(Weapons)
Some ninja styles used the shuko or "hand claws" to fight against a sword or to give deadly hits to their oponents. As well, they used another kind of claws in their feet for more traction, called ashiko.
Introduction:
Since we knew the fascinating character of the ninja every kind of explanation about them was published in the media. If you ask to several people about what they know about the ninjas, most of them will only mention the use of their wide-known weapons: the ninja sword and the ninja stars. But none of them would really know the real characteristics or the usage of those fantastic weapons and neither the real meaning of the ninjas.
Some people used to say that they were part of some non-Christian religion or even satanic followers but it is not true, the tradition is only learn as a martial art and a way of life, it is not intended to force anyone into any religion or philosophy. There was another theory that explains that they were only production of ancient mythology, but this is also false because there are several Japanese historic personalities who are recognized as ninjas.
But the reality is that even today, in the information era, the ninja character is not trully known. There is a certain group of people who think that the ninja tradition has disappeared, lost in time but they are wrong. The traditions and titles earned by the famous characters has been passed from generation to generation until today's days testifying the current existence of modern day ninjas. Those documents are stored in a museum called Iga Ueno and clearly states a chronologic lineage starting in the 12th century and ending on current ninja lider, Masaaki Hatsumi.
But the modern ninjas are not what they used to be, they are no longer used as spies or assassins. The modern ninjas are engineers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, farmers... simple people who venerates the tradition of their way of life. We are martial artist who want to live the "simple meaning" of life, the way of the ninja.
Weapons:
The Togakure Ryu Ninjutsu tradition was created from several antique martial arts and most of them were intended to be used in war. Therefore you will find that most of the weapons used by the ninjutsu practitioners are very harmful. Several weapons used in the antiquity can be appreciated in the pictures included in this page, but it is very important to remember that their armory included several more than the ones pictured here. These pictures are only for you to imagine the destruction potential that these characters had at their reach.
When some people talk about the ninja sword (ninja-to) they mistook it as a straight bladed sword, shorter than the samurai katana but they are wrong. The truth is that most of the ninja survival lied on their skills to disguise themselves as ronin (masterless samurais) which used to freely travel on foot by almost any road in mid-age Japan. Therefore it would be impossible to disguise as ronin if that kind of particular weapon was carried, so the conclusion is that certainly the ninja used samurai swords even when they may have been made of lower quality blades.
There are several kinds of swords and none of them can be exclusively related with the ninja. Actually most of the ninja swords were made by themselves, reason for the lower quality of their blades.
For more information about our weapons and tradition press here.
Some of their weapons were adaptations from working tools like the manriki-gusari, which was used as an auxiliary weapon against swords.
Most of the ninja weapons were spread among the warrior class, but there was a couple of them that was strictly used by them, an example of those are the shuriken, bo-shuriken and hira-shuriken, which are exclusively used by several ninja families.
As previously said, some of their weapons were made from daily work tools, like this one, the bakahatsugama. This is a modern variation of the kusarigama which was designed from a hooked tool used to pull out the fishing nets from the water.
