Hattori Hanzo: The Medieval Demon Samurai

Matt Lewis presents a special episode from his podcast Echoes of History on the medieval 'Demon' Samurai. In the world of Assassin's Creed Shadows, the legendary Hattori Hanzo embodies both samurai and shinobi warriors, and earned himself the nickname "The Demon". How did Hattori Hanzo reach such legendary status? How were his loyalties tested as both samurai and shinobi? And what does his story tell us about late Sengoku Japan? Joining Matt Lewis to answer these questions and more are Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt, authors of Ninja Attack!: True Tales Of Assassins, Samurai And Outlaws. You can keep up to date with Hiroko and Matt's work on their blogs blog.hirokoyoda.com https://blog.hirokoyoda.com and blog.pureinventionbook.com https://blog.pureinventionbook.com Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Listen here https://podfollow.com/echoes-of-history/view. Hosted by: Matt Lewis Edited by: Tim Arstall Produced by: Matt Lewis, Robin McConnell, Peta Stamper Senior Producer: Anne-Marie Luff Production Manager: Beth Donaldson Executive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen Bennett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yarnagger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:16Speaker 02

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• 1:57Matt Lewis?

  Hey, you can keep a secret, right? You might know me as Matt Lewis, presenter of Gone Medieval, but you've been tricked. I am in fact a ninja, a shinobi, a secret agent from another podcast, Echoes of History, which dives into the history behind the worlds depicted in the Assassin's Creed games. Last week Ubisoft launched their most recent game Assassin's Creed: Shadows, which is set in feudal Japan and it throws players into the fierce worlds of the samurai and the shinobi. Yes, ninjas. Over on Echoes of History, we've been exploring this fascinating world in some real depth. One of the brilliant and surprising conversations I had was about Hattori Hanzo,

• 2:40Matt Lewis?

  one of the most feared samurai of the Sankoku era, who was also a shinobi. I was thinking, who else loves a legendary historical character? And naturally, I thought of you guys, those who have gone medieval. So I adopted the shinobi tactics I've learned and infiltrated the Gone Medieval feed to insert the story of a man known as the Demon Hanzo. So, before they catch me, here's just a taste of the riches Echoes of History has to offer. I hope you enjoy it and if you do, you can listen to the back catalogue covering a variety of games, periods and places and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Right, I'm off.

• 3:32Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. For the next five weeks, join us as we return to the heart of medieval Japan, to the late Zuchi Momoyama period, the tumultuous setting for the eagerly awaited Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

• 3:54Matt Lewis?

  With only weeks to go before the release of the game in February, we'll be delving into the era's intricate landscape of power and ambition, myths and legends, preparing you as a player to experience it all for yourself in Assassin's Creed: Shadows. Later this week, I'll begin a special series of episodes that take a close look at samurai and shinobi, the weapons they wielded, the battle tactics they used, their politics and culture. No stone will remain unturned as we discover just what separated and united the two iconic warrior classes of Japan. But first, what better way to dive back into the era of samurai and shinobi shadow warriors

• 4:38Matt Lewis?

  than to meet the embodiment of both cultures, the legendary Hattori Hanzo? He established himself during the Warring States period as a loyal retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, playing a vital role in Ieyasu's rise to become the first shogun of a united Japan in 1603. How did Hattori Hanzo reach such legendary status, earning the nickname "The Demon Hanzo"? How were his loyalties tested as both samurai and shinobi, and what does his story tell us about the late Sengoku period? Joining me to answer these questions and more are Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt, authors

• 5:19Matt Lewis?

  of Ninja Attack: True Tales of Assassins, Samurai, and Outlaws. You can keep up to date with both their works on their blogs, Japan Happiness and Pure Invention. You can find the links to both in the descriptions for this episode. Hello Hiroko and hello Matt, welcome to Echoes of History.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Thanks for having us.

• 5:40Matt Lewis?

  It's great to have you here. I'm really looking forward to this because this is a name that I know, but I know nothing else about this, so I'm really looking forward to finding out more. So we're going to be talking about Hattori Hanzo. I wonder if you could just start off by setting the scene for us in terms of where and when is he born?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Okay, before we're gonna talk about Hattori Hanzo. Hattori Hanzo is not a personal name. It sounds like a personal's name, but it is actually a job title. So when you talk, so if you talk about, let's talk about Hattori Hanzo. The next question would be, which one? And then the Hattori Hanzo, because it's a title. And so the D. Hattori Hanzo that all of us know, it's Hattori Hanzo the second. And I'd like to talk about Hattori Hanzo the second here. And then, anyway, so he, Hattori Hanzo, his name is, personal name is Masanari.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  And he was born in fifteen forty-two, in the province of Mikawa.

