>>27913968
>What does make one a ninja?
Its a job title. Just like how learning a koryu doesn't make you a samurai, learning a martial art doesn't make you a ninja. What makes one a ninja? Being a warrior with skills in sneaky git type operations, either for hire or in the employ of a feudal lord.
>Which primary sources?
Takeda Shingen's writings has a whole section on how he used them. The Oda, Tokugawa, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi made extensive use of them as well, plus there were the denizens and collective of samurai that ran the Iga han, they're an especially interesting lot.
Big multi volume collections of these writings and letters have been published. But unfortunately not in English, and they're DISGUSTINGLY expensive. They're pretty much made for libraries and Universities only.
>Are your primary sources automatically more correct than mine?
If your "primary sources" include the shoninki, written during the Edo period by the leaders of the Iga han to wow the shogunate to give them an exception on the caste-lock that prevented farmers from being warriors and the other way around, then yes. Otherwise, I dunno, you'd have to give me a list.
>Look, neither one of us has direct access to historical evidence, so posturing back and forth, citing primary sources that we both can't produce will get us no where.
So back out and accept you may be wrong then, because so far you seem to be the only one unable to "produce" any sources.
>Neither are writers, but sometimes writers do some research if it'll help their craft. So do some martial artists.
I'm sure some do, except all too many of them just fall right into the popular history trap, or take Edo period romanticism at face value.