The popular image of the black-clad ninja likely originated from kabuki theater, in which ninja characters dressed as stagehands to take the audience by surprise. Real ninjas usually disguised themselves as civilians.
Discover the viral sensation spreading across the internet. Check out the community’s top reactions below.
Top Reddit Reactions
“alan moore tells a story about how he was going to write a ninja comic, but when he researched it, being a ninja was 90% sitting waiting under a poop hole with a spear”
“They did occasionally wear outfits like this but they weren’t solid black. They were usually either blue or more earthy colors. As it turns out, without light pollution, solid black isn’t very good for blending in.”
“They were basically like CIA agents from what I understand
A lot of what they did was gather information on enemy territories like how many forces they could muster, layout of towns, who the important people are, where they get their money from, how much food they had, etc.
Also back then dialects/accents varied greatly to the point where sometimes people from different parts of Japan needed translators to communicate lol, so some “ninjas” had to spend a lot of time learning and mimicking dialects/local customs to blend in better
I think occasionally they would have to assassinate people, but most of the “action” they were tasked with was in the form of sabotage
At least that’s what I learned from this one Japanese TV show about it haha”