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13. One of the ninja’s 81 mystic hand positions.

In the battle of Tensho Iga no Ran in 1579, Nobunaga’s samurai troops under the command of Katsuyori were soundly defeated by ninja of Iga led by Sandayu Momochi. Infuriated, Nobunaga retaliated by himself leading a massive invasion of Iga in 1581. This time, outnumbered by more than ten to one, the men, women, and children of Iga were slaughtered by their enemies. The ninja, the legendary invisible ones, had been crushed by the brute force they so despised.

A few ninja survived, to scatter and go into even deeper hiding than before. Families like the Tarao, Hattori, Togakure, and Momochi took their remaining members and withdrew to regroup in new mountain retreats. The training of ninja slowly began again, and a new life unfolded for the outlaw families.

With the 1582 murder of Nobunaga in Honnoji, his ally Ieyasu Tokugawa had to move safely from Sakai in the Osaka area to his stronghold of Okazaki Castle near present-day Nagoya, without passing through the dangerous Honnoji territory. The only route left was through the treacherous mountains of Iga and Koga. Ieyasu left his fate in the hands of Iga-ryu ninja Hanzo Hattori. Hanzo successfully organized several ryu in Iga, as well as their one-time rivals in Koga, to afford protection and safe passage to the man who would become shogun in 1603 and whose family would rule Japan for the next two and a half centuries. Some of the ninja families were happy to assist Ieyasu, simply because of their joy at the death of Nobunaga. Some families saw it as a chance to secure a more stable future for themselves. Some remained silently apart from the action, keeping warily to themselves and neither attacking nor assisting.