神河当時 - 文化的背景：忍者

昨日の記事の続きです。

The Ninja
Ninja of the Deep Hours Spy game: During the medieval period of Japanese history, starting in the mid-12th Century and peaking with the Sengoku ("Warring States") period (1467-1568) the expansion of conflict across the islands of Japan made clandestine operations, information-gathering, and assassination an indispensable part of warfare. Thus were born the ninja, practitioners of a complex repertoire of artifice, camouflage and killing techniques called ninjutsu.

Ninjas go to school, too: Traditionally, the techniques of ninjutsu were only transmitted by word of mouth to preserve their secrecy. The two main schools of ninjutsu were the Iga school (from modern-day Mie Prefecture) and the Koga school (from modern-day Shiga Prefecture), and sometimes the school names are used as "code" when talking about ninjas, as in "This carnage must have been the work of a Koga." With the coming of relative peace in 1600, the code of ninjutsu was written down in a series of manuals so as not to be lost...thus beginning the countless ninja stories that remain popular to this day both in Japan and overseas.

A letter home: Legend holds that ninja were trained to conceal their own bodies should they be mortally wounded in the line of duty, so as to leave no physical evidence of their existence. In order to keep things straight at headquarters, however, each ninja would carry a special letter identifying them to their school and master. This is all rather dubious, considering that a mortally wounded ninja is going to have a very difficult time passing off the letter to a comrade and then crawling off to die in an out-of-the-way place. I guess that’s why they call it a ’legend.’

Real ninjas don’t eat pizza: ’nuff said.

引用元
TRUTH IN FANTASY Posted in Feature on March 7, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/truth-fantasy-2005-03-07

忍者の解説です。日本史の中世（特に戦国時代）においては戦が多かったため、情報収集や暗殺などが不可欠な要素となっていました。そこで生まれたのが、複雑な術式「忍術」を多数持つ「忍者」だということです。

その他、忍者の学校があること忍術には伊賀流（三重県）と甲賀流（滋賀県）の二大流派があること、忍術の秘伝が書物として残されたことで、国内外で人気のある無数の忍者ものが始まったことが解説されています。

任務中に致命傷を負った場合、自分の証拠を残さないために、自分の体を隠す訓練を受けたという「伝説」も、怪しいとはされながらも紹介されていました。これは初耳でした。

ここで記事は終わりです。忍者が紹介されて、侍が紹介されないのが何とも残念ですが。