Question: what was the first ninja called???

Michael Cook answered on 2 Jul 2012:

Interesting! I like the idea of ninjas, but I didn’t know this answer. I went and did a bit of quick reading.

The ninja were most active from the 15th Century onwards, during a period of Japanese history known as Sengoku – a huge period of war, changing leaders, and lots of spying! That’s what ninjas were really used for: sneaking around, spying on things and occasionally assassinating people.

When I looked up the origins, though, it apparently goes back to the 6th Century or even before – over 1400 years ago! But because ninja have become so popular in culture today (both in Japan and here) it’s apparently quite hard to tell fact from fiction. I’m afraid I couldn’t find out for certain who the first recorded ninja really was.