Ninja Trivia
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48 free Ninja trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The real shinobi were spies, scouts and arsonists for hire from two mountain districts of central Japan, and almost nothing about the black-clad assassin of the movies survives contact with the records. The black costume comes from kabuki stagehands, the straight "ninja sword" cannot be traced before 1956, and the best-known ninja of all, Hattori Hanzo, was a samurai general famous for his spear. These 48 questions cover the history (Iga and Koga, the Sengoku mercenaries, Oda Nobunaga's 1581 invasion, the Shimabara Rebellion, the Edo-period manuals), the kit (shuriken, makibishi, nightingale floors built to defeat them), the famous names (Hanzo, Fuma Kotaro, Ishikawa Goemon boiled alive in Kyoto), and the pop culture that followed: Enter the Ninja, Ninja Gaiden, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Naruto and the Sasuke obstacle course that became Ninja Warrior. Easy questions cover the words and the weapons; harder ones ask about clan politics, manuscripts and Mie University's ninja research centre. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a history round.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nokizaru, an old regional nickname for a ninja, literally pictures which animal on the roof?
A monkey
A monkey: nokizaru means 'macaque on the roof', and other old names included kusa, 'grass', and monomi, 'one who sees', while the word ninja itself was rarely used.
Q 02Ninja sometimes travelled disguised as komuso, wandering flute-playing monks who hid their faces under what?
A basket hat
A basket hat covered the whole head, and because komuso held a rare exemption from the shogunate's travel limits, they were rumoured to report back to it on what they saw.
Q 03Which 1967 James Bond film sends 007 to train with ninja in Japan?
You Only Live Twice
You Only Live Twice has Bond train with the Japanese secret service's ninja before they storm a volcano base, though the film shows them more as commandos than as traditional ninja.
Q 04Which warlord invaded Iga in 1581 and wiped out its organised ninja clans?
Oda Nobunaga
Oda Nobunaga led a huge army into Iga in 1581 and burned the province, ending its self-rule and scattering the surviving ninja into the service of lords across Japan.
Q 05In Japanese folklore, and again in Naruto, the ninja Jiraiya rides or summons which giant animal?
A toad
A toad carries Jiraiya in the 19th-century novel of his adventures, where Tsunade works slug magic and his enemy Orochimaru commands snakes; Naruto reused all three names and their animals.
Q 06Which was the highest of the three traditional ninja ranks?
Jonin
Jonin means 'upper person': he represented the group and hired out its men, while the chunin below him acted as his assistants.
Q 07Which creature, sealed inside Naruto as a baby, makes his village shun him?
The Nine-Tailed Fox
The Nine-Tailed Fox, named Kurama, had attacked the village before it was sealed in him; it draws on the kitsune of folklore, foxes that grow more tails as they grow older and more powerful.
Q 08Films cast ninja as assassins, but what was their chief role in the historical record?
Espionage
Espionage came first: like modern spies, ninja gathered intelligence on an enemy's strength, and the sword-swinging assassin is an image that came from movies and comics.
Q 09What was the ninja's primary form of sabotage?
Arson
Arson was the usual method: an abbot's diary for 1541 records men of Iga slipping into Kasagi Castle in secret and setting fire to the priests' quarters.
Q 10The oniwaban, spies who took over from the shogun's Iga and Koga guards, were named for which part of Edo Castle?
The garden
The garden gave them their name, since they were rumoured to be quartered there; the eighth shogun, Yoshimune, founded the unit, and its low-ranking agents could report to him in person.
Q 11The last detailed record of ninja in open warfare comes from which conflict?
The Shimabara Rebellion
The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-38 ended at Hara Castle, where a diary records Koga men stealing up to the walls by night; after it, ninja fade from the records of open battle.
Q 12Which ninja tool, thrown like a dagger in Naruto, was really used for digging and prying, more trowel than weapon?
Kunai
Kunai were flat iron tools for digging through walls and earth where a gate was too well guarded, closer to a modern survival knife, though small ones could be thrown.
Q 13Which haiku poet, born in Iga, does a popular theory claim was secretly a ninja?
Matsuo Basho
Q 21Makibishi, used to slow pursuers, are the Japanese version of which weapon?
Caltrops
Caltrops is the European name for the same idea: makibishi could pierce the thin straw sandals worn in feudal Japan, and clay spikes thought to be early ones have been dug up at castles besieged in 1590.
Q 22In 2025, which country banned the possession and sale of so-called "ninja swords"?
