I admit that actually the history of ninja is just a history of pop culture, but what about traditions like ryuha or schools, such as iga, koka, togakushi, are they all made up history?
To be completely honest, I'm not really sure how to answer that question. Martial arts traditions and lineages are notoriously difficult to assess, given how much basically depends on whether you trust the word of the sensei or not. In the frequent absence of much in the way of documentary evidence, a strictly historical methodology doesn't get you very far, especially as I think almost everyone acknowledges that martial arts schools pretty much always exaggerate their own ancientness and engage in mythmaking about their origins.
There definitely were specific schools of martial arts through the Warring States and on into the Edo period; that point, I don't think, is in dispute. For the most part I tend to stay away from disputes about lineage or who is the "true" grandmaster of whatever style, because I think they're generally a waste of time. An awful lot of internet ink has been spilled, for instance, on trying to prove or disprove Hatsumi Masaaki and Takamatsu Toshitsugu's claims about their lineage. I'm not really interested in those discussions - I don't think the topic is really amenable to evidentiary argument in the first place - and would rather concentrate on the undeniable fact that Hatsumi has a habit of making historical claims that are not well supported by evidence, because that I *can* prove.
For what it's worth, my own understanding is that there *is* some premodern textual evidence that men from Iga and Koka had a reputation for being skilled in spying and other forms of covert warfare; that idea seems to have been there by the early Edo period. Whether that translates to specific schools and lineages is very, very difficult to determine, especially since such knowledge is supposed to have been passed on only in private.
I've noted before that in ninja history it's quite rare for something to be totally made up out of nothing; there usually is at least *some* basis for a lot of claims, even if that basis is fictional, misread, taken out of context, or heavily exaggerated. So I don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that there really was a continuous Iga school of ninjutsu, for instance, - but the problem is that it's damn hard to really prove it.
If there is anything that calls itself "iga-ryu" or "togakushi-ryu" or whatever, I would ask: What does it claim to be a ryuha of? And then, of course, on what grounds...
Another excellent contribution with high educational value and relevance that goes far beyond the boundaries of "ninja studies." The clash between the modern and premodern is rarely emphasized in our context when interpreting Japanese history. The attempt to understand supernatural phenomena in a "modern" way—that is, through rationality and modern science—is also mentioned in Yamada's History of the Ninja in connection with the boom of interest in hypnosis during the Meiji period. In this context, one also encounters the term ninjutsu. In the 1910 book Hypnosis at your will (催眠術自在), there is a chapter on wizardry (senjutsu 仙術) and "shadow magic" (ninjutsu 忍術), where ninjutsu, of course, has nothing to do with martial arts. Even as late as 1917, the Tokyo Society for the Study of Hypnosis published Secret tradition of Ninjutsu and Kiaijutsu (忍術気合術秘伝). It would likely be interesting to observe how rapid and widespread Gingetsu Itō’s influence was in shaping the image of ninjutsu.
Absolutely. We also have to note the existence of 'ninjutsu' films in the 1910s and 1920s, where 'ninjutsu' seems to mean something closer to 'trick photography' or, in a broader sense, blurring the boundaries between film and reality. As Turnbull 2017 points out, the 1924 Buster Keaton film "Sherlock Jr" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Jr.), for instance, was known as "Ninjutsu Kiiton" in its Japanese version, and the film has nothing to do with premodern spies or martial arts either. Its central plot conceit is that the main character is a film projectionist who falls asleep and finds himself in his own film.
To try to tie all this together, I think the thing that unites these earlier definitions of "ninjutsu" - hypnotism, dreams, stage magic, literal magic in literature, trick photography in films - is that they seem to destabilize the idea of a modern scientific objective reality. They all seem to be interested in ways that we might be able to perceive or experience things that appear to be magical or unreal, things that modern science says aren't supposed to be possible. In other words, the thing uniting "ninjutsu" was the idea of altered perception, of making the seemingly impossible appear real.
A lot of people in Japan at this point in time were interested in this sort of thing; in 1909, the same year Gingetsu was writing, the well-known novelist Mori Ōgai published a short story called Masui 魔睡, usually translated as "Anaesthesia," but it's actually about using hypnosis (the kanji literally mean "malevolent sleep") to commit various crimes, and it's interesting (though possibly coincidence) that Gingetsu writers about both criminality and hypnosis in his book.
The take-home point, I suppose, is that "ninjutsu" is a term in flux in the first half of the 20th century, far more than non-academic ninja writers seem to have realized. It's also worth noting that the Tachikawa Bunko Sarutobi Sasuke stories appeared in the middle of all these different ideas about ninjutsu, so I suspect there's some influence there too.
