Cultural Note: Ninja (Japan)

So I was thinking, the blog will start to get stupidly boring if I only document my life. I don't want that to happen at all. My plan is to start adding other features into the blog. Here's what;

Anything entitled "My day/Week" Etc - will quite clearly be, well, my day or week.
"Cultural Notes" will be a post about a certain aspect of Asian culture, whether it be Chinese,Japanese, Korean or any other part of Asia that has taken my fancy throughout the week.

If you haven't already guessed, my post today will be about, what I believe to be, one of the greatest things in the world - Ninja.


Here's what I've learnt so far;

There seem to be two predominant theories as to why Ninja's exist. I shall explain both of them in my way (My way usual consists of talking in circles, an overuse of punctuation and a sentence structure that makes no sense, so bare with me)

The first theory I read about is that Ninja were the average working men of Japan. Farmers and such like would train in the art of Ninjutsu to defend their self from unwanted infiltrators. I wasn't so keen on this idea so I did not do much research into it, you're more than welcome to research and educate me in this theory if you would like.

The more widespread theory seems to be that Ninja were the "James Bond" of ancient Japan. Essentially Spies and infiltrators. I liked this idea a lot more, so I'll talk more about it.
It is said that the actual fighting skill of ninja was secondary to stealth. Which should be common sense for a spy, but many of us are under the impression they are mainly fighters.
On saying that, they were taught to fight. As I've already said they studied a Martial Art called Ninjutsu or "Ninpo". This martial arts could have been taken from China and adapted by the first Ninja.

One very interesting thing about ninja (other than everything about ninja) is their clothing. Contrary to our belief Ninja did not wear Black clothing. Which is strange as every ninja film /picture or video game is depicted in a black costume. In actual fact ninja wore blue. The black comes from Old Japanese Theatre productions. Black costume were used against a black curtain background to give the appearance and idea that ninja were very hard to spot and could move around relatively undetected.
So next time you see a Ninja in a black costume, you can either boast of the knowledge you have learned, or thank Japanese theatre houses for providing us with one of the most famous misconceptions of all time.
Although to their credit, it was an ingenious idea.

Of course there is a lot more I could write, but most people will have either stopped or be ready to stop reading. If this post gets enough response I might do a Ninja part 2 at one point.

Still thankyou for reading, and I hope you look forward to a lot more Cultural notes and a lot more posts on this blog.
Please help me spread the word, and follow me on twitter @TurnChapanese
Any questions, ideas or adivce, hit me up on twitter.

Thanks again
Dan

Images on this post are from google.