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Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Answer the door on Halloween.

And no matter what else is going on in pop culture, every fifth kid or so will be dressed

as some iteration of a ninja. There's just something about the legend of these silent,

secretive assassins that captures our imagination, like pirates or Robin Hood. But just like those

other legendary figures, our image of these stealthy Japanese warriors

is based largely on nuggets of historical truth buried under mountains of myth.

However, there is a research center devoted to teasing out those nuggets of truth.

In 2017, Mie University in Iga, Japan, established the world's

first international Ninja Research Center. The center is located about 40 miles or 64 kilometers

southwest of Kyoto, where, as of the 1500s, the first and most famous ninja school may have existed. The Research Center houses

not only historical documents related to the ninja, but also hundreds of novels, movies,

and cartoons that have helped forge the modern image of the black-clad assassin. Before the article

this episode is based on, How Stuff Work spoke with Stephen Turnbull,

a historian of Japanese military history who gave the inaugural lecture at the opening of the

research center in Ega. He's written more than 75 books on samurai and Japanese warfare,

including The Ninja, Unmasking the Myth. He explained that everything we associate with the character of the ninja, the black costume, the weapons, the spycraft, and secrecy, is all based on historical truth.

He said, what's made up is to give it to the ninja.

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