> After all it too is rooted in myth, romanticism, and cultural stereotypes... Kinda funny, from what I read the depiction of ninjas in popular culture - dress

> After all it too is rooted in myth, romanticism, and cultural stereotypes... Kinda funny, from what I read the depiction of ninjas in popular culture - dressed in pitch black cloth, cloaked face - was really the outfit of stage hands in traditional japanese theater. Convention was that viewers ignore the stage hands for the sake of the plot. In one play, a ninja assassination was shown and to demonstrate the point that absolutely anyone could be the ninja and he could strike out of nowhere, the ninja was revealed to be one of the stage hands in a sort of fourth-wall break. So our current mental image of "ninjas" is itself the result of a past popular-culture interpretation of them, not the actual looks.