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It is said that some time in the years of the Temmon Era there was a certain man—an assassin—who was more feared than any samurai or warlord before him. Legends tell of this man, who spent his entire life in darkness, and who could end the life of any man in Japan. So that he would be completely comfortable at night, it was said, when he came to kill his target, for as long as anyone had known of his existence he was never once seen in the light. Those few messengers who could say they had ever been there said that in his house there were no windows, and there were no lanterns anywhere.

Technorati Tags: Histories, Japan, Ninja, Fictives

They recounted how they would be allowed inside and guided silently to this assassin’s chambers by a servant, who himself seemed to have no problem navigating the silent lacquered halls. They would present their papers to a figure—a figure, it was said, whom one could sense by a silence even deeper and more sinister than that of the house in which he lay, like a hole pressed into the darkness, and would receive them back, sometimes in moments, sometimes after some interminable period, during which the sound of the turning of pages was like the roar of the ocean, the assassin’s seal pressed on them in contract. It does not survive to us what was on his seal.

The result of such a life was that this man was the best killer in all of Japan; he could see in the dark as normal men see in the day, and his movements made no sound. As most people live their noisy lives in the light, he assumed the aspects of his environment completely. When it came time to kill some powerful daimyo, he needed merely to leave his home and go to that of his target; normal men, clumsy and blind, posed no barrier to him.

As these things so often turn out, among certain circles there arose something of a cult of veneration for this legend. People swore that he was supernatural; if not a demon in human skin, then a man whose sacrifice was so great—he relinquished all pleasures and human company, following in every moment of his life a solitary and ascetic path towards the saintly goal of true and unsurpassed excellence—that his piety was immeasurable and so he had gained mystic and magical powers. Nobody can say what is true about how he lived; if he did have servants, they never revealed themselves to the world, and if he did keep a group of girls for his personal enjoyment, similarly nocturnal and every one mute, as it was sometimes alleged, nobody could prove their existence.

One story that is told, and which is universally held to be without question true, is that of the assassin’s murder of the daimyo Imagawa Ujiteru. This daimyo was a man of particular power and prestige; he kept himself in an impregnable fortress staffed by 5,000 personal soldiers, and had many more armies upon which to call if he needed. It happened then that the killer made known through certain channels, to those who would know, his precise intentions. He whom nobody knew and whose victims were dispatched before they ever even suspected that he sought them willingly tossed away his advantage of surprise. When Ujiteru was told to whom he had been assigned, he withdrew immediately to his fortress with his 5,000 personal soldiers. Nevertheless, the daimyo knew that these were not to be considered for a moment by the legendary ninja. Ujiteru was a shrewd man and understood that as long as night fell after day, no number of guards or walls could prevent the demon from entering his home and chopping off his head. That was the key, then: if he could prevent night from coming, then his would-be killer would similarly held at bay. The man whose whole life was spent in darkness would be disoriented, blind, vulnerable in the light. If he were exposed to it the ninja would be dazzled, and then would be cut down in an instant. The daimyo immediately ordered that torches be placed in every room of his castle, and kept burning at all times. He assigned soldiers to every torch, in shifts, to see that they never for a moment went out—especially in his bedchambers. For months, there was never a moment of darkness in Iwata, and the legendary assassin was nowhere to be seen.

However, the health of the fearful general began to suffer from these unnatural conditions. His sleeping worsened, and though after a little while he seemed to improve at sleeping in fully-lit chambers, only a little while after that the constant brightness began to wear on his nerves. His sleep became lest restful, and his eyes constantly ached. His mind, afforded no even momentary cease of stimulus, became unfocused; his obsession with his unseen attacker, who, he was sure, lurked at the very edge of the darkness beyond the castle, always, began to deepen. He became afraid that in the moments that his eyes blinked the light might go out, even for half a second, and that in that half a second the demon would cut off his head and that would be that. He became obsessed with keeping his eyes open for as long as he could, and some say—though certain skeptical parties insist this is a later apocryphal addition—that by the end the Ujiteru had had his eyelids sewn open, in order that he might never falter in his vigilance. It was not long before the daimyo ceased to sleep, and ceased after to speak (so he could hear any footsteps).

It is of course unknown what the assassin of legend was doing while these events unfolded in the castle Iwata. It is possible that he simply was biding his time, dispatching other targets, with one eye always on Ujiteru. It is possible also that this drama had gone on for so long because the ninja was in fact dead, or retired—or perhaps he had never existed in the first place. All that is known for sure is that the Imagawa Ujiteru was killed in his fortress by his personal guards, decapitated and done away with soon after his descent into madness and fear was complete—and that the lights of Iwata were then put out.

Takeru Eiji, Stories of Japan