Ninja Attack!. Hiroko Yoda

is known of Togakushi Daisuke’s physical appearance, which shouldn’t be particularly surprising for someone born close to eight-and-a-half centuries ago. Originally known as Nishina Daisuke, he was born in the village of Togakushi in present-day Nagano prefecture’s Northern Alps, whose soaring peaks were long used as sacred training grounds by the yamabushi warrior-monks of the Shugendo religion.

      It’s safe to say Daisuke’s upbringing was far from the pampered standards of today’s youth. Under the yamabushi, he learned secret techniques such as bladed weapon throwing and the “flying bird,” an Olympic-worthy method of jumping extreme heights and distances.

      At some point, Daisuke set out from his hometown to serve as a warrior under Minamoto no Yoshinaka, an early shogun of Japan. When his master was felled on the battlefield in 1184 by an arrow to the eye, Daisuke hacked his way through some three thousand enemy troops to escape. Terribly wounded, he managed to make his way to the mountains of Iga, where he was nursed back to health by the local martial artists.

      It was there that he would fuse the Shugendo techniques he studied as a boy with guerilla warfare tactics he gleaned from the Iga inhabitants. His all-new system of deception, survival, and combat is widely considered to be the direct precursor of “modern” ninjutsu. In fact the teachings he left behind, refined by his descendents into a school called the Togakure-Ryu, represent the only ninja arts that are still openly taught today.

      The Moment of Glory

      Daisuke’s early interest in unorthodox tactics likely forecast his future as a ninja.

      According to the local history of the Togakushi area, he led a special forces team called the Nishina-to (Team Nishina) during the battle of Kurikara Pass in June of 1183. The pass, part of a major alpine throughway, represented prime strategic ground in a battle playing out between the Heike and Yoshinaka clans for dominance in the region.

      Late one evening, as the Heike forces bivouacked in preparation for another day of battle, Team Nishina launched a surprise assault. Raising a din loud enough to wake the dead, they startled the Heike soldiers into an immediate retreat—and then Daisuke cowed them into submission. Literally. He had hit upon the novel tactic of strapping flaming torches to the horns of a herd of cattle, which he stampeded directly into the terrified mass of Heike soldiers. In their haste to escape the flaming beasts, some ten thousand men tumbled from the narrow confines of the Kurihara Pass to their deaths. Some speculate that he may have gotten the idea from a Chinese story in which cattle with daggers tied to their horns were sent careening across a battlefield. (History is silent as to whether Team Nishina celebrated their victory with hamburgers afterwards.)

      Trivia

      TOOLS OF THE TRADE

      As eventually refined, the Togakure-ryu school of ninjutsu employed a variety of then unique weapons: senban shuriken, distinctive diamond-shaped throwing stars; shuko, spiked bands slipped over palms or feet for climbing like a cat; oni-bi, the use of fireworks and monster masks to terrify opponents before they have a chance to attack; the use of hollow bamboo tubes that doubled as blowgun and snorkel; and a distinctive knife called the kyoketsu shoge: a forked dagger attached to a metal ring via a length of rope originally made of braided horsehair. And the best part? Designed from commonly found materials, all could be carried without arousing the suspicion of the authorities.

      Togakure training

       Rare excerpts from a 1960s-era guide to Togakushi-style ninjutsu from Shonen Magazine.

      In contrast to other martial arts, the Togakure-ryu is a largely defensive style of ninjutsu, focusing on avoiding detection and incapacitating opponents rather than direct assaults. While it utilizes a wide variety of tools and weapons, the heart and soul of the art is the ability to defeat enemies even while totally unarmed. To this effect, it includes a wide variety of physical training such as kosshi-jutsu, strengthening one’s fingers to the point where they can be used to “defeat a raging beast.”

      All of this requires serious endurance. Basic training involves walking some 120 to 160 kilometers a day (80 to 100 miles) at a speed fast enough to keep a straw rain-hat pressed to one’s chest, wind-sprints in high wooden geta clogs across frozen lakes, and long jogs with buckets of water slung over one’s shoulders.

      TOMOE GOZEN

       A match for any man on the battlefield: Tomoe Gozen

      NINJA RIVALS

      1184 A.D.

      Name: TOMOE GOZEN

      巴御前

      Birth/Death: 1157?-1247?

      Occupation: Taisho (Military Commander)

      Cause of Death: Unknown

      Gender: Female

      A.K.A.: Lady Tomoe

      伴絵 (alternate kanji for "Tomoe")

      鞆絵 (alternate kanji for "Tomoe")

      Known Associates: Minamoto no Yoshinaka

      Preferred Technique: Decapitation

      Hobbies: Horseback riding

      Clan Affiliation: Minamoto

      Existence: Confirmed

      The Woman

      A lone female face amid a millennium of testosterone-fueled warriors, it is tempting to compare Tomoe Gozen to another fighting femme from times of old: Joan of Arc. But the comparison ends with the swords and armor, for unlike Joan, Tomoe wasn’t a warrior of God. She was a warrior of love.

      The thousand-year-old Tale of the Heike describes her thus:

      Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot.

      Tomoe wasn’t a ninja in any sense of the word. She was, if anything, a samurai. But her bravery on the battlefield undoubtedly served as an inspiration to generations of women who found themselves having to engage in battle, including female ninja. In fact, she may well have crossed paths with at least one proto-ninja of sorts: Togakushi Daisuke. Tomoe was one of the commanders of the legendary battle of Kurikara Pass in 1183, in which Daisuke secured victory for the Minamoto by stampeding flaming cattle directly into the midst of enemy Heike forces. While it is unlikely that he was under her direct command, word of Daisuke’s innovative strategy undoubtedly spread through the ranks back to her.

      The Moment of Glory

      The battle of Awazu, January 21, 1184. Tomoe is twenty-seven. Sheathed in samurai armor, she sits astride her steed surveying the carnage of the just-concluded battle. Does a rivulet of the blood of fallen enemies mingling on her tachi blade drop upon the trampled grass below?

      She turns to face her lover, her confidant, her superior officer: General Minamoto no Yoshinaka. Officially, she was but another of his (ahem) “consorts.” But she was no stay-at-home concubine. Tomoe was an ass-kicker to rival any Amazon out of ancient Greece. That this manly man in an age of manly men deigned to ride into battle alongside someone with two X chromosomes is a testament to the respect in which she was held. A beast on the battlefield, her beauty was equally legendary; even in crimson-spattered armor, with an elaborate helm hiding her silken tresses, Tomoe must have been a sight to behold.

       Artist Yoshitoshi’s take on Tomoe, from his 1875 “Mirror of Ladies Past and Present” series.

      But