I admit that actually the history of ninja is just a history of pop culture, but what about traditions like ryuha or schools, such as iga, koka, togakushi, are they all made up history?
To be completely honest, I'm not really sure how to answer that question. Martial arts traditions and lineages are notoriously difficult to assess, given how much basically depends on whether you trust the word of the sensei or not. In the frequent absence of much in the way of documentary evidence, a strictly historical methodology doesn't get you very far, especially as I think almost everyone acknowledges that martial arts schools pretty much always exaggerate their own ancientness and engage in mythmaking about their origins.
There definitely were specific schools of martial arts through the Warring States and on into the Edo period; that point, I don't think, is in dispute. For the most part I tend to stay away from disputes about lineage or who is the "true" grandmaster of whatever style, because I think they're generally a waste of time. An awful lot of internet ink has been spilled, for instance, on trying to prove or disprove Hatsumi Masaaki and Takamatsu Toshitsugu's claims about their lineage. I'm not really interested in those discussions - I don't think the topic is really amenable to evidentiary argument in the first place - and would rather concentrate on the undeniable fact that Hatsumi has a habit of making historical claims that are not well supported by evidence, because that I *can* prove.
For what it's worth, my own understanding is that there *is* some premodern textual evidence that men from Iga and Koka had a reputation for being skilled in spying and other forms of covert warfare; that idea seems to have been there by the early Edo period. Whether that translates to specific schools and lineages is very, very difficult to determine, especially since such knowledge is supposed to have been passed on only in private.
I've noted before that in ninja history it's quite rare for something to be totally made up out of nothing; there usually is at least *some* basis for a lot of claims, even if that basis is fictional, misread, taken out of context, or heavily exaggerated. So I don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that there really was a continuous Iga school of ninjutsu, for instance, - but the problem is that it's damn hard to really prove it.
If there is anything that calls itself "iga-ryu" or "togakushi-ryu" or whatever, I would ask: What does it claim to be a ryuha of? And then, of course, on what grounds...
Another excellent contribution with high educational value and relevance that goes far beyond the boundaries of "ninja studies." The clash between the modern and premodern is rarely emphasized in our context when interpreting Japanese history. The attempt to understand supernatural phenomena in a "modern" way—that is, through rationality and modern science—is also mentioned in Yamada's History of the Ninja in connection with the boom of interest in hypnosis during the Meiji period. In this context, one also encounters the term ninjutsu. In the 1910 book Hypnosis at your will (催眠術自在), there is a chapter on wizardry (senjutsu 仙術) and "shadow magic" (ninjutsu 忍術), where ninjutsu, of course, has nothing to do with martial arts. Even as late as 1917, the Tokyo Society for the Study of Hypnosis published Secret tradition of Ninjutsu and Kiaijutsu (忍術気合術秘伝). It would likely be interesting to observe how rapid and widespread Gingetsu Itō’s influence was in shaping the image of ninjutsu.
Absolutely. We also have to note the existence of 'ninjutsu' films in the 1910s and 1920s, where 'ninjutsu' seems to mean something closer to 'trick photography' or, in a broader sense, blurring the boundaries between film and reality. As Turnbull 2017 points out, the 1924 Buster Keaton film "Sherlock Jr" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Jr.), for instance, was known as "Ninjutsu Kiiton" in its Japanese version, and the film has nothing to do with premodern spies or martial arts either. Its central plot conceit is that the main character is a film projectionist who falls asleep and finds himself in his own film.
To try to tie all this together, I think the thing that unites these earlier definitions of "ninjutsu" - hypnotism, dreams, stage magic, literal magic in literature, trick photography in films - is that they seem to destabilize the idea of a modern scientific objective reality. They all seem to be interested in ways that we might be able to perceive or experience things that appear to be magical or unreal, things that modern science says aren't supposed to be possible. In other words, the thing uniting "ninjutsu" was the idea of altered perception, of making the seemingly impossible appear real.
A lot of people in Japan at this point in time were interested in this sort of thing; in 1909, the same year Gingetsu was writing, the well-known novelist Mori Ōgai published a short story called Masui 魔睡, usually translated as "Anaesthesia," but it's actually about using hypnosis (the kanji literally mean "malevolent sleep") to commit various crimes, and it's interesting (though possibly coincidence) that Gingetsu writers about both criminality and hypnosis in his book.
The take-home point, I suppose, is that "ninjutsu" is a term in flux in the first half of the 20th century, far more than non-academic ninja writers seem to have realized. It's also worth noting that the Tachikawa Bunko Sarutobi Sasuke stories appeared in the middle of all these different ideas about ninjutsu, so I suspect there's some influence there too.
Great read.