in the Hollywood ninja films. However, real ninjas also used shuriken as fistload weapons for stabbing victims at close range. (In fact, the shuriken's primary use was actually in hand-to-hand combat.) 

Shuriken came in a variety of shapes and forms, from pointed bars to the more familiar star-shaped types we see in films and on TV:

A small selection of the shuriken on display at the Iga museum

Shinobi also studied the manufacture and use of explosives. Bamboo tubes made handy casings; shinobi loaded them with explosive compounds in a variety of sizes, from little firecrackers to incendiary bombs:

Actual ninja firecrackers, made from bamboo and loaded with black powder.

Smoke bombs were also useful, both as distractions and as cover for getaways:

Smoke bombs, wrapped in discarded paper. Recycling, ninja style. 

Shinobi often concealed these, and other, devices in hidden pockets inside their clothing. Medieval Japanese clothing did not usually feature pockets, which made the shin obi’s attire even more unique. Since shinobi often wore disguises in order to pass as merchants, farmers, or samurai, pockets were sewn into these costumes also.

But not all special ninja tools were lethal, or able to fit in a pocket. For missions that required crossing reedy rivers or castle moats, the shinobi developed special wooden shoes called mizugumo, which allowed the wearer to cross over water—assuming he or she had the balancing skills to stay afloat.

All you need to walk on water. In theory, anyway....

 Many of the ninja's unusual tools don't make it into the movies, and thus escape the modern culture's notice--largely because the best devices didn't make for a flashy fight or an explosive getaway. The point wasn't just getting close enough to assassinate or spy on a high powered samurai target.

For ninjas...as for modern spies...the real trick was getting away alive, and preferably unnoticed.

And for that, they needed more than fancy throwing stars and pipe bombs. Fortunately, their arsenals  included a wide variety of subtle weapons, too.