[Asen_G]

Originally Posted by OldSam

And you wrote: "In fact, shuriken were known as a samurai weapon more than anything"...also a dangerous quote I'd say...

The text-statement that "...authors have also wrongly designated weapons often used by samurai - such as the shuriken and kusarigama - 'ninja weapons' - ..."
does not automatically lead to the conclusion that these were known a lot... Actually I would argue the other way around that it is maybe more likely that they were not known very much because in fact several authors did not know about them and wrote wrong stuff...
Though it is of course correct what is written in the book that they were 'many' samurai using these weapons. Unfortunately there is no statement or given source that tells us how many samurai really used this weapons in relation to the standard-weapons like katana, naginata, yari etc. (which is probably hard to say).

Actually, here is a link that states clearly samourai were using shuriken-jutsu, since it is studied in the oldest bu-jutsu school. It is just that ninja made more use of them, because on the battlefield, a bushi would prefer using a bow and arrows (and would have themreadily available), but for secrete operations, shuriken are definitely better, I'd imagine.
I expect the book to be a good one, if the author found this kind of informartion, but alas, I haven't got it yet!