Ok for the Nth time---there is no ninjitsu. Get it through your heads people, it is a fabrication of storytellers during the Tokugawa era in Japan for mass entertainment. There is no mention of ninja's prior to this in Japan. Ninja Ryu's date all the way back to, ummm, right after WWII when some Japanese got the bright idea of selling American's this Japanese folklore wrapped up in black pajamas (just like the Lee brothers got the bright idea of repackaging Hapkido with some weapons, psychic powers, Easter medicine and hiding in the woods as Hwarang Do).
First off, a bushi would have done whatever it is that ninja's are supposed to do. That is, some daimyo isn't going to employ some dude who lives in the mountains and wears black pajamas to sneak around the enemy camp. He's going to send one of his better samurai to do it. Not surprisingly we find "ninjitsu" elements in the authentic Bujitsu schools in Japan (Katori Shinto Ryu for instance). Espionage and assasination were not separate from the arts the bushi practiced. Secondly, ninjitsu, like the traditional Japanese Bujitsu, would be a weapons art. Ninja, if they existed, would have to fight samurai, who were always armed with multiple weapons. The elaboration of unarmed arts in Japan occurred during the Tokugawa (peacetime) period, not during the period of warfare that preceeded it. According to the fictional accounts the ninja were destroyed by then anyway. So unarmed ninja techniques are totally bogus. If there were an authentic ninjitsu it'd look more like Kali than bad karate/judo (which it resembles now). Thirdly, the guys that lived in the mountains and fought the samurai back in the day were known as the yamabushi ("mountain warriors", though some, paradoxically, lived in monasteries on the plains). This is where the ninja mythology comes from. Yamabushi were basically like Shaolin monks--e.g. Buddhists who sat around training to fight all day long. They actually did fight the samurai on a regular basis. They were, however, eventually crushed. To my knowledge, no yamabushi ryu have been passed down to the present. Again, these would have been ARMED arts (you go ahead and try to wrestle a guy in armor with 2 swords, a few daggers, and a spear...right). They didn't run around in black pajamas. If they conducted covert type ops, it was not the focus of their studies. There isn't any big secret to being stealthy. You run around at night and don't make a lot of noise.
Anyway, the fact is, no serious historian of the Japanese martial arts has been able to find a shred of evidence there were any real ninjas or ninjitsu schools. Oh, but they must have burned all the evidence of their existence.
Nope. There were guys employed by warlords in Japan and guys employed by monasteries. They used the same weapons pretty much and fought in pretty much the same ways. There was no secret society of mystical assassins in Japan or Korea or anywhere else. Never happened. So give it up.
Beyond the mere historical facts, there is this to consider as well---ninjitsu is totally untested. By this I mean that even granting it historical legitimacy, it, like all the other Japanese arts, would have de-evolved as it were during the Tokugawa period. Since no one fought for real anymore, the arts became antiquated. Kano discovered this with Jujitsu (and the Gracie's did separately across the ocean). The old Jujitsu styles (developed largely during peacetime and removed from combat for hundreds of years) contained many techniques that wouldn't work against real, resisting opponents. Well, obviously ninjitsu, having never gone through the testing phase that Judo, BJJ and others have gone through, is largely devoid of real world applicability. It hasn't come fresh from the field like Kali or some Silat styles. Even if there were ninjas, no one has used ninjitsu to kill anyone for about 500 years. Kali was probably used to kill someone today, and will be again tomorrow. Its a living art still used in real combat. Ninjitsu isn't.
Beyond all that, all I have to say is that Ninjas are so sweet they make me want to crap my pants.