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom's ban took effect on 1 August 2025 as the last part of Ronan's Law, named for Ronan Kanda, a 16-year-old killed with such a sword, whose family campaigned for it.
Q 23Despite his ninja reputation, what was Hattori Hanzo's actual station in life?
A samurai general
Matsuo Basho came from Iga and walked for months through northern Japan in his forties, so a 1966 book imagined him on a secret shogunate mission; a Mie University scholar who checked found his pace no faster than other fit travellers'.
Q 14The famous 1676 ninja manual compiled from Iga and Koga knowledge is called what?
Bansenshukai
Bansenshukai means 'ten thousand rivers flowing together to form an ocean': Fujibayashi Yasutake, heir to one of Iga's great ninja families, gathered the lore of many schools into one work.
Q 15Which yellow-clad Mortal Kombat ninja is famous for the shout 'Get over here'?
Scorpion
Scorpion's shout was recorded by series co-creator Ed Boon himself for the 1992 original, and Boon's voice has delivered the line in the games ever since.
Q 16The black ninja costume of fiction is thought to imitate which figures from Edo theatre?
Kuroko stagehands
Kuroko stagehands wore black so that audiences would ignore them, and dressing a stage ninja the same way is thought to have made his attack a surprise; real ninja wore ordinary, unremarkable colours.
Q 17Which 2019 FromSoftware game, starring a one-armed shinobi called Wolf, won Game of the Year at The Game Awards?
Sekiro
Sekiro began as a new entry in Tenchu, the ninja stealth series its studio owns, before outgrowing the idea; the title is a contraction of the Japanese for 'one-armed wolf'.
Q 18Which Japanese castle's 'nightingale floors' chirp when walked on, long said to warn of intruders?
Nijo
Nijo Castle's corridors chirp because clamps under the boards move against nails, and the castle itself calls the intruder-alarm story a mistake.
Q 19What does the word shuriken literally mean?
Hand-hidden blade
Hand-hidden blade is the literal reading: small enough to palm, shuriken were carried by samurai as well as ninja, and were meant more to distract an opponent than to kill.
Q 20Shuriken were reportedly left lying in plain sight, coated in what?
Poison
Poison is what the reports describe, meant for whoever picked one up; shuriken could also be wrapped in a lit fuse and thrown to start fires, or planted in the ground to injure anyone who stepped on them.
A samurai general is what the records show: Hanzo led a unit of some 200 Iga warriors and is counted among the Tokugawa's sixteen divine generals, while his feats as a ninja belong mostly to later legend.
Q 24What nickname did Hattori Hanzo earn for his ferocity in the early 1570s?
Demon
Demon Hanzo, or Oni no Hanzo, also served to tell him apart from another Tokugawa commander who shared the name Hanzo.
Q 25What is named Hanzomon after Hattori Hanzo in modern Tokyo?
A palace gate and subway line
A palace gate and subway line carry the name: his house stood by that gate of the shogun's castle, now the Imperial Palace, and the Hanzomon Line was named after the gate.
Q 26Films arm him with a legendary sword, but which weapon of the real Hattori Hanzo is kept at Tokyo's Sainen-ji temple?
His spear
His spear, by tradition a reward from Ieyasu for valour in battle, was once over four metres long; it lost its tip in the 1855 Edo earthquake and was damaged again in the 1945 bombing of Tokyo.
Q 27A retired swordsmith named Hattori Hanzo forges the heroine's blade in which 2003 film?
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Kill Bill: Volume 1 named its swordsmith as a tribute to his actor: Sonny Chiba had played ninja leaders called Hattori Hanzo in a 1980s Japanese television series, as Tarantino pointed out himself.
Q 28A viral 2019 Facebook joke proposed 'Naruto running' past the guards of which US site?
Area 51
Area 51's mock raid drew more than two million sign-ups on the theory that the arms-back anime run would outpace bullets, and law enforcement in Nevada took it seriously enough to issue warnings.
Q 29Which weapon does Donatello, the purple-masked Ninja Turtle, fight with?
A bo staff
A bo staff: Donatello is the brains of the team, a scientist and inventor, yet he carries the simplest weapon of the four, a plain wooden pole.
Q 30Legendary outlaw Ishikawa Goemon was executed in 1594 by what method?
Boiled alive
Boiled alive in an iron cauldron in Kyoto, he left his name to the goemonburo, the 'Goemon bath': a deep iron tub shaped like a kettle.