Illustration by Yutaka Kondo, from "Ninja Attack!"
Reports of a "flaming-horned bull" goring a man in Spain yesterday remind me of a historical incident involving flaming bulls that you may not be aware of: The Battle of Kurikara Pass, in June of 1183.
It starred a certain ninja-to-be named Nishina Daisuke, who would later go on to develop the Togakure-ryu school of ninjutsu, one of the few that is still actually taught in Japan today (by the illustrious Masaaki Hatsumi).
According to the legends of Togakushi, the Nagano village from which Daisuke hails, he led a special forces team called the Nishina-to ("Team Nishina") during the Battle of Kurikara Pass. Part of a major alpine throughway, the pass represented prime strategic ground in a battle playing out between the Heike and Yoshinaka clans for dominance in the region.
Late one evening, as the Heike forces bivouacked in preparation for another day of battle, Team Nishina launched a surprise nighttime assault. Raising a din loud enough to wake the dead, they startled the Heike soldiers into an immediate retreat— and then Daisuke cowed them into submission. Literally.
He had hit upon the novel tactic of strapping flaming torches to the horns of a herd of cattle, which he stampeded directly into the terrified mass of Heike soldiers. In their haste to escape the flaming beasts, some ten thousand men tumbled from the narrow confines of the Kurihara Pass to their deaths. Some speculate that he may have based the idea on a Chinese story, in which cattle with daggers tied to their horns were sent careening across a battlefield.
History is silent as to whether Team Nishina celebrated their victory with hamburgers afterwards.
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