User:ZofiaT/sandbox

A Hidden Village (隠れ里, Kakurezato) was a remote settlement in Japan during its Feudal Period. Often characterized by their inaccessibility and ease of defense, tradition holds that these villages were the dwelling place of the Ninja.

An example of the location of one of these villages can be found in Kamakura, Kanagawa near Sasuke Inari Shrine.^[1]

The concept of Kakure Zato or Hidden Village exists all around Japan, and even in legends. Many are told in different concepts. Kakure Zato is told in folktales, and is said to be found in places such as deep in the mountains or end of caves. They are sometimes referred to as Kakuri Yo, meaning afterlife.

Kakure Zato - Ninja

Ninja refers to the people who use skills of stealth and secrecy. They existed from the Asuka period to the end of the Edo period in Japan. Working under the Daimyō or lords, sometimes Independently, they will conduct secret missions like collecting intel and assassinations. During the transition from the Edo to Meiji period, police forces and the military was created in Japan eventually causing the dissolution of Ninjas.

Ninjas were first seen in Japan during the 16th century. It is said that there were roughly more than 49 different styles of Ninjas were created up until the Edo period.

Some Styles include...

Aomori Prefecture (Nakagawa Style)

Yamagata Prefecture (Haguro Style)

Niigata Prefecture (Uesugi, Kaji Style)
Tochigi Prefecture (Fukuchi, Matsumoto Style)
Nagano Prefecture (Akutagawa, Aoki, Togaku, Ito Style)
Yamanashi Prefecture (Koyo, Takeda, Matsuda Style)
Kanagawa Prefecture (Hokujyo Style), Aichi Prefecture (Akiba, Ichizen Style)
Fukui Prefecture (Yoshitsune Style)
Mie Prefecture (Iga Style)
Shiga Prefecture (Koka Style)
Nara Prefecture (Asuka, Kyushu Style)

And many more in Wakayama, Okayama, and Hiroshima prefecture.

Famous Styles

The two most famous styles were the Iga Ninjas (often referred to as the justice) and the Koka/Koga Ninjas (often referred to as the villian). Koka is located in current day Mie prefectureand Iga is located in current day Shiga prefecture. Despite the fact that the two areas are next to each other, the Iga worked with the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Koga worked with the Toyotomi Shogunate. This is why it is said that the two powers discriminated each other.

Iga Style - Kakure Zato

The Kakure Zato for the Iga Ninja is located in Iga Ueno, Mie Prefecture. Roughly 400 years ago, many of the Ninjas from the Iga Style had gathered and created a village, which still remains today. The area is surrounded by large mountains which made the village hard to access by outsiders, and the communication of classified information was possible. Today, a road is named “Ninja-Cho” in the area because it has been said that many Ninjas lived along the road. There are also mansions that were reproduced, duplicating traps and hidden passageways used back in the days by Ninjas.

Many temples and shrines that are in the Iga City today were hidden remote settlements for the Iga Ninjas in the past. Some had to travel large distances, so they would use the temples and shrines as a place to rest, stock up, and even hold rituals.

Tokugawa Temple located in Iga City, Tsuge-Cho, is a temple that was named after the Tokugawa Shogunate. During the Honnoji incident in Kyoto, Tokugawa was able to barely escape with one’s life.

Tokusei Temple

Tokuei Temple located in Iga City, Tsuge-Cho, is a temple that is famous for supporting the Tokugawa Shogun’s escape from Kyoto. During the Honnoji incident in Kyoto, Tokugawa was able to barely escape with one’s life. He was planning to commit suicide at Chionji, but he was convinced to return. His passage to returning back is the “Iga pass through”, where he had to walk through several mountains and forests. The Tokuei Temple was his stopping point midway, where he was able to rest. He appreciated the people of the temple and the Ninjas of Iga, giving them special authority to use his crest. Although the temple was a secret site for the Ninjas, they had supported the Tokugawa shogun during the period of war.

赤目四十八滝(Akame Shijyu Hachi Taki)

赤目四十八滝(Akame Shijyu Hachi Taki) is a waterfall that is located in Nabari, Mie, in the Iga region. The name came from the Fudo Myoo that is said to have come riding on a red eye cow. Fudo Myoo is know to be a very powerful Budda that will destroy anything in his way, and overcome any obstacle that it faces. The area was very well fit for the training for Ninjas, so they has created a Kakure Zato that included a Ninja forest and Ninja training village. A practice has been created for Iga Ninjas to spend their childhood in this area to practice their Ninjutsu (Ninja skills) and weaponary. The Iga Ninjas that had trained in this Kakure Zato performed furious battles with the Oda Shogunate during the warring state period.

Koga Style Kakure Zato

Documents state that the Koka was the birthplace of Ninjas. Koka and Koga are written in the same characters, but Koka refers to the region’s name and Koga refers to the Ninja of Koka. Like many other Kakure Zato, the Koga Ninja village can be found deep in the mountains of Koka city, Shiga prefecture. Also known as the Ninjutsu village, there were many training areas for the practice of Shuriken (blade throwing weapon) and close combat. Back in the day, if you were to disclose yourself, it had the same meaning as death. Many of the houses looked nothing different on the outside, but there were many traps and hidden passageways inside of the houses. Writings and scrolls that dealt with Ninjutsu were hidden, and the Ninjas lived their daily lives as villagers.

The area of Koka is surrounded by mountains. Many training were held in this area, as well as worshipping. The Iwao mountain, like it’s name, was a mountain with large rocks piled on top of it. The top of the mountain was where many of the Koga Ninjas trained. The Handou mountain is said to have a rock that has the power of the Fudo Myoo, and was also a training site for the Ninjas. The mountain is high enough to view so far in the distance, that even the Oda Shogun visited the area secretively.

