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I've heard ninja's first came about when samuri began to abuse the power being a samuri gave them, so a group of people who were formerly peasents, trained and created the ways of the ninja in order to combat these corrupt samuri. Eventually it grew and evolved and they eventually began hiring themselves out as assassins. This is just something I read somewhere so don't quote me on it, unless it turns out to be the truth.

Most of the ninja wepons were modified farming tools anf kitchen utensils, because the common peasants weren't allowed to have wepons and such.

That's what "kunai" are. Gardening tools.

And, yeah, if a ninja is going covert and doesn't want to be seen at all, he'd carry a ninja-ken. If he was making himself visible, but unregnizable (like with a disguise), then he'd visibly show gardening tools or kitchen items. Shuriken are easily concealable either way.

^^ Its cute! In a gothic way XF Gothic can be cute right?

Wiki, Mail Call, and Adam Sessler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja


Ninja is Sino-Japanese compound derived from the two kanji (Japanese characters of Chinese origin) used to write shinobi-no-mono (忍の者), one of the native Japanese words for people who practice ninjutsu (sometimes transliterated as ninjitsu). Ninja and shinobi-no-mono, along with shinobi, another variant, became popular in the post-World War II phonetically with the kanji 志能備, has been traced as far back as Japan's Asuka period, when Prince Shotoku is alleged to have employed one of his retainers as a ninja.

The underlying connotation of shinobi (忍, pronounced nin in Sino-Japanese compounds) is "to do quietly" or "to do so as not to be perceived by others" and—by extension—"to forebear," hence its association with stealth and invisibility. Mono (者, likewise pronounced sha or ja) means "person." The nin of ninjutsu is the same as that in ninja, whereas jutsu (術) means skill or art, so ninjutsu means "the skill of going unperceived" or "the art of stealth"; hence, ninja and shinobi-no-mono (as well as shinobi) may be translated as "one skilled in the art of stealth." Similarly, the pre-war word ninjutsu-zukai means "one who uses the art of remaining unperceived."

The ninja's original use of guerilla tactics against better armed enemy samurai and their eventual use as hired spies does not mean that they were limited to espionage and undercover work, that is simply where their actions most drastically differed from the more accepted tactics of samurai. Their weapons and tactics were partially derived from the need to conceal or defend themselves quickly from Samurai, which can be seen from the similarities between many of their weapons and various sickles and threshing tools used at the time. [1]. Ninja as a group first began to be written about in 15th century feudal Japan as martial organizations predominately in the regions of Iga and Koga of central Japan, though the practice of guerilla warfare and undercover espionage operations goes back much further. At this time the conflicts between the clans of daimyo that controlled small regions of land had established guerilla warfare and assassination as a valuable alternative to frontal assault. Since the samurai code Bushido forbade such tactics as dishonorable, a daimyo could not expect his own troops to perform the tasks required, and thus had to buy or broker the assistance of ninja to perform selective strikes, espionage, assassination, and infiltration of enemy strongholds (Turnbull 2003).

There are a few of people and groups of people regarded as having been potential historical ninja from approximately the same time period.

Stephen K. Hayes, an American recognized as an instructor of ninjutsu by the 34th Grandmaster of Togakure Ryu Ninjutsu, says that the ninja were a "manifestation of a unique set of cultural, economic, religious, and social pressures".

Though typically classified as assassins, many of the ninja were warriors in all senses. In Hayes's book, Mystic Arts of the Ninja, Hattori Hanzo, one of the most legendary ninja, is depicted in armor similar to that of a Samurai. Hayes also says that those who ended up recording the history of the ninja were typically those within positions of power in the military dictatorships, and that students of history should realize that the history of the ninja was kept by observers writing about their activities as seen from the outside.