• 6:45Matt Lewis?

  So, Iga province is something that we have come across in terms of shinobi before, the Tensho Iga War and things like that. So presumably, if he's born in fifteen forty-two, he's in the midst of some of those events that are gonna crop up during his life too.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Exactly, because Iga is a, it's the village that locates in a mountain valley, and it's hidden. And it's, that's where the ninja technique was flourished. The time period is Warring States era? So there's battles everywhere. And then, so the people who live in the Iga are the professionals of the asymmetrical warfare, and using surprise attack, girly warfare. And then, so that's the background where he was born, in the background where he was from.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  The Sengoku Jidai, the era of Warring States that Hiroko is talking about, is a period that lasted about a hundred years in Japan. And it was a time of great social unrest, political strife, military strife. It is a sort of romantic period, I think, for a lot of Japanese looking back, almost fantastical, which is why you see so many Jidai Geki, which is the name for period dramas set there, or often set there. So when you're thinking of samurai, and when you're thinking of ninja, when you're thinking... Thinking of castles and warlords and game, game of thrones style vying for power and unifying the country. That's all the era of warring states, but it probably wasn't that great of a

• 8:19Speaker 04

  time period for the people actually living through it. So, you know.

• 8:24Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, but also in contrast, probably a great place to set a video game like Assassin's Creed shadows, you know, you get to go and play in the midst of all of this and see it all going on without the actual danger. What do we know about Hattori Hanzo II's father and his family? What kind of rank were they? What background were they from?

• 8:43Speaker 03

  So he was actually higher ranking, the strategist, I guess, the serving for Tokugawa clan. That, well, at that time, the Tokugawa's name was Matsudaira, strictly speaking. They changed the name later on. But anyway, he was already serving. So when Hattori Hanzo Masanari II was born, the father, father was serving for the Matsudaira clan, later won't become Tokugawa clan.

• 9:14Matt Lewis?

  And does that put him in conflict with, you know, Oda Nobunaga is obviously a figure who is going to dominate this, this period. Is he aligned to Nobunaga's faction? Or is he opposed to Nobunaga's faction at that point?

• 9:28Speaker 04

  The Matsudairas, well, Tokugawa was an ally. Tokugawa became an ally of Nobunaga and was up at the end of Nobunaga's life, to the point where when Nobunaga was assassinated at the Honnoji incident, Tokugawa had to go on the run because he was worried that the same factions that had targeted Nobunaga would be targeting him as well. There's a lot of shifting factions and things happening going on. It really was a game of thrones. It was a dog eat dog world. And there was not a kind of absolute loyalty. There was a lot of shifting alliances and things going on. Masanari,

• 10:09Speaker 04

  the son, was absolutely aligned with the Tokugawa side. Leading up to that, I don't think we're 100% clear on how the history played out there, but by By the time Masanari came of age, and quite young, because some of his first battles are in his teens, he was very much allied with the Tokugawa side.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  It makes sense, because even though there's not much historical story when he was a kid, but it's still, it's easy to understand, or it's easy to imagine, that because his father was a serving Tokugawa clan, um, so he was actually, you know, fighting along, along with the father. But the turning point for Hattori Hanzo II, for him, was, uh, the battle, when he involved at the age of sixteen. So he actually fought so well, in, in, in terms of the ninth surprise attack. The Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord, he saw how well the Hattori Hanzo Masanari, sixteen-year teenager, fought well.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  And he recognized that, and then he gave spear and a sake cup, the Hattori Hanzo. And, yeah, it's like, okay, what's the deal with the sake cup, right? But the sake cup in, in that era, is, is, it's actually symbolic action. It's a, um, it's tying up, uh, with, with a boss and henchman relationship. So, um, that, that was his turning point to becoming Tokugawa Ieyasu's official followers.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  A vassal, I guess you'd say.

• 11:40Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so it's almost like he's gone and watched all of the, the, the young men fighting, and he, you know, he's got in the early in the draft and thought, I'm having that one. I'll give him the spear and I'll get him, I'll get him into my side because this guy is clearly very good at what he's doing.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  So that's his, that, so the spear was his weapon. The interesting thing is that still the spear exists today. And there is, yes, there is, uh...

• 12:04Speaker 04

  And we've seen it.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  We've seen it. It's in, it's in the temple.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  In Tokyo.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  In Tokyo, and it's big, long. And so you can, you can easily imagine how strong, and how strong he, and he, he was. He must have been.

