Did ninjas originate in China or in Japan?

china is the home for ninjas and japan is the home for samurai

I am a Ninja and am from neither China or Japan.
I’m not a Ninja.. I just have mad skills

Life after 2012 are you sure its not the other way around?

No… he got it right.

positive… lets bet some lurve on it.. wouldnt that be pretty fun

The Shinobi (ninja’s) were from Japan along with Samurai. The Shinobi were known for their unorthodox war tactics. They were mercenaries, assassins and such. Samurai were highly trained swordsman that were upholders of the law of the Emperor, the very word Samurai means: To serve.

Dammit! @Axemusica just had to come in here with his “facts” and “correct information” and spoil everything!
nice job bro

Saturday morning cartoons.

Like almost everything else, ninjas originated in China. Japan borrowed nearly all its culture (painting, literature, bonsai, writing, fighting arts, religion, etc.) from Ancient China. Even the word “ninja” is from the Chinese character “nin-ja” which means “patience”. The Japanese are great modifiers. They are very skilled at borrowing ideas and skills from other cultures and modifying them, making them even better for their own use. The Chinese, on the other hand, are great innovators. They are well-known for their many inventions, from paper to gunpowder, from porcelain to silk, etc.

@MRSHINYSHOES totally worked @Axemusica… fight fight fight!
or not… you know, whatever

And Sinanju are from North Korea.

@life_after_2012 You would be wrong. Ninjas were farmers repressed by the samurai. Then later those who excelled in the art of stealth and the arts were later as @axemusica said, hired by the emperor.

They are both Japanese.

@Dr_C well @MRSHINYSHOES has some validity to his response. Most of the orient area of the earth did get their culture by borrowing it from China and Ninja’s even used a lot of the philosophy of the Chinese military. Although, I can’t find any other facts about their actual origin other than the Feudal era in Japan when they were known as Shinobi.

”....The word itself derives from the Japanese Shinobi-no-mono, which is written with two kanji characters that can also be pronounced as nin-sha, if the Chinese pronunciation is used instead. The first character, nin, suggests concealment, while the second, sha, means person. Ninja: a person who hides his presence. In Japanese, the word is applied to a person who does covert, military operations.” – A site that come up when I googled

“When the claim is made that Ninja arts originated in China, what is really being said is that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was written there around the fifth century BC, and contains a chapter about the importance of espionage. Some of the tactics described in this book, specifically the espionage chapter, were eventually put into use by the ninja. For this reason, ninja skills are often described as Chinese in origin. On the other hand, there was nothing particularly secret about this book, and the strategems were widely known, once the book finally made it over to Japan sometime in the seventh or eighth century AD. The Chinese often referred to it, and many other books which followed it, when planning for warfare and studying tactics. The Japanese, too, came to use the book and many of its teachings, not just the espionage chapter. Samurai battles used tactics laid out in The Art of War. Yet no one claims that the Way of the Samurai originated in China.” – Ibid

Reading about it now, I’d have to say they were defined as Ninja in japan since it seems like the only real thing that originated from china was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The Shinobi utilized the teaching of espionage and used it and other tactics to become the notorious Ninja.

@Axemusica FTW

listen! ninjas are from CHINA and samurai are from JAPAN. Im sure everyoe believes one these countries invented martial arts too. Wrong, If you want to get technical Ninjas and Samurai are from Greece. You better do some homework be for you try to test the waters on this one..

@life_after_2012 Not even close. Go be quiet. BEFORE you make yourself look even worse….

Ninjas were Japanese peasant rebels. They fought against the tyrant samurai ruling over Japan. Ninjas are JAPANESE.

@life_after_2012 wtf seriously?!? ninja and samourai came from japan. geez. @TehRoflMobile Ninja were NOT peasant rebels. they were monks who were oppressed for their religion so they fled to the provinces of Iga and some other province which i forget the name of. They started ninjutsu in the iga mountains and eventually became assassins for hire. They developed most of their techniques to defend against the samourai. The only thing China contributed to the art of ninjutsu is karate, which means empty hand in chinese. http://www.grandmaster.cc/history/Ninjutsu.php3 i think this is a pretty reliable source. dont just go make things up if you dont have proof. ninjutsu FTW. bit*h.

Ninjas were hired by the Samurai and Honorable Masters to do the non-honorable work of spying, espionage and assassination. Ninjas had no honor according to the Samurai and Japanese culture, even though they played a very important part in both Japanese and Chinese cultures.

The original Ninja were Chinese, a “counter-culture”, born in the mountains to Chinese peasant families, who were fighting against the oppression of the Samurai overlords and thus developed Ninjutsu. The fighting skill of Ninjutsu (18 traditional disciplines that include various forms of armed/un-armed fighting techniques with lots of variable weapons training/knowledge, horsemanship, various forms of espionage, sabotage, disguise, infiltration, stealth, trickery, escape, poisons, watercraft, medicines, running, jumping, climbing walls, long-distance hiking, swimming, assassination and combat situations) was kept secret from the Samurai, handed down only from Ninja to Ninja. It is an accepted fact that the Ninja were founded by Chinese immigrants in the sixth and seventh century, who were fleeing oppression in China.