Locating Iga
With fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, the city of Iga is located in the north of the Kii peninsula, not far from Nara, Japan’s so-called first permanent capital from 710 to 784 CE, then known as Heijδ-kyδ.4 Iga city, in its current form, is a merger of the former towns Ueno, Iga, and Aoyama along with several villages.
It was once a part of Iga province until the feudal lords (damiyo) returned their fiefdoms to the emperor in 1869 and the modern prefectures, such as Mie, were created. Between 2003 and 2005, many municipalities were merged into larger administrative units. Despite Ueno being bigger, the local governments picked Iga as the new city’s name due to its historic significance (this goal was formulated as early as 1990; Iga City, 2003). Iga is linked to two historical figures, Matsuo Bashδ (1644-1694), a famous poet of the Edo period (1603-1868), and Hattori Masanari (1542-1597), better known as Hattori Hanzδ, a samurai (warrior noble) serving Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) and believed to have helped the latter become ruler of a unified Japan. The distinction between noble samurai warriors and dishonorable ninja assassins in the popular imagination emerged centuries after Hattori had fought sneakily and openly for his lord. Still, in the popular imagination, Hattori stands tall as the ideal warrior of the Iga ninja clansReenacting Japan’s Past That Never Was 151 and features in various media, from novels and video games to domestic and international movies, such as Kill Bill (Tarantino, 2003, 2004).Despite such notable figures, Iga is associated with inaka, meaning back-country or simply rural areas, the opposite of central Tokyo. Formerly flourishing economically through agriculture but now with a declining and over-aged farming population, Iga depends on attracting tourists from the center. However, the mountainous seclusion and remote location allowed Iga and nearby Kδka to become the homeland of the ninja in the first place because they were free of feudal control and therefore self-governed (Yamada, 2016, Kindle Loc 153).
Ninja Origins
The predominant ninja guise to be encountered on billboards, advertisements, and train seats around Iga is well known within and outside Japan: dressed in all black, face covered with the exception of the eyes, and holding a shuriken throwing star at the ready.
However, this popular figure shares little similarity with the covert agents of the Warring States era and the following Edo period (mostly active between the 15th and 18th centuries). As a symbol of the contrast between the two stands a display in the Iga-ryu (Iga School) Ninja Museum (see Figure 8.1): a mannequin dressed in black attire
Figure 8.1 Display showing and challenging the expected “traditional” ninja outfit.
Source: © Iga-ryu Ninja Museum.similar to what tourists can borrow and wear during their visit to the city and a plaque explaining the historical inaccuracy of that image right next to it.
Following the explanation plaque—and in line with current scholarship (Kawakami, 2016; Yamada, 2016; Yoshimaru and Yamada, 2017)—actual shinobi wore farmers’ and working clothes to be inconspicuous, which also allowed them to carry various tools, such as a sickle, that could be used as weapons. These clothes were usually dyed indigo, a common color at the time, and less noticeable than all black would be in the night.