Well, if you really want my opinion (a guess really because I'm not a very good martial artist), it depends on the claims made, and ideally it's both. A lineage without skill is pretty useless, but skills without the ability to pass them on could be argued equally pointless except for a certain point in time. When you can claim you come from a lineage of note, and have significant skill, you've actually got two claims to prove and I agree they are not mutually exclusive. But proving the lineage is quite different than proving the application of skill, isn't it? Lots of people could prove their lineage to some great martial artist that's relatively easy in some cases. but proving you can apply anything is a different set of standards. Karate (no expert) is a good example of an art relatively well documented in the historical record, but it's fair to say only a portion of people who study karate can 'prove' its application. A hundred years from now I will bet, there will be lots of provable lineages to the historical scions of karate, but again some will be able to 'put up', and others won't. To compound all of that, there the liars cheats and scoundrels who misuse/abuse the martial arts (and often history) for fame, a buck, or whatever.
So let me see if my perception is on point. Ninjutsu is not a complete martial art per say, but rather a sub-style taught to a specific class of Japanese warriors who are already trained in the samurai practice of bushido? So if the Sengoku Jidai in Japan was compared to the American Civil War, then regular armies would be the samurai, and Abraham Lincoln's spies would be the ninja? Or if a soldier joins the Navy, he receives training in naval warfare and then the best soldiers in the Navy are then recruited to the Navy Seals, who are identical to the ninja? Am I looking at this correctly? Also, concerning the difference between ninjutsu and bushido, what are some of the main differences between the ninja and the samurai? I remember hearing about a group of battlefield ninja who fought during the Battle of Tennoji alongside regular troops, and also I believe Hattori Hanzo was both a ninja and a samurai. But if I were looking for the classical American depiction of a ninja in all-black, wearing a shinobi shozoku with a face mask, climbing hook ropes and shooting blowguns, or dripping poison from a string and using a saya as a snorkel, i.e. the typical assassin-professional ninja spy, where should I look for that? Or is that just a myth?
Thank you Kevin G, I googled Stephen Turnbell and was able to open an entire pamphlet he wrote called The Ninja: An Invented Tradition that is filled with information about the ninja. It's going to take me a while to read it though.
Training. If someone has the system ingrained in them then they aren't a novice. Not really sure where you are going with all this.
I found some more information on the internet last night, concerning the Chinese influence of ninjutsu pertaining to the Togakure-ryu, Koto-ryu and Gyokko-ryu lineages (and as a result the Bujinkan, Genbukan, Bansenshukai, Jinenkan, AKBAN and To-Shin-Do schools). I haven't heard anything else yet about the Banke Shinobinoden, apart from learning that they include Seiko Fujita and Masazo Ishida in their lineage. Other than that, I don't know anything about the Banke Shinobinoden. But supposedly, I'm not sure if all of this information is correct, but it does offer quite a bit of knowledge about the history of Takamatsu lineages.
If you're not sure if it's correct, you shouldn't refer to it as 'knowledge'. Instead brother you should present the source for each and then you can get the feedback from other people, who may know whether it's incorrect, correct, or somewhere in between of course. I'm a patient man but it appears you are using a 'fire hose' approach to this subject by swarming the discussion with names, places, organizations, and so forth, without stopping to verify a single one to any degree of accuracy. If you want my opinion brother go back to the first claim in the first statement and start signifying where you saw or received the information. If it doesn't align with a historical work, archaeological evidence, or some similar form of supporting material, I'd just assume it's fallacious. I fear my friend that you will end up believing a lot of things might be true that aren't, and you'll be grasping at straws hoping to qualify various theories you have that are themselves based on superfluous sources (something which the internet will happily supply you with morning, noon, and night if you let it). If you want to start somewhere, you claimed above there is a Chinese influence on ninjutsu and many of your different threads seem to have jumped to that conclusion. But you have no evidence other than some mixes of fact and fiction and even 20th century fiction!! Start with the evidence, verify it, build a decent amount of it before you start laying down theories. That's all I can suggest...otherwise you're going to create theories that will crumble upon superficial analysis.
Personally I don't see the value in looking for the 1st ninja or looking for a fixed line of transmission of ninjutsu People all over the globe developed and learnt unconventional tactics. Sometimes independently, often by people observing tactics being used effectively and adopting them and sometimes by people learning skills, travelling to a new place and imparting their knowledge there In many ways it's more interesting to look at how humans have been successful at using disruptive ideas in ways that prevent or delay their opponents' adoption of them
