Narrow Road To The Deep North 35

                   Hattori Hanzo: Why do you need Japanese steel? 
                   The Bride: I have vermin to kill. 
                   Hattori Hanzo: You must have big rats if you need 
                                             Hattori Hanzo's steel. 
                   The Bride: ... Huge.
                                                        Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003) 

Robyn and I were almost at Tokagawa Ieyasu’s story, and his Nikkō shrine. The namesake of the man who saved his life and then helped him become the ruler of united Japan wasn’t a Tarantino character, but he could have been. 
Hattori Hanzo’s life story is fuzzy, which is to be expected since he was a ninja, renowned as a supernatural otherworldly warrior, a master of the art of invisibility and teleportation and psychokinesis and precognition and psychomancy.  In legend, it was said that he could sit behind a hand-held fan, bow, and then suddenly disappear, only to reappear in the next room. He had mastered the art of using a rope to capture an enemy who snuck up behind him as he sat in seiza posture. He could clairvoyantly discern the plans and strength of an enemy army, or make an object explode by cursing it.  Tales of his exploits, dressed in black, flying through the sky, swimming underwater, tunneling beneath the ground, and vanishing into the darkness, are the template for a transcendent culture of ninja mythology. One well-known anecdote about Hanzo and Ieyasu exemplifies the power of his suggestion.
‘Takugawa Ieyasu was fond of the martial arts, and was a sharpshooter, a master swordsman, and an excellent swimmer himself. One day in his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year, when he was living in Mikawa, he grabbed Hanzo Hattori by the scruff of the neck, dragged him to a river, and pulled him underwater. While Hanzo continued to calmly hold his breath, Ieyasu had to break the surface, gasping for air. He crawled ashore, pale and exhausted. 
“How long can a ninja stay underwater?” He asked. 
“One or two days, Lord. However long you request.” Replied Hanzo, who then dived beneath the water. Several hours passed and there was still no sign of him. Ieyasu became worried. He and his retainers began calling Hanzo’s name. Then Hanzo rose to the surface with bursting air bubbles. He was not out of breath, but smiling. He handed Ieyasu something, and the general let out a cry of surprise. It was the short sword the future Shogun had put on, after dressing on shore.
“I was not beneath the water all the time,” Hanzo told his astounded listeners. “After diving beneath the water, I swam ashore, hid behind a rock, and napped. When I was called, I dove underwater and surfaced. I apologize for taking your short sword, Lord, but this is ninjutsu.” leyasu was impressed.’
Hanzo was born in Mikawa in 1542, the son of a retainer of the future shogun Tokugawa leyasu’s grandfather.  As a child he returned to his Hattori family roots in the small inaccessible mountain-ringed Iga basin that had spawned the unconventional fighting strategies, guerrilla tactics, espionage skills, and deceptive trickery known as ninjutsu. For the 100 years from the Ônin War through the Sengoku, from the mid-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries, the region had been unconquered by outside warlords. The mountains discouraged attack, and its inhabitants never tried to expand their dominion beyond them. But there was no shortage of local violence, and each village had a castle behind whose walls arms were stored and plots were hatched.
Despite its isolation, the absorbable technologies of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya, and all the arts necessary for ninjutsu could be acquired within a radius of 45 miles from Iga. An Onmyodo Chinese system of divination had been brought from Kyoto, the village of Yagyu was home to a venerable school of sword technique, and the Hozoin temple in Nara supported a unique spear fighting style. Warriors specializing in demolition, political warfare, and intelligence gathering established over 70 clandestine tactical martial institutes in the surrounding mountains.
In 1550, Hattori Hanzo began his training on Mount Kurama north of Kyoto, at the age of eight; he became a full-fledged ninja four years later. At 16, he fought his first battle for the Oda Clan (a night-time attack on Udo castle), where he earned the nickname, ‘Hanzo the Ghost,’ and, as a master ninja two years after that, became known as Oni no Hanzō ‘Devil Hanzō,’ because of the fearless tactical expertise of his spear fighting. From 1569 to 1572 he laid siege to Kakegawa Castle, engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat as a Tokugawa ninja in the middle of a river at the Battle of Anagawa, and valiantly won, with a night raid, the Battle of Mikatagahara, despite being outnumbered four to one.