Mochizuki Chiyome

Mochizuki Chiyome (Japanese: 望月千代女) is a female ninja. Although some non-academic books claim the existence of her, her name has appeared only after 1971; in a book "考証日本史"("Investigation of Japanese history") written by non-academic writer Shisei Inagaki (Japanese: 稲垣史生) in 1971^Y17.

In this book, Inagaki

1. describes the details of the 4th Battles of Kawanakajima^Y17
2. claims that Moritoki Mochizuki was a husband of Chiyome and he was died at this Battle^Y17
3. presents a historical written permission to Chiyome issued by Shingen Takeda and claims that, due to this permission, the "Miko-village" emerged ^Y17 .
4. claims that Mikoes of the village became spies^Y17
5. claims that Chiyome then became a ninja.

However, Katuya Yoshimaru, an associate professor of Mie University who studies Japanese Edo period literature and ninja, says Chiyome did not exist actually and he points out the erroneous points of Inagaki's book:

1. There is no historical document describing the details of this battle^Y17
2. Moritoki did not die in this battle^Y17
3. This written permission is not extant^Y17. Generally speaking, most of such kind of written permissions are forged ones^Y17
4. Spy activities of Mikoes is groundless; it is based only on guess of Inagaki^Y17
5. This is groundless as well. Although Inagaki refers History of Japanese Miko (Japanese: 日本巫女史), 1930, written by Taro Nakayama (Japanese: 中山太郎), this book says nothing about ninja^Y17; all descriptions about ninja first appear in Inagaki's book.

The name of Chiyome became popular in 1991 by a two-page article about her "biography" on a special issue titled Extraordinary special issue "All the definitive types of ninja" (Japanese: 臨時増刊号『決定版「忍者」の全て』) of the magazine History Reader (Japanese: 歴史読本). ^Y17 This article said that Chiyome was a upper ninja Japanese: 上忍(but historically, there is no rank of "upper ninja" in a ninja's hierarchy^Y17.