• 12:21Matt Lewis?

  At sixteen as well, I mean, that's impressive. I love the idea of being able to go and see Hattori Hanzo's spear. That's very cool.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Can see it, it's on display at this temple, but you know, sixteen, it's like a, we think of that as like a child soldier now practically, but that just goes to show you how harsh this era was. There aren't any sixteen year olds in Japan picking up any spears or swords now that aren't on a video game screen. Uh, so times have changed mightily in the five hundred years.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just basically adulthood starts started very early.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, with puberty, basically. You were an adult and, and you were thrown into it. And it's obvious that Hattori Hanzo must have been trained presumably by his father and, and his family in the martial arts from a very young age, because not only was he participating in this battle at sixteen, he was excelling at the battle, like he was, he was racking up, you know, victories for himself that got him noticed by a much older and more experienced, uh, warlord.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  So that's the, another thing, the interesting about the Hattori Hanzo, the second, is that because he was a leader, he was, he led the foot soldiers from Iga town. A lot of people think that Hattori Hanzo was ninja, but, but he was more like a commander. Um, rather than the ninja, um, in, yeah, shinobi, in spine work, he's more like a, um, yeah, the commander.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Like a strategist.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, military strategist, a soldier, a talented one. Uh, but he's, he's probably not somebody who's stalking around in like black, you know, unless he needed to do it very specifically for some very specific moment. He's commanding troops, uh, which is why he's getting recognized.

• 14:03Matt Lewis?

  Right, so he's more like the ninja boss fight, maybe?

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you know, it, it, it calls into question like, what is a ninja, right? And what was Hanzo doing at this time? Now, it's true that he comes from Iga, but it's not a monolithic place. There were many different families there who are operating kind of under an umbrella of this kind of Iga shoe name, and there was a lot of conflict among them, and they went about things in, in different ways. So whether Hattori Hanzo was a shinobi as we think of one now in the modern era, or whether he was more like a kind of, for lack of a better word, a super samurai, somebody who is just very talented with the sword, somebody who understands tactics, somebody who naturally understands the element of surprise, you know, versus what the kind of-

• 14:51Speaker 04

  The the modern conception of a ninja is throwing ninja stars and using all sorts of, you know, exotic weaponry and and like taking the enemy out before they even notice what's happening. He was leading actual battles, you know, of the sort that were unfolding quite frequently at that time. And he might have used unorthodox tactics, but he probably, again, wasn't dressed, you know, with the mask and the, you know,

• 15:17Speaker 03

  The black costume actually didn't exist.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that black costume.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Okay, it's it's a woodblock print.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  The the black costume actually is a really interesting thing. The the and and this is, we're getting a little bit off topic here, but it's important because the reason that we know and love ninja today all over the world, when you think about it, it's a little odd because the Japanese, you know, art didn't invent asymmetrical warfare. They didn't invent guerrilla warfare. They didn't invent assassinations. They certainly that word comes from the the Arab world. And there's a long, the the art of war talks about things like this, Sun Tzu's, a book set in China. The Japanese didn't invent any of this stuff, yet we associate sneaky behavior and stealth tactics with the ninja. The reason for that is because in the Edo period, when things had really calmed down and settled down,

• 16:05Speaker 04

  ninja were some of the first historical characters that became fictional characters. And there's a whole lot of them in the very early part of the or the middle part of the Edo period when the publishing industry was taking off. And that's where you get Jiraiya, the the famed ninja who you see in the Naruto series. And it's where you start to see this this these the the black clothing. It's actually Hoksei of the wave, the great wave. He had a book called Hoksei Manga, which isn't, it sounds like manga, like modern manga, but he meant it just almost like clip art. And there's a drawing, a woodblock print of a ninja crawling up a rope, dressed in black clothing. And that's believed to be the very first depiction of ninja that way. Before that, they just, you know, in in the

• 16:49Speaker 04

  illustrated books and things, they look just like samurai, very opulent looking samurai.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then before that, just to re you know, remind that clock, you know, back to the the war, the war.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Area warring states.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Warring warring states era. The where the basically where the ninja came from, how the ninja established was that they they were farmers.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  And then when the when the Sengoku era started, the everything was just basically a mess. The dog eats what dog world? And then so farmers decided to arming themselves. And that's basically the origin of ninja. And then um they they use everything in a daily life, you know, the um the.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Rake or a hoe or whatever.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Whatever, or or or hot water, rocks, it doesn't matter. It's just that's a gorilla good gorilla attack techniques. And then um so so the one so when you talk about ninja, it's it's not not just the, you know, the warfare techniques, but also the important thing is like the spy network. You know, the whispering and information gathering and stuff like that. In order to do that, you cannot wear like, I mean, black ninja, whatever, you know, the costume, you would stick out. So the common clothes was just basically being farmer or being just a common, you know, common whatever and then to mingle in and then just basically all ears and gather information. So when so when we were writing um the ninja attack,