Folktale

Konjaku Hyakki Shūi

Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (今昔百鬼拾遺, "Supplement to The Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past") is the third book of the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series. Written by Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien, it was published ca. 1781. The series are supernatural fables, a collection of spirits, monsters, and ghosts, which have had a deep effect on subsequent yōkai imagery in Japan.

List of creatures

The three volumes were titled Cloud (雲), Mist (霧), and Rain (雨).

First Volume - Cloud

Shinkirō (蜃気楼, mirage)

Shinkirō (蜃気楼, mirage), also called Kai-yagura (貝櫓) in Japan, is a shen (蜃, clam-monster) that grew into a colossal size, upon which it rises to the surface of the sea and exhales out a mirage of far-off cities. Shen is a transmogrifying dragon or sea monster that is believed to create mirages. This creature has stories where they create mirages of kakure-zato to men who were on the run or in hiding from society.

Shokuin (燭陰)

Shokuin (燭陰) is the spirit of China's Purple Mountain. It is an enormous red cosmic dragon and god that is believed to have a human's face and a snake's body. It can create day by opening its eyes, and night by closing them, and can create seasonal winds by breathing. In Sengaikyō (山海経, Classic of Mountains and Seas), the Classic of the Great Wilderness: North (大荒北経) section mentions a Shoku-ryū (燭龍) that is viewed as the same creature. This creature was thought to be seen in kakure-zato to some people.

Ninmenju (人面樹, human-faced tree)

Ninmenju (人面樹, human-faced tree) is a yōkai that is a tree that grows in secluded mountain backlands, with flowers that resemble human faces. These faces are always laughing, some laugh so hard they fall off their branches, still laughing as they fall. Stories of this Ninmenju are told in many Asian countries, such as the Ginseng fruit tree in China that grows fruit shaped like babies (人参果), and it is believed that only by smelling it you live an extra 360 years, and eating it will add 47,000 years to your life. Some thought that these creatures lived near kakure-zato.

Ningyo (人魚, human fish or mermaid)

Ningyo (人魚, human fish or mermaid) is a sea monster that looks like a combination of a human and a fish. They seemed to have an eerie figure when it came from China, the creature with the beautiful red-haired woman as the upper body is from the early modern era, and until the Middle Ages it seems to just look like the mixture of a human and a fish. The witness of a mermaid was said to be a sign of a major incident happening. It can be a good omen or a bad one, and there are also times when they make predictions. A specific type of this creature supposedly knew the directions to kakure-zato.

Kakurezato (隠里)

Omusubi-kororin is a very famous tale that is often covered in japanese elementary school textbooks. It is a story about an old man dropping a rice ball into a hole, and is led to a Kakure Zato that is ran by mouses.

Plot

Omusubi-kororin is about an old man who cut branches of trees in the mountains everyday. One of those days, he sat on a tree stump to eat his lunch and opened a package of rice balls that his wife made that morning. As he opened his lunch package, one of the rice balls slipped out and rolled down the mountain slope. The old man followed it, but the rice ball had fallen into a hole in the root of a tree. The old man catches a glimpse of the hole, and hears voices coming from inside. The old man searched his surroundings to find something that he could drop into the hole, but accidentally fell into the hole instead. There were many white mouses in the hole, and they gave him a big tsuzu-ra (葛籠) and a small tsuzu-ra to choose from as a thank you for the rice ball. A tsuzu-ra was originally a kind of basket with a lid knitted with vines from Tsurafuji (ツヅラフジ, Sinomenium acutum), but then commonly became more known to be made with bamboo.

The old man chose the small tsuzu-ra and brought it back home to his wife. When he opened it at home, many treasures came out. The old man’s neighbor, after hearing this from him, goes out and forcibly kicks the rice balls so that they go into the hole. He then enters into the hole on his own, and starts shouting for his gift. The mouse asked him to choose one of the two different sized tsuzu-ras, but the greedy old neighbor wanted to take both, so he imitated cat noises to scare the mouses and tried to run while they were frightened. However, the mouses stop him with their biting, and the story ends with the old neighbor surrendering.

Kakure Zato - Ochimusha (落武者)

Ochimusha is a warrior that was defeated and lost their identity as a samurai. Ochimusha was considered as low-class and categorized as a coward because it is known that warriors escaped safely, hid themselves in mountain villages (hidden village) to avoid seppuku.

Heike no Ochudo (平家の落人）

Warriors who have lost in the Genpei War fled to different places and looked for places to live. Most of them were Heike's Ochimusha but because women, children, and elderly were also part of group, it was known as Heike no Ochudo (people who have fallen from Heike).

Location

People (Heike no Ochudo) were located deep in the mountains and on solitary islands and also on remote islands.

Life Style

Although they hid themselves in an isolated area, they sometimes accidently drop plates and other daily products and was found by other people. However, only few of them found out and they used supernatural power (Yokai) in order to stay hidden. Due to this, many believed that Kakure Zato was a sanctioned place.

Famous Heike no Ochudo (平家の落人)

Heike no Ochudo existed all around Japan and here are some famous ones.

Tōhoku Region - it is said that a Kakure Zato (hidden village) where Taira no Sadoyoshi escaped exists.
Kantō Region - Many Kakure Zato did not carryout certain rituals and lived through their own identity.
Chūbu Region - Kaure Zato with fallen samurai (warriors) from Kurikara-toge War lived.
Kinki Region - Many Kakure Zato witnessed the fall of the Taira family.
Chūgoku Region - Kakure Zato with a grave with Heike's leader.
Shikoku Region - Kakure Zato where Emperor Antoku came to escape.
Kyushu Region - Most number of Kakure Zato (about 40 hidden villages).