Ninja Equipment

The spies and assassins of medieval Japan ninjas would strike from out of nowhere and then disappear just as suddenly leaving on the corpses of their enemies. There success was in part thanks to their ninja equipment. While the samurai lived with on the ninja worked out of sight doing all the dirty jobs that had to be done. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the ninja but what is known is that they were able to hide among the people and often employed disguises. If that failed they would use a more stealthy attire that included a jacket, trousers, gauntlets, and tabi boots that had a thick rubber soul to reduce noise. Historians are split whether or not ninja's actually wore the black uniform, but at the very least they probably had camouflaged kimonos or gi's to help them blend in with the terrain.

While a samurai projected strength and would readily meet an attacker a ninja would take great pains to avoid anyone, but their target. They were the first to experiment with explosive as a means to distract guards, and they often carried tools to help them break in to a fortress. For wall climbing a ninja would attach climbing spikes to his tabi boots and put on climbing claws called either tekagi or shuko and scale the wall. A kawanga which was a grappling hook with either a rope or rope ladder attached would also be used for climbing. If a ninja was chased, they would leave behind sharp metal spikes called tetsubishi or caltrops to slow down pursers, and they had a survival kit already prepared incase they had to good into hiding in the wilderness.

All of the ninja's equipment was practical and deadly like the Manriki-Gursari which was a chain with weights on each end that could be easily hidden and was excellent for striking at and entangling attackers. Kusari-Gama attached the Manriki-Gursari to a farmer's scythe so the chain would entangle an attacker's weapon allow the ninja to strike with the scythe. Another valuable piece of equipment was the ninja's three-pronged dagger that wasn't sharp, but could block a sword strike. The ninja also learned the equipment of their enemies and many mastered the weapons of the samurai and weapons associated with Karate in addition to their own. Espionage has never had warriors as feared as the ninja of Japan.

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