• 18:17Speaker 03

  one of the thing I learned and I found really very interesting was that that those people are business people. So whoever bids biggest, they serve. And then, you know, when the the other side of the warlord say, hey, you know, I can pay you more. You know, why don't you, you know, why don't you use this work for me? They basically just turn, you know, turn back. It just it just that's how that's how it was back then.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Private military.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Because if you lose.

• 18:45Matt Lewis?

  Mercenary force.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Exactly. If you lose, you die. But if you win, you gain power along with the warlords and that was the time era. And then anyway, the Hattori Hanzo the second was it was uh was entire life. He served faithfully to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Later on, who be he became Shogun and then united Japan. And then that's, you know, in a peace, you know, the peace came and and then the story goes on.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:13Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, from doing some of these episodes, I very much get the impression that sort of Samurai is more like a rank or a position. Shinobi is more like a way of fighting. So you can blur the lines and you can be a Samurai who employs shinobi tactics. So the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. They're slightly different terms, really.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Yes, it's just basically hired and then employed in an employer, I guess.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Well, it's also, it's really tempting to see it in terms of categories because so much of the way that we interact with ninja culture is like through things like games where Shinobi or ninja or assassins are a class. You know, they're like a character class. But of course, like you're saying, Matt, in real life, the lines are a little bit blurred. You can be an officer and a gentleman. Do you know what I mean? You can, you can be both. And Samurai is actually, you know, Westerners think of Samurai as warriors and it was a warrior class, but Samurai is actually a caste in ancient Japan. It is a, they're the aristocracy, the nobility. And there were, although you were supposed to study the arts of war as a, to be a well-rounded Samurai along with

• 20:24Speaker 04

  like fine arts and poetry and things like that. There were plenty of Samurai who probably couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag or a cloth sack at the time. And there were probably plenty of farmers out there who could really kick some ass on the battlefield.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  But the warriors actually, you know, they started as a farmers too, because before that, before the Sengoku era started, the aristocrats in the royal palace in Kyoto, they were the ones who had the power. But then, you know, but still, there was a, there was a power struggle thing going on, Game of Thrones thing going on. And then into corruption going on. And then the society in Japan got really unstable. And then farmers started, I mean themselves, that I, you know, that I, that I said before. And if someone went to become a ninja, if someone become a warrior, Samurai.

• 21:14Matt Lewis?

  And so Hattori Hanzo II, we've sort of left him at the age of 16. He's caught the eye of Tokugawa Ieyasu and entered his service. Does he continue to impress? Tokugawa Ieyasu, does he continue to rise in service?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Yes. So there are three major crises in Tokugawa.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Tokugawa Ieyasu life. And then Hattori Hanzo actually played a major role in there. And then the one was Iko Ikki that you, you, you know, you brought up the questions. Iko uprising. And then, um, and he fought well, but there's not much informations in there, in there about the, uh, the Hattori Hanzo.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  There's a historical moment called the Iko Ikki.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Fifteen sixty-three.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Fifteen sixty-three, it's the Iko uprising. That's what Ikki means. It's kind of an uprising or, uh, you know, a, a battle of some kind. And the Iko were a group of warriors who were associated with a Buddhist sect, the Jodo, uh, Pure Land Buddhist sect. And it was kind of a holy army in, in a lot of ways. And the Iko are actually just one of many groups at this time, who were not affiliated so much with a warlord or a region, but with a temple. And there's a lot of examples of this. There's another one called the Nagorogumi. Um, and there's, there's many, many cases of this. And this is where the concept of the warrior monk comes from out of that era.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  So what happened was that Tokugawa Ieyasu was trying to unify first the Mikawa area, the province. And then, and then those monks, the Iko school of Buddhism, said no to it. And, and then the, the, the problem was that, that, um, that he's Tokugawa, many of the Tokugawa Ieyasu's, um, followers, warlords, were actually affiliated with that school. So those guys are actually left Tokugawa Ieyasu. So it was just like, it was just, it was, it was a crisis for, you know, to have, to keep that, keep the power or authority for Tokugawa Ieyasu.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  And then there's a lot of battles going on. And then finally Tokugawa Ieyasu basically, it was just basically stamed it. And then, you know, he couldn't take it anymore. And so that's so, so that was, that, so that incident actually taught Tokugawa Ieyasu a lot, how complicated and how difficult the religions could be.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  To deal with.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  To deal with. Anyway, there were not much informations about the Hattori Hanzo there. But because we know that the many, many warriors left Tokugawa Ieyasu. And then so, but Masanari, the Hattori Hanzo didn't.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  He stayed.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  So he, basically that means he must have served Tokugawa Ieyasu faithfully. So that's, that's one. And then, then the second one, okay, so Ikko.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Second crisis.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, second crisis. Anyway, the Ikko crisis, the first one, he was only 21 years old. And then, then the second one, when he was 31 years old, there's a huge battle happened again, and Tokugawa versus Takeda Clan. And the Takeda Clan had huge army, 20, yeah, 25,000 people. And then the Tokugawa side is just only 8,000. It's so small, and the battle was just, it was just a great, in losing. And then Tokugawa Ieyasu basically lost the battle. He left, he ran away, he managed to run away. Anyway, even though the battle ended in a huge loss, the Hattori Hanzo fought well, and then Tokugawa Ieyasu recognized that.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  And then he, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the Hattori Hanzo to lead 150 Inga foot soldiers, ninjas. And so that's, that's the beginning, the working as a military commander.

