The Iga Ninja

                                                           Iga Ninja


Who were the best ninjas of fuedal Japan, that is a question that is not easily answered. Though virtually every clan throughout Japan had its own form of ninjitsu training, there were only a couple whose name and reputations bacame legendary. The shinobi were used as spies, sabatuers, and assasins by the most powerful and wealthy leaders in Japan and virtually every province had some form of its own ninjas so there were no shortages of the elite warriors.

In time there were two schools of ninjitsu that continued to show the excellence of their training. First were the warriors from the clans in the Iga provence. Iga is located in the central area of Japan in a mountainous region. Its location being a basin surrounded by mountains afforded it good protection from outside forces and also provided excellent terrain for the ninjas to train. As their reputation grew the need for them to prove their abilities was not needed. For in fuedal Japan before a ninja was hired for a specific mission he would be required to perform a less critical mission showing that he would be capable of executing and surviving the orginal mission that he would be hired for. But the excellence of their training and the past success of previous Iga ninjas cemented their reputation so much that just stating that you were from Iga gauranteed immediate hire for the primary missions. Now back in the late 1500's the warlord Oda Nobunaga had come to hate and fear the Iga ninjas because they would not bow down to him and perform any mission that he declared. He felt that if they would not bow to him then they should be conquered. In 1579 Oda sent his son and a force of soldiers in to Iga to dominate them, that attack however failed miserably. Two years later in 1581 Oda launched another attack this time though he sent somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 soldiers and attacked from 6 different directions. This attack succeeded as Oda's men slaughtered a large population of this regions inhabitants. He did make one error in that he called a cease fire before everyone was killed and this allowed for some of the remaining ninjas to escape in the surrounding countryside. Though the strength of Iga never returned some believe that the teachings did and this training helped other provinces to improve their ninjas abilities.