To view one of the other parts, click on the numbers below. During the relative quiet time of the Edo period, under the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the arts flourished. Stories, woodblock prints, and plays all told dramatic stories from the past. In these tales, the ninja became semi-mythical beings, whose ability to hide, stay silent, to siege castles, and to kill, grew to superhuman heights, and so the only explanation for their powers became sorcery. In one play a ninja is able to turn himself into a rat.
Stories tell of another ninja who knows 'Toad Magic,' and rides on the back of a giant toad.
In another tale, a ninja meets a sorcerer on the road, and when the ninja cuts the sorcerer open, and his intestines continue to attack the ninja, the ninja begs him to teach him the magic arts. In the face of such powers as these, the ability to fly or turn invisible seems commonplace. Part of the mystical aura which surrounds the ninja may be due to their longstanding association with monks, especially the yamabushi , who would take long, mountain pilgrimages in the belief that such hardship combined with worship and fasting would reveal their religion to them, and at the same time be granted powers beyond that of ordinary humans. Iga and Koga provinces, being very mountainous, were both destinations for yamabushi . Add to this the rumours that ninjas often disguised themselves as wandering monks for purposes of concealment on intelligence missions, and it is easy to see how the magical powers ascribed to one can so easy be passed to the other.