• 25:26Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so it's interesting that that comes out of the loss of a battle. So he, they, they lose a battle, but actually he's performed so well that he, he rises through the ranks despite that loss.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  Yes. Well, you know, Tokugawa is, you know, he's a, he's a pragmatist. So, you know, he can recognize that we're getting routed here, but you know, we survived or we made it out because of this guy. You know, that could very well have been the case.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Tokugawa Ieyasu's life is very, actually, it's very interesting. I mean, he, he, you know, he became a shogun in the end. He is the absolute winner in entire Game of Thrones. But his entire life was just to be. Nothing but struggle and nothing but patience. And he was just, you know, he could have died any time. But he somehow, he, he, he was alive. And then, so then I think, this is just my talking, you know, the, you know, so it's, it's, it makes sense for me. That even though he's losing, and he kept losing and everything. So it's just to just to recognize all the, the good stuff, what, you know, among the, you know, the, the, the things he had. And I think eventually that is just, you know, that brought him to, to the top.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Right. The third crisis came when Oda no Banaga, who had unified Japan, uh, was assassinated in fifteen eighty-two. And he had unified Japan, but under his fist, it was a very unstable alliance. That was basically kind of being enforced through sheer willpower and fear, uh, on, on, because of Oda's charisma and his just incredible ability in battle. His death threw Japan into chaos again. And Tokugawa was aligned with him. At that time, Oda was in Kyoto when he was killed and Tokugawa was in Osaka. Tokugawa needed to get to Mikawa, his home, you know, base, literally base.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  That was the only, uh, uh, his, his place of safety. But there was no way that he could travel through Kyoto, which was the way to get to Mikawa at that time. Because there were literally, everybody was on the lookout for anybody allied with Oda and trying to kill them. This is how much people hated Oda in a lot of ways. And there was a dedicated faction that wanted to kind of wrest control away from him. That's why he was assassinated. Tokugawa is no dummy. He knows that if he goes out on the open roads, he's going to get slaughtered because people are literally, you know, people who are allied with Oda are. So he's trying to figure out what to do and Hattori Hanzo says, I have an idea.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  I can take you a back way through the mountains of Iga, which is my hometown, you know, my homeland, so to speak. And Iga is, as Hiroko was talking about, it's like a kind of basin. It's surrounded by mountains with only one or two entrances to get in or out. This is the whole reason why the people there could live in relative peace, because it's defensible. It has natural defenses. It's also very difficult to navigate. There's a lot of like really rugged terrain. So, uh, Hattori Hanzo, Masanari, leads this group.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Of Tokugawa and a handful of samurai because he didn't have a huge force with him through what is known in Japanese as Iga Go-e or the Iga Escape. And this is an incredibly dramatic moment in Japanese history because they're constantly being attacked. Hattori Hanzo is gravely wounded at one point, helping spirit Tokugawa to safety, even going through this area. But he succeeds. And if he hadn't, if he hadn't succeeded and Tokugawa had been killed, Japan we know today wouldn't exist. It just, it wouldn't exist. So Hattori Hanzo was instrumental not only in helping Tokugawa at this really, really difficult, delicate time.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Arguably, he's this kind of linchpin who made modern Japan in a lot of ways, which is really interesting.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so the, once again, you know, the same thing for Tokugawa Iyasu, you know, did. So he recognized his, you know, his, Tokugawa Iyasu recognized Hattori Hanzo's work. And then he rewarded, and you know, then now he commanded to, to, to lead 200 foot soldiers of Iga.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, so his troops are growing.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  And then also he got, so then he got the, we call that Goku, you know, 8,000 Goku. It's a, it's a basic rice thing, but it's a, it shows you that, you know, he got.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Wealthy, basically. Well, he got a lot of, he was, he was given a lot of, of, of reserves.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, high ranking, higher, higher ranking samurai, I guess. Tokugawa Iyasu has a castle. It's, you know, today is a royal, the royal family's house, royal palace, at the center of Tokyo, in Otemati. You can still visit there. Um, but anyway, the, um, the one, there's one gate, the gate?

