Shinobi

The Shinobi or the Shinobi-No-Mono are units available to the Japanese in the Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties expansion. They have strong ranged and siege attacks, along with the ability to use stealth. Shinobi are recruited from the Consulate with the Japanese Isolation feature. The Shinobi costs and takes up 1 population slot.

Historical background
The word "Shinobi" translates to mean "one skilled in the art of ninjutsu" better known as the art of stealth. They were peasantry with no social status, and yet they were highly sought after by daimyo and other officials for their skill. They specialised as scouts or spies, gathering vital reconnaissance information for their paymasters.

The Shinobi are often misrepresented in popular culture as shrouded in a black garb, supposedly to help them blend into the darkness, although it was more likely that they were dressed in the what was essentially day-to-day dress of Japanese in the 15th century: scraps of head covering, fragments of samurai armour, and the jika-tabi, a split-toed footwear design that provided improved wall-gripping and climbing, all in absolute silence.