Free Ninja by John Man

door. The moths swarm in and put out the candle. He carefully draws the sword, kicks the executioner awake, and stabs him twice, ignoring his cries, through the navel and the throat. Then he hides in a bamboo thicket.
    Guards come, see the little footprints, and at once guess who has committed the crime. The boy must still be on the premises, they say, because the moat is deep. They start searching. Kumawaka wonders whether to kill himself; but no—and this is what marks him as more ninja, less traditional samurai—better to live a useful life than die a useless death. “If I can preserve my life in some way, may I not assist the emperor as well, and accomplish my father’s desire of many years?”
    So he climbs a bamboo, which bends until it reaches across the moat, depositing him on the other side. Day dawns. He hides again, this time in a growth of hemp and mugwort, while guards gallop this way and that, hunting him. In the evening he comes out and looks for the harbor, where he intends to take a ferry. Perhaps the spirits were protecting him in reward for his filial resolution (despite the fact that he has not killed his intended victim), for he meets a monk, who carries him on his back to the harbor, summons a boat, and climbs aboard, just in time to evade their pursuers. Thus it was with divine protection that Kumawaka “came forth alive from the crocodile’s mouth.”
    The story is told with no great narrative technique, for we never learn what happens to Homma or whether Kumawaka ever gets to aid the emperor. But it does reveal something about ninja-style acts, though of somewhat dubious morality: Vengeance is a valid motive; any victim will do; opportunities must be seized; escape must be improvised with whatever means are available; better to survive ninja-like to fight again than die a samurai’s death; and if the motive is pure—apparently the intention is more vital than the deed—then luck will be with you.
    Meanwhile, Go-Daigo had fled south from Kyoto with the imperial regalia to the mountains and forests of Yamato Province, where scattered castles—so-called “hilltop” castles, though few were actually on the very top—guarded remote valleys. He holed up in one of them, on Mount Kasagi, while his greatest general, Kusunoki Masashige, and his son, Prince Morinaga, based themselves in other castles. The shogun’s army went in pursuit. The consequences were horribly complicated—castles were taken and Go-Daigo exiled to “Oki Island,” as most sources claim. In fact, Oki is a group of four islands, none of which is called Oki, fifty kilometers off the north coast, but never mind the details, because he escaped, hiding under seaweed in a fishing boat; he returned to Kyoto, made a total mess of governing for four years, and fled again to Yamato. The Kamakura bakufu (shogunate) fell, leaving power in the hands of the incoming Ashikaga; Go-Daigo set up a rival Southern Court in Yoshino, a division that would last, with almost continuous warfare between Northern and Southern Courts, rebel versus loyalist, shogun versus emperor, for another sixty years.
    Fortunately, we do not need to know much about the war as a whole. We are interested in the opening actions against the hilltop castles, because these assaults, sieges, and defenses demanded new and unconventional tactics from both attackers and defenders. The way Kusunoki, in particular, established his bases and fought held lessons for anyone fighting superior forces in similar landscapes, which is precisely what the ninjas were doing as they developed their communities and their techniques in neighboring regions.
    In this world of steep forests, rocky outcrops, and precipitous ravines, set-piece battles were impossible, and cavalry useless. Both sides had to use other means. Kusunoki, later to acquire a reputation as the epitome of loyalty, was a noted guerrilla fighter, so skilled in covert