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  It's, it's a ruin, the ruin of the Iyasu's castle, basically. And then, and then the major part, another major part is just today is a royal family's house. But anyway, um, there's a gate named after, you know, the Hattori Hanzo's name. Hanzo Gate.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Hanzomon.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Hanzomon Gate. And, um, and then, and then, and also, I guess, you know, the Japanese uh, respected Hanzo, Hattori Hanzo's work, I guess. And then also because of the, you know, the gate's name, we have a subway. It's called Hanzo Mon Sen, Hanzo Mon Line. So when you go, when you take the train, basically you're riding the train, the Hanzo. It's just.

• 31:04Matt Lewis?

  Man, I wanna get on the Hanzo train now.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Exactly. Like a ninja runs through the city today.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  It's, so that's the really interesting about, you know, the Tokyo. And even though Tokyo is like a metropolitan, you know, the high tech, whatever, but still you can touch such an old history. And it's, it's a, you know, it's a totally intertwined, the historical thing and in, um, the modern.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  But the gate is still there.

• 31:32Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it'd be so interesting to wonder, you know, Hanzo, someone like Hattori Hanzo II, he, it must have been fantastic to have a gate at, at the castle named after him, a real honor. It's hard to imagine what he would think if he arrived in 2024 and found that there was a subway train line named after him as well.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  I, I don't know the gate was named after his death. I think he was using that gate. But then, uh, then he later, yeah, but I don't know when exactly named it, but it's still like, because you know, it can.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  But Matt is absolutely right. Like it's his gate.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  It's his gate.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  So it was a huge honor.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  That was his gate, the main gate, and he was using it all the time. So, um, so yeah, so I don't know. It was a nickname. But I don't know when exactly officially, you know, they called it a Hanzo Mon, but to today it's just called Hanzo Mon Gate.

• 32:17Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I just, I just wonder, you know, if he arrived in Tokyo in 2024 and he was like, hang on, there's a gate named after me. There's a subway train under the city named after me. Well, this is pretty cool.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  What is this thing running through the tube under the ground? Yes.

• 32:29Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Matt Lewis?

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• 34:02Matt Lewis?

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• 34:09Speaker 05

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• 35:13Speaker 02

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• 35:55Matt Lewis?

  So I guess we ought to get on to what happens to Hattori Hanzo in the end. I mean, it seems almost a shame to bring his, his life to an end because it's been so incredible. It's been so impressive. He's, he's done and achieved so much. I guess the big question is, having been so involved with Tokugawa Ieyasu, does he see a unified Japan? Does he see Tokugawa as shogun?

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, no. He, he passed away 1592. And the, the Battle of Sagihara was happening in 1600. And then Tokugawa Ieyasu became, officially became shogun in 1602. So he couldn't see it, unfortunately.

• 36:36Matt Lewis?

  So he was 50 years old then?

• 36:39Speaker 04

  55?

• 36:39Speaker 03

  55 years old.

• 36:40Matt Lewis?

  55?

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Can you imagine?

