Ninja

Ninja separates the historical shinobi of Japan from the supernatural figures created by later legend and popular culture. John Man traces the development of covert specialists associated particularly with Iga and Kōga, explaining their use of intelligence, disguise, infiltration, sabotage and survival during the warfare of the Sengoku period. Their work depended less on magical techniques than on local knowledge, careful preparation and the political fragmentation of sixteenth-century Japan.

The unification campaigns of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu reduced the independent military role of ninja communities, but their reputation continued to evolve in manuals, theatre, fiction and film. Man follows that reinvention into the modern age and closes with Hiroo Onoda, whose decades-long survival in the Philippines became a very different expression of secrecy, endurance and absolute commitment.