Ninja Treasures

The 16th century in Japan was an age of civil war. To take a lead in the conflict for territory, one domain employed some of the country's best-trained spies...

The Sendai Domain (currently Miyagi Prefecture) gained immense power in the Tohoku region under lord Date Masamune. The secret to his winning the status of war hero was the Kurohabaki-gumi, a brigade of covert agents clad in black-spies known today as the ninja.

These ninja had superhuman powers. With special training from childhood, they acquired the ability to control the natural elements at will. Adept at setting targets on fire, lurking underwater for extended periods of time, and vanishing behind cloaks, the ninja used their tactics to infiltrate heavily guarded warlord mansions and shogun castles, and access secret documents on which national security hinged.

Chronicles say that the ninja used magical weapons-five, to be exact, including ninja stars (shuriken) and throwing knives (kunai), which formed the foundation of their art. Ninja loyal to Masamune used these legendary weapons and risked their lives to sustain their lord and the Sendai Domain. With the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, covert operations faded out of need but the ninja secretly preserved their weapons.

Times of turmoil returned with the imminent fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. The ninja chief at the time was one Hosoya Naohide, aka Hosoya Judayu, who served as a scout for the Sendai Domain. At the onset of the Boshin War, Judayu gathered burly misfits and formed a guerrilla brigade known as the Karasu-gumi for their black garb marked with a crow motif. Armed only with daggers, the unit attacked armies at night and instilled fear in the new government. Following the Meiji Restoration, Judayu went on to serve in the First Sino-Japanese War, but later returned to Sendai where he passed away as the head priest of Ryuunin Temple (1907).

With the death of this illustrious figure, the ninja apparently vanished from history. Until recently-a scroll was discovered in Ryuunin Temple containing this message:

The inscription goes on. There are five treasures hidden in five locations. To prevent misuse, each is protected by a spell and guarded by a deity. An encrypted map points to the five locations.

A decryption team assembled by officials was able to make out that the legendary weapons are concealed mainly in the coastal areas of Miyagi Prefecture such as Matsushima, Ishinomaki, and Minamisanriku, and also in the capital of Sendai, which was a major castle town in Judayu's days. But this is as far as they got. The riddles are so complex that the exact spots remain unknown. Miyagi has decided to release the treasure map and seek help from the public. Join the hunt for the legendary ninja treasures!

*This is a fictional story.