There’s been a lot of romanticism about the ninja in the west.  Lone assassins who dress in black wearing black masks killing with quick and lethal efficiency impresses the western motif in lone assailants succeeding with skill and weapons on their own against many.  To the Japanese, the ninja was something to be reviled; a boogey-man who was a hired killer, a man or woman of very low status who killed men and women of very high status.  It upset samurai sensibilities that a creature of such common stock could be trained to kill other samurai warriors.  Our modern ideas of the ninja have been clouded by that romanticism to the point that a lot of what we actually know seems to defy understanding.  Take ninja weapons, for instance.  Most such weapons really are more to distract and dissuade attack than to be of use.  The shiruken, or throwing stars, are not particularly reliable, and the weapons they do have were meant to be carried singly, with few back-ups if any, and were surprisingly simple and cheap.  The kama, or sickle, such as this set of Kamas – Set of Two – Unsharpened Steel Blades are actually farm implements used to harvest rice and grain.  Swords were expensive even for ninja, and it was best to go into an operation with something that was both lethal and disposable.  If you lost it, you didn’t feel bad about it.  Such weapons give us a different picture of these mystical warriors as men and women who used their minds more than sheer muscle and exotic weaponry to accomplish their missions, and are a steady reminder that the victor doesn’t always go to the one with the best weapons.