Ninjas and Clergypersons

 

 I recently read an academic book about ninjas: Ninja no Rekishi by Yuji Yamada (Kadokawa-Sensho, 2016). The author had read ancient documents about them and had analyzed them.

  I assumed ninjas were just specialists in some kind of martial arts. Apparently they also had various responsibilities. Setting fire to the enemy territory was one of them. According to this book, some documents written about ninjas mentioned some rules about setting fires. If you are a ninja, you should not set fire to any holy places, such as temples or shrines. If you didn’t have a choice but to set fire to such a place, you should not harm any clergypersons. You have to warn the clergypersons so that they can escape. You have to promise them that your monarch will build a greater temple or shrine after the war and let the monarch keep that promise. If you don’t follow the rules, it would be disadvantageous to your monarch. If you show respect to holy places and clergypersons, people in the enemy territory could welcome the new monarch after the war.

 These ancient documents could be like textbooks for ninjas. We should doubt that ninjas actually followed the rules, but if they strictly did, they could be smarter than many of us who live a lawless modern world.

Picture by Ayutaro Papa