Found this site from your appearance on Bullshido and immediately fell in love - I've wanted to do a musical project thematically centered on questionable Western mythologizing of the Ninja for a while (but held off due to wanting a more academic understanding of the phenomenon) and this is a valuable resource on said mythologizing. In that spirit, what would you recommend as a "reading list" for the worst of junk Ninja mythology? Obviously a lot of it is actual, undisguised fiction like movies and video games, but surely there are specific works that show up in the libraries of every American with a knockoff katana. Many, I imagine, are in the Tuttle catalog.
Hi Ethan, thanks for the comment. It's good to know I'm not shouting into the void.
A worst of the worst? Well, if you really want the pure junk mythology stuff you have to start with Ashida Kim's stuff (start here: https://peterhuston.substack.com/p/ashida-kim-bizarre-how-to-be-a-ninja?utm_source=publication-search) which is barely even tethered to reality. I haven't written very much about him because my impression is that absolutely nobody takes him seriously, but if you really want the "worst of the junk," then have at it.
More seemingly respectably, I think almost every ninja writer has Andrew Adams' 1970 Ninja: The Invisible Assassins - it seems to be viewed as the oldest and most authoritative book on the topic, even though it's absolute garbage. Donn Draeger's 1971 Ninjutsu is close behind, then as we get into the 1980s Stephen K. Hayes takes over. He's got five or six books during the 80s, I think, so you can take your pick. Finally we get Turnbull's 1991 Secret Warrior Cult, although that doesn't seem to have sold as well as his 2003 Ninja: AD 1460-1650. That gets you most of the major names in the field, I think, unless you also want to include Zoughari's 2010 work I've been discussing.
Kind of a tangent (and probably a whole can of worms): In terms of the Japanese language, to what extent has it evolved over time? For scholars of the Bible and Greek classics, for example, have to deal with source material in ancient Hebrew and Greek that I understand is different than the modern spoken versions. (Some of us struggle even with Shakespearean English 🤣) In other words do non-native Japanese speakers have that extra hurdle to correctly understanding historical documents? You know, even when they’re not plagiarizing or outright making stuff up?
It's significantly different. Classical Japanese (loosely defined as the written language commonly used in Japan until about 1900 or so) has much more complicated structures of grammar than modern Japanese, to give just one example, and often uses very different idiom, syntax, etc. To add to the complexity, it's also the case that a lot of official or formal documents were written in kanbun, which is basically classical Chinese adapted for use in Japan, rather like how European scribes might use Latin. So ideally to do premodern research you'd also have at least some familiarity with classical Chinese as well.
All of this definitely requires specific study of the language systems involved, and yes, it is a hurdle for potential researchers. That's before you even get to dealing with handwritten documents, which present a whole other layer of complexity (and which I freely admit I am not that good at).
To get at the subtext of your question, I think this is a large part of the reason why many 'ninja' researchers seem so reluctant to work with primary sources - at least some of them can't read the language they're written in. If I recall correctly, even Minami Yoshie, the Japanese writer who worked with Anthony Cummins on the English-language translation of the 'ninja manual' Bansen shukai, didn't use the original; instead she used a translation someone else had prepped into modern Japanese.
TBH I have never quite understood why people who don't know Japanese and don't know history seem to be convinced they can still write books about Japanese history...
I mean, you could frame this as one of those interminable "death of expertise" think pieces, but this isn't a field where there's an established academic/expert consensus that pop readers don't accept. The actual experts have basically ignored the 'ninja' field entirely, so that model doesn't necessarily fit.
I had, by this point, expected to get some nasty emails about how I just didn't understand the true spirit of the ninja because I haven't trained in THE REAL NINJUTSU, but nothing so far.
I never liked the Ninja Tuttles
well played, sir
Found this site from your appearance on Bullshido and immediately fell in love - I've wanted to do a musical project thematically centered on questionable Western mythologizing of the Ninja for a while (but held off due to wanting a more academic understanding of the phenomenon) and this is a valuable resource on said mythologizing. In that spirit, what would you recommend as a "reading list" for the worst of junk Ninja mythology? Obviously a lot of it is actual, undisguised fiction like movies and video games, but surely there are specific works that show up in the libraries of every American with a knockoff katana. Many, I imagine, are in the Tuttle catalog.
Hi Ethan, thanks for the comment. It's good to know I'm not shouting into the void.
A worst of the worst? Well, if you really want the pure junk mythology stuff you have to start with Ashida Kim's stuff (start here: https://peterhuston.substack.com/p/ashida-kim-bizarre-how-to-be-a-ninja?utm_source=publication-search) which is barely even tethered to reality. I haven't written very much about him because my impression is that absolutely nobody takes him seriously, but if you really want the "worst of the junk," then have at it.
More seemingly respectably, I think almost every ninja writer has Andrew Adams' 1970 Ninja: The Invisible Assassins - it seems to be viewed as the oldest and most authoritative book on the topic, even though it's absolute garbage. Donn Draeger's 1971 Ninjutsu is close behind, then as we get into the 1980s Stephen K. Hayes takes over. He's got five or six books during the 80s, I think, so you can take your pick. Finally we get Turnbull's 1991 Secret Warrior Cult, although that doesn't seem to have sold as well as his 2003 Ninja: AD 1460-1650. That gets you most of the major names in the field, I think, unless you also want to include Zoughari's 2010 work I've been discussing.
Kind of a tangent (and probably a whole can of worms): In terms of the Japanese language, to what extent has it evolved over time? For scholars of the Bible and Greek classics, for example, have to deal with source material in ancient Hebrew and Greek that I understand is different than the modern spoken versions. (Some of us struggle even with Shakespearean English 🤣) In other words do non-native Japanese speakers have that extra hurdle to correctly understanding historical documents? You know, even when they’re not plagiarizing or outright making stuff up?
It's significantly different. Classical Japanese (loosely defined as the written language commonly used in Japan until about 1900 or so) has much more complicated structures of grammar than modern Japanese, to give just one example, and often uses very different idiom, syntax, etc. To add to the complexity, it's also the case that a lot of official or formal documents were written in kanbun, which is basically classical Chinese adapted for use in Japan, rather like how European scribes might use Latin. So ideally to do premodern research you'd also have at least some familiarity with classical Chinese as well.
All of this definitely requires specific study of the language systems involved, and yes, it is a hurdle for potential researchers. That's before you even get to dealing with handwritten documents, which present a whole other layer of complexity (and which I freely admit I am not that good at).
To get at the subtext of your question, I think this is a large part of the reason why many 'ninja' researchers seem so reluctant to work with primary sources - at least some of them can't read the language they're written in. If I recall correctly, even Minami Yoshie, the Japanese writer who worked with Anthony Cummins on the English-language translation of the 'ninja manual' Bansen shukai, didn't use the original; instead she used a translation someone else had prepped into modern Japanese.
TBH I have never quite understood why people who don't know Japanese and don't know history seem to be convinced they can still write books about Japanese history...
To be honest there are many things that some Americans are “experts” about despite having no knowledge whatsoever. 😏
I mean, you could frame this as one of those interminable "death of expertise" think pieces, but this isn't a field where there's an established academic/expert consensus that pop readers don't accept. The actual experts have basically ignored the 'ninja' field entirely, so that model doesn't necessarily fit.
I had, by this point, expected to get some nasty emails about how I just didn't understand the true spirit of the ninja because I haven't trained in THE REAL NINJUTSU, but nothing so far.