Iga... City of the Ninja

Iga city in Mie prefecture is one of the two towns where ninja's historically trained. The most famous ninja of all time, Hattori Hanzo led the ninjas of Iga.

Hattori Hanzō helped the first ruler of Japan Tokugawa Ieyasu and , when he became Shogun, Ieyasu "employed ninja to guard the Edo Castle, the headquarters of the Shogunate. He settled 200 men from the Iga-ryū in the Yotsuya neighbourhood of Edo (Tokyo). Iga men were employed to guard key gates of the castle and were used as intelligence agents for the Shoguns... Iga Ninjas continued to be employed by the Tokugawa Shoguns until Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruled 1716-1745) dismissed all ninja from intelligence work and replaced them with people from his local Kii Province." - Iga-ryu wiki

I had actually expected it to have been very secret in history, but it seems that the ninja towns were fairly well known.

I was quite excited to visit Iga but this was tempered by the very average reviews on the ninja museum of those who had gone before.

Gate as you enter the city. Various shops had mannequins dressed as ninja in their shop windows.

Ninja-Experience

Our entry ticket

The ninja house. We had an interesting little show as we were shown secret doors and tricks. There was a tunnel under the alter, a sword hidden in the floor etc. It was a small show and well done. Just why all these tricks were needed is a bit confusing though. A secret door to another room is not really going to be much help when there are only two rooms in the house.

Mizugumo (Mud Shoes). The underground museum had a number of quirky tools and weapons on display. My favorite were the special shoes to let you walk through a moat filled with mud. You must have had to strap yourself in.

OK on to the show where we had a demonstration of ninja weapons. It was wonderfully badly acted with over the top fake deaths and a number of jokes (in Japanese)

Throwing stars

he made it look easy, but when others from the crowd tried they had much more trouble.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of ninja weapons.

Sales presentation at the end. We also had a sales pitch for the parks restaurant. It was a funny way to end.

I think that if you are going to be a tourist here, don't expect too much. It is pretty cheesy, but it is a good stop on the way to something else if you are in the car. About an hour of reasonable entertainment.

Basho-Memorial

The other famous thing about Iga is that is was the birthplace of Japan's most famous Haiku poet, Matsuo Basho.

I bought a book of Haiku and quite enjoy them. The poems are small and elegant. I like the idea of just a few words giving such a big picture.

Probably the most famous is

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

or in english -

An old pond!
A frog jumps in
The sound of water

There is not much to the memorial, but it is located right beside the ninja experience. The building is meant to look like Basho wearing a hat and carrying a stick. It did not look like it would add much to our experience so we looked from the outside and went on our way.

Links to other pages on this trip


IgaUeno Ninja	Nara Temples	A night at a temple in Koyasan	More sights in Kyoto

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Iga... City of the Ninja

Ninja-Experience

Basho-Memorial

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