Isn't Kamui in the manga of the same name by Shirato Sanpei burakumin?
I believe Ninjitsu would have been "highly illegal" because only samurai were allowed to own swords, and I would imagine in a highly class-restrictive society like Tokugawa Japan, it was probably illegal for non-samurai to learn or practice any special martial arts. (and also most of what they were hired for was for illegal activities of course - assassins, spying, burglary, etc. - unless of course it's on the victor's side ;) )
That's a good catch - you're right that Kamui is identified as a 'hinin.' I don't think that's where Gluck got the idea of ninja being burakumin from, though, because the Kamui-den manga came out in 1964, while Gluck's book was published in 1962. My guess is that they were probably both responding to the prominence of burakumin in early 1960s media, the only difference being that Gluck presented what he was writing as historical fact.
And that's actually a good illustration of my overall point: in the 1930s, it's yay samurai!, so Gingetsu and Seiko argue that ninjutsusha were a regular part of daimyo armies. Then, in the 1960s, it's boo samurai!, so everyone starts claiming that ninja were completely different from samurai, their lower-class mortal enemies. And around the same time, everyone becomes aware of the burakumin as a marginalized group, so it's like, sure, we'll have ninja be burakumin as well. None of this is being driven by new historical evidence or even new interpretations of existing historical evidence; it's all just shifting back and forth with the broader cultural mood in Japan.
The restriction of bearing swords to the warrior class would have been an Edo-period thing (1603 onward), since before that there wasn't a clear legal status of samurai, and just about everyone was armed. That's part of the reason why Hideyoshi enacted his "sword hunt" in the 1580s, to try to disarm the peasants and prevent ikki uprisings of the kind that had given Nobunaga so much trouble. In practice, during the Edo period the sword-bearing thing was also a bit of a gray area; it wasn't totally unheard of for non-samurai to own or occasionally carry a short sword, for instance.
Hatsumi's claims are often vague and difficult to parse, but my sense is that he is claiming that ninjutsu was an illegal "counter" to 'samurai' ways of war for most of its history. Which doesn't really make any sense from an historical point of view, as I've laid out in the posts preceding this. I suppose you could parse Hatsumi's statement to mean that the idea of ninjutsu developed under the Tokugawa Shogunate, which might actually be more defensible, but that's pretty clearly not what Hatsumi claims; he wants to make the case for ninjutsu as unfathomably ancient, stretching back into the far mists of antiquity.
Isn't Kamui in the manga of the same name by Shirato Sanpei burakumin?
I believe Ninjitsu would have been "highly illegal" because only samurai were allowed to own swords, and I would imagine in a highly class-restrictive society like Tokugawa Japan, it was probably illegal for non-samurai to learn or practice any special martial arts. (and also most of what they were hired for was for illegal activities of course - assassins, spying, burglary, etc. - unless of course it's on the victor's side ;) )
That's a good catch - you're right that Kamui is identified as a 'hinin.' I don't think that's where Gluck got the idea of ninja being burakumin from, though, because the Kamui-den manga came out in 1964, while Gluck's book was published in 1962. My guess is that they were probably both responding to the prominence of burakumin in early 1960s media, the only difference being that Gluck presented what he was writing as historical fact.
And that's actually a good illustration of my overall point: in the 1930s, it's yay samurai!, so Gingetsu and Seiko argue that ninjutsusha were a regular part of daimyo armies. Then, in the 1960s, it's boo samurai!, so everyone starts claiming that ninja were completely different from samurai, their lower-class mortal enemies. And around the same time, everyone becomes aware of the burakumin as a marginalized group, so it's like, sure, we'll have ninja be burakumin as well. None of this is being driven by new historical evidence or even new interpretations of existing historical evidence; it's all just shifting back and forth with the broader cultural mood in Japan.
The restriction of bearing swords to the warrior class would have been an Edo-period thing (1603 onward), since before that there wasn't a clear legal status of samurai, and just about everyone was armed. That's part of the reason why Hideyoshi enacted his "sword hunt" in the 1580s, to try to disarm the peasants and prevent ikki uprisings of the kind that had given Nobunaga so much trouble. In practice, during the Edo period the sword-bearing thing was also a bit of a gray area; it wasn't totally unheard of for non-samurai to own or occasionally carry a short sword, for instance.
Hatsumi's claims are often vague and difficult to parse, but my sense is that he is claiming that ninjutsu was an illegal "counter" to 'samurai' ways of war for most of its history. Which doesn't really make any sense from an historical point of view, as I've laid out in the posts preceding this. I suppose you could parse Hatsumi's statement to mean that the idea of ninjutsu developed under the Tokugawa Shogunate, which might actually be more defensible, but that's pretty clearly not what Hatsumi claims; he wants to make the case for ninjutsu as unfathomably ancient, stretching back into the far mists of antiquity.
ah, yeah, i was thinking Hatsumi was talking about the Tokugawa period, not way earlier.
Always a welcome diversion from my increasingly political timeline…
…unless there’s any historical support for ninja vs neo-fascist?
Ninja: the voice of sanity.