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That's 20% off your first purchase with Code Short History at LiquidIV. The year is 1332. On Seido island, just off the coast of Honshu, the Japanese mainland. A 13 year old boy is climbing a hill through a misty bamboo forest. His name is Hino Kunimitsu and he's from a noble family that serves the emperor. It is Mei, and the morning air is cool and dry, full of birdsong. The boy passes a shrine and whispers of prayer. He's hoping to see his father today. The man is a samurai warrior and a counselor at the Imperial court. But he fell out of favor and has been imprisoned here on Seido. Soon he is to be executed. Kunomitsu is supposed to be in hiding, but he has traveled to the prison island in secret to say goodbye to his father. Kunomitsu rings the doorbell at the residence of a monk called Honma Saburo. The monk answers, but does not let the boy enter. Instead, he presents him with a white box. Inside are his father's ashes. Kunomitsu is too late. The boy races back to his lodgings, shutting himself into his room. He weeps over his father's remains. But once he is all cried out, his grief turns to anger. How dare that cowardly monk execute a brave samurai. Kunomitsu arranges for his father's ashes to be sent to a Buddhist temple on the mainland. But the boy pretends to be too ill to travel and stays behind in Seido. He has other plans. A few nights later, Kunimitsu returns to the monk's residence in the dark. He picks a lock and sneaks inside. The boy creeps through the corridors on stockinged feet, Moving silently so as not to alert the guards. His anger has settled into a steely determination. With a sharp focus, he wants revenge. He follows a path of lamplight to the master bedroom. Carefully, he slides the door aside. Inside, Saburo the monk, snores. The room is too bright for a stealth attack. But Kunomitsu fears that suddenly blowing out the candle may disturb his victim. So he opens a window. Hundreds of moths stream inside, Flapping around the light until they extinguish the flame without waking the sleeping man. Now that the room is completely dark, Kunimitsu approaches the bed and picks up the monk's own sword. He raises it to strike, but then recalls something his father once told him. It is cowardly to murder a sleeping man. So, with his sword poised and ready, Kunimitsu kicks the monk to wake him. As soon as his terrified victim calls out an alarm, the boy swings the blade at his throat. The boy drops the weapon and flees. He climbs out of the window and crouches in the bushes. But the guards have found his small, bloody footprints and shout as they give chase. Kunimitsu runs down the hill from the residence until his escape route is blocked by a wide moat of turbulent water. Scanning for a means of escape, the boy spots a thick trunk of bamboo. It bends under his weight, then swings him out over the water and across to the other side. He leaps off, and the bamboo springs back into place. As he lands safely on the far shore, the guards arrive. Noisy and disorganized. Kunomitsu looks back for just a moment, laughing at the enraged man, who cannot work out how he managed to cross the water. And then, nimble as a cat, he disappears into the night. The story of Kunemitsu reveals an early example of a new type of espionage. Unlike his father, a sword swinging samurai, this boy uses only wit and wiles to conduct his covert mission. His is a more subtle craft that develops in the coming centuries into the way of the ninja. Japan's masters of spycraft were active for only 200 years in one central region. But their legend expands far beyond the limits of place, time, and even reality. Today, there is much fantasy as history perceived as assassins in black robes. They were rumored to have the ability to walk on water, Control the weather, and turn invisible. The true ninja was closer to a secret agent, A spy whose mission was to gain information, infiltrate the enemy, and survive by stealth and cunning. But how did the ninja originate? How did they move from the shadows of folklore to the spotlight of popular culture? And what did these Ancient masters of secrecy contribute to the spycraft of the 20th century and beyond. I'm John Hopkins from Noiza. This is a short history of the ninja. The ninja emerged in the 15th century, a time of widespread conflict in Japan. The country has long been ruled by emperors of the Yamato clan, who claim to be direct descendants of the Sun Goddess. But the Yamato are puppet rulers. The real power lies in the hands of military dictators called the Shogun, noble families or Buddhist monks. By the middle 1400s, local lords called daimyo also start to establish decentralized kingdoms and add to the complexity of the political environment. Soon their feuding escalates into all out civil unrest between numerous warring factions. It becomes known as the Sengoku era or Warring States period. The instability continues for over a century as various ruling houses wrestle for power. Both shoguns and daimyos rely on the might of samurai warriors who have been an important military force for centuries. John Mann is a historian and author of the book Ninja of Thousand Years of the Shadow Warriors.