• 36:42Speaker 04

  Although it's, yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  So young.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Very young, very young by modern standards. But you know, there's no hospitals back then. There's no modern medicine. And Hattori Hanzo was somebody who did not lead life sitting on a couch in his living room. Like, this was a person who was involved in some of the most key battles and undoubtedly carried a great many scars with him. And we don't know why he died. The records just say, the most believable record is that he collapsed suddenly when he was engaged in his favorite sport of falconry, which is, you know, it's a popular sport in, in many countries, but trained falcons, which he would, would have hunt for you. Very popular among the aristocracy of, of Japan back then.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  And he apparently died. Was it a heart attack? You know, we don't know, but because we don't know, a lot of legend has sprung up around this. Oh, somebody poisoned him, or there was a dart from a blowgun, or some rival ninja faction killed him, or, you know, fill in the blank. It's, it's, when you have that hole in the record, it is just... Too delicious to not try to exploit in fiction, but all we know is that he died then. And he must have really wanted to see it through to the end. I'm sure it sounds like it was sudden, but it's it's a kind of sad end for a really awesome guy.

• 37:59Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it is. I'm quite often struck by, you know, I look at various historical figures across all time and across the world, and you look at the age at which some of them died and the things that they'd achieved by that age. And then I look at myself and I think, oh.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  How many battles have I fought in?

• 38:15Matt Lewis?

  Have I unified a country?

• 38:19Speaker 04

  I haven't helped any warlords across the, you know, the Yuga Mountains. What am I doing with my life? Yeah, they lived fast and hard back then. But, you know, you got to remember, we're talking about the the the absolute standouts of the era. The average person was probably living very close to where they were born, engaged in the exact same sort of work that their fathers and fathers before them or mothers or mothers before them had been, and led very sort of quiet lives compared to these sorts of, you know, captains of of battle and industry, so to speak.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  Also, the people wrote that wrote down those stories. That's why people, the people like us and modern people know what happened. And then so that's the thing about the shinobi. Yeah, the shinobi literally means hiding. And that's what a ninja is all about. You have to hide to gather information because it's a spy. If the if that, you know, shinobi is working a public information, that means that shinobi is not shinobi. And they're not doing a good job for that. So there has to be, there has to be a lot of nice job, but it's not written.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  And we know nothing.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  And we know nothing about.

• 39:30Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I quite like the idea that the only shinobi we know about are the bad ones.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Right, exactly, exactly. And there was no, like, you know, record keeping. So it's not like, oh, well, you know, in another 20 years, they're going to unseal the JFK files, you know, like, there's no files. It's just gone.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  So that's why this, I just, this is just only me talking again. But I think the reasons on why the Hattori Hanzo, you know, the stuff is, it's written a lot, a lot, is just because, probably because he was a commander, a military commander, and then using his own spy network of Inga ninja clan.

• 40:05Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, so he did do a lot of interesting and exciting things, but he's also better recorded than a lot of other people. So there is something we can latch on to to tell his story.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  And it's been told many, many times, and that's why Hattori Hanzo is so well known. He's a staple of Japanese pop culture and has been for a long time. I'm not sure when the first sorts of stories were told about him, but certainly in the 60s, there's Ninja Hattori-kun, the kids manga. And then in the 80s, there is a Kageno Gundan, the Shadow Warriors, an 80s television series starring the legendary Sonny Chiba, who again played Hattori Hanzo in Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill. So, you know, the reason that we know him and love him and talk about him is because of all of these appearances in pop culture.

• 40:54Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna have to confess that my, most of my knowledge about Hattori Hanzo comes from Kill Bill, so.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 41:00Matt Lewis?

  I'm sorry, that's the limit of my knowledge before.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Sushi chef.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Sushi chef, exactly.

• 41:05Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  But actually, it's funny because Tarantino has said unofficially, he sees that as a sequel to the Kageno Gundan shows. Because Hattori Hanzo, as Hiroko said at the beginning of this, is a title. And, but it's also a real name.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  For a name.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  So like you will find people named Hattori-san.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Hattori-san.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  And it's like, you know, Hattori has become associated with ninja, just like Bond has become associated with spies, MI5, what have you. So it's a really similar sort of thing.

• 41:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, that's a really interesting comparison, that he's sort of a Japanese equivalent to James Bond in the English spy genre. It's really interesting. And I've seen him referred to as the demon. Is that a nickname that he would have recognized? And if so, how do we, do we know how he earned that nickname?

• 41:54Speaker 03

  So the Hanzo's nickname is Oni no Hanzo.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Oni.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Oni. And then, so Oni is not a demon. Oni is a concept, Japanese concept, and a demon is not Japanese concept. Um, Oni in Japanese concept is, is, uh, this, it's po- means powerful. Powerful, strong, beyond the human capability. And then that's, that's what is, that's, that was his nickname was all about. They, actually, there is a story about him that I kinda like. That, um, the, when, uh, the, when the Tokugawa Ieyasu got involved in a political,

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Scandal?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Scandal, in- incident, whatever. He had to order his own son, or, or, his own son, eldest son, and wife, to commit seppuku, the suicide. And, um, and then the son was only twenty years old. Anyway, that when you do the seppuku, um, the haragiri, um, you, you, there is a second to help you.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  A kaishakunin, right?

