Hensojutsu
Encyclopedia
was a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese martial art skill involving disguise
Disguise
A disguise can be anything which conceals or changes a person's physical appearance, including a wig, glasses, makeup, costume or other ways. Camouflage is one type of disguise for people, animals and objects...

, impersonation, and infiltration
Infiltration tactics
In warfare, infiltration tactics involve small, lightly equipped infantry forces attacking enemy rear areas while bypassing enemy front line strongpoints and isolating them for attack by follow-up troops with heavier weapons.-Development during World War I:...

.

In some ninja
Ninja
A or was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations...

 clans it was known as the or, "seven ways of going" (one form of ninjutsu
Ninjutsu
or may be:*the arts associated with espionage and assassination in feudal Japan, see Ninja*modern schools of martial arts claiming to be based in these traditions, see Modern Schools of Ninjutsu*fictional depictions, see Ninja in popular culture...

 that has a person play a role much like an actor does in impersonating people). A ninja had to appear either as a priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

, samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

, merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

, craftsman
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...

, performer, puppeteer
Puppeteer
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, such as a puppet, in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or...

, or farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

. To accomplish this, the ninja was a well studied sociologist, observing people in other towns for long periods of time until, just like actors, ninjas could blend into the crowd. They acted like either one of the major classes to spy on people. Ninja thus sometimes carried one or two costumes to look like the other classes and kunoichi
Kunoichi
is the term for a female ninja or practitioner of ninjutsu .-Etymology:The term is thought to derive from the names of characters that resemble the three strokes in the kanji character for ; said in the order they are written: ku - no - ichi...

were specialists at Hensojutsu due to the importance of close contact missions.
It also included the art of camouflage, such as mesh covered with leaves, grass, mud, bark etc. It is heavily reliant upon shadows and form manipulation..such as crouching to resemble a rock, twisting to match a bush, and also includes various ways one can "meld" into foliage to virtually disappear.

This is different from other methods in that the ninja needs only to appear like someone else for a short period of time. Ninja typically must learn the character traits of another class quickly and then impersonate the members of that class. For instance, if workers were walking in large numbers toward a worksite, using this skill the ninja observes the worker, copies the same clothing and walking style of the workers, then follows the crowd in just like the other workers. A good ninja ought to be able to impersonate anybody in terms of appearance.

A ninja would often have dark clothes stitched onto the inside of a normal looking peasant's outfit, so that he would simply reverse the clothes and immediately have his camouflage garb. For hiding in brush or bushes, elastic fibers on the ninja's clothes allow for branches and grasses to be attached, helping break up the ninja's outline.

Animal footprints

Part of this was to tie carved wooden pads to the feet to lay tracks of animals or children so the ninja couldn't be tracked easily.Things like birds, wolves and many other animals would have been used.

Tonpo

Hensōjutsu is a sub-category of the "thirty methods of becoming invisible/escape" - it is a part of the - or "Use of People Method of attaining invisibility".
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