Documentary - Ancient Warriors - Ninja: Warriors of the Night

There is a little kid in me who loves this stuff - Ninjas are so cool. It's good to honor the child in us sometimes, in healthy ways.

A little background on ninjas below the video.

Discovery Channel TV Series: Ancient Warriors
Episode 19: The Ninja - Warriors of the Night

The Ninja, respected for their stealth and cunning manners, were considered the most devious and feared warriors in ancient Japan. Ninjitsu - the way of the Ninja (shinobi) - involved taking any action necessary to achieve their aims, no matter how unethical. For four centuries, Japan was in turmoil, locked in warfare. The most powerful warlords were protected by the Samurai, noble soldiers prepared to die for their masters - but there was another kind of warrior, the Ninja (shinobi), who were cunning and ruthless and worked covertly. In this documentary film we follow their art, their tactics, the manner in which they were taught to move and think, and how they were prepared to die rather than divulge their secrets.

Wikipedia:

A ninja (忍者^?) or shinobi (忍び^?) was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan who specialized in unorthodox warfare. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, and open combat in certain situations.^[1] Their covert methods of waging war contrasted the ninja with the samurai, who observed strict rules about honor and combat.^[2] The shinobi proper, a specially trained group of spies and mercenaries, appeared in the Sengoku or "warring states" period, in the 15th century,^[3] but antecedents may have existed in the 14th century,^[4] and possibly even in the 12th century (Heian or early Kamakura era).^[5][6]

In the unrest of the Sengoku period (15th–17th centuries), mercenaries and spies for hire became active in the Iga Province and the adjacent area around the village of Kōga, and it is from their ninja clans that much of our knowledge of the ninja is drawn. Following the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate (17th century), the ninja faded into obscurity, being replaced by the Oniwabanshū body of secret agents.^[7] A number of shinobi manuals, often centered around Chinese military philosophy, were written in the 17th and 18th centuries, most notably the Bansenshukai (1676).^[8]

By the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), the tradition of the shinobi had become a topic of popular imagination and mystery in Japan. Ninja figured prominently in folklore and legend, and as a result it is often difficult to separate historical fact from myth. Some legendary abilities purported to be in the province of ninja training include invisibility, walking on water, and control over the natural elements. As a consequence, their perception in western popular culture in the 20th century was based more on such legend and folklore than on the historical spies of the Sengoku period.