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, kaishakunin, the second. And then, well, so, but the, the first person who got ordered to be a kaishakunin for, for Ieyasu, Ieyasu's son, he couldn't do it. It's just too much. And then, and he ran away. And then the Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered Hattori Hanzo to be a se- the second for the Ieyasu. I mean, and so, and Ieyasu's son. And then, so that, uh, but it was just too much for him too. And then, then, and then the story, and according to the story, that, um, that Hattori Hanzo actually begged Ieyasu, and then I, let me commit seppuku on behalf of your son. And he's, she said, and he cried, shed the tears.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  So when Ieyasu is saying, said, and said to him that, um, Oni, even Oni like you, yourself, would shed tears. So that's the story, and that's the Oni, and not the demon, and so, um...

• 44:02Speaker 04

  And it shows that Ha- that Hattori Hanzo had a, a heart. You know, this wasn't some kind of brutal person.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, uh, so it's a, so that, that's, that's, that story really kinda, you know, that gives you another side of his personality. He's strong and powerful and blah blah, and then also, he's, he's a human being.

• 44:20Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I think it's really great to be able to round people like that off a bit. So we're not just talking about a guy who is militarily capable. We can see a human side to him as well. And it sounds like rather than thinking of him as the demon, what they're referring to him as is something more like a superhero. They're considering him to be beyond what a normal man is. So they're setting him apart, but not in the sense of a demon as we would think of it today.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, the hero behind the scene kind of thing.

• 44:48Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

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• 45:31Speaker 06

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• 45:53Matt Lewis?

  The Assassin's Creed games give players the opportunities to step into the Animus and be transported back in time to these periods. If you could go and visit one moment in Hattori Hanze II's life, what would you like to see? Where would you like to be?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Okay, my answer is I don't want to go.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  There's no reason why, just because it's...

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Japanese people in general, including myself, romanticize that, you know, that period of the war, the war in states. So I don't want to meet heroes in person. You know, it's, it's, it's a fact that it's a brutal era. And then, you know, there has to be a lot of ugliness that I just simply didn't, you know, don't, don't agree with. But just because so many years ago, you know, there's a fantasy attached to it. And I totally enjoyed it. So I don't want to go. I want to just keep it as it is.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, we live in a terribly polarized era. And it would be like going back to an even more polarized era where you actually kill each other over at the polarization instead of just arguing about it online. So as much.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, because we just, we have such a, you know, the soft heart with that era, even though it's a brutal, bloody thing.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  We probably couldn't survive five minutes in that time period. You know what I mean?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  And then came like, I mean, I'm going to just die.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  And get killed.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  We're like number one targets, all of us. Just like, I can imagine some bandits like, ooh, look at these weaklings, you know, like we'd get some gold.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's just dope.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, as a historian in us would love to fill in some of the blanks in the record, of course, but actually going there, no, thank you.

• 47:32Matt Lewis?

  No, no, I, I quite like the idea of keeping it as a nice romantic memory, you know? We'll, we'll send you back there and you can just close your eyes for a bit until we bring you home again. And just, just imagine that it was. Yeah, yeah. Imagine that it was still the romantic period that you remember.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 47:46Matt Lewis?

  That's a brilliant answer. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hiroko and Matt. It's been fascinating to try and get a little bit closer to, to Hattori Hanzo II. I will remember to call him the second from now on as well.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 47:56Matt Lewis?

  And it's been fascinating to see a different aspect of the Sengoku period, a different figure working his way through it. And also to be able to see different dimensions of him, a man who is not just a warrior, but someone who, who had a human side to him too, who achieved an awful lot and who's, whose name still lives on in Tokyo today. It's fascinating. Thank you very much for joining us.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Thanks for inviting us.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  We'll ride that subway in, in this show's honor.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:22Matt Lewis?

  Hanzo. Think, think of me next time you're on it. I would love to be on the Hanzo line of the Tokyo subway. That sounds very cool.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Come on, come on out and ride it.

• 48:32Matt Lewis?

  I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. In the next episode, I'll start my special series examining the cultures of samurai and shinobi with Professor Eric Rath. Then, next week, we're returning to the history of the Sengoku era with a trip to Mount Hie, the home of the warrior monks. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review, too. I'll see you next time amongst the echoes of history.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 49:44Speaker 05

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