The city of Iga, in Mie Prefecture, was the center of the Iga school of ninjutsu, which, along with the Koga school, was one of the most well-known schools of ninjitsu. The ninja of Iga stalwartly defended Iga from Oda Nobunaga's son Nobukatsu, but were forced into submission by Nobunaga, who outnumbered them ten-to-one. When Tokugawa Ieyasu became the shogun, he employed Iga ninja as his guards and intelligence agents. They continued to guard the castle until Tokugawa Yoshimune dismissed them in 1716. The museum in Iga is located near the castle and tells the history of the Iga ninja. The current honorary director of the museum is also the head of Iga ninjutsu. With so much fascination by ninjas in Western culture, and with so much of it fictionalized, this museum is a great effort to separate fact from fiction and chronicle the real place of ninjutsu in Japanese history.
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