Are you considering taking on Yamada Fūtarō's 1959 Kōka ninpōchō 甲賀忍法帖? There is some weird female ninja *jutsu* in there as well :-) (I wonder if that is the book that created the Iga vs. Koga rivalry image)
That wound up as Basilisk, didn't it? That's almost the only YF work that made it into English if I recall correctly, so it could be fun to cover the anime or manga versions.
I do plan to write a possible academic article on YF's work at some point, because he's almost completely unknown in Western academia - I had never heard of him until 2019, and my PhD is literally in modern Japanese literature. I have three or four of his novels, but he was extremely prolific - something like 20 ninja novels in a decade - so covering him in full detail would be quite the undertaking. Maybe a PhD dissertation for some promising grad student?
Modern Japanese literary studies certainly deserve for him to be included. I had a student write a bachelor's thesis on Kōga Ninpōchō (sorry for the typo in the previous comment), as it was one of the first literary works on ninja to be widely read after the Tatsukawa Bunko era (before the 1960s), when the "men in black" lore hadn't yet solidified. However, there aren't many actual descriptions in it. I suppose that's because it predates the "scientific" approach to ninja (around 1962?).
Basilisk, I’d say, is already influenced by the post-1960s ninja canon, but there's still enough magic left—like the kunoichi who sucks blood or bodily fluids through her victims' skin :-)
Are you considering taking on Yamada Fūtarō's 1959 Kōka ninpōchō 甲賀忍法帖? There is some weird female ninja *jutsu* in there as well :-) (I wonder if that is the book that created the Iga vs. Koga rivalry image)
That wound up as Basilisk, didn't it? That's almost the only YF work that made it into English if I recall correctly, so it could be fun to cover the anime or manga versions.
I do plan to write a possible academic article on YF's work at some point, because he's almost completely unknown in Western academia - I had never heard of him until 2019, and my PhD is literally in modern Japanese literature. I have three or four of his novels, but he was extremely prolific - something like 20 ninja novels in a decade - so covering him in full detail would be quite the undertaking. Maybe a PhD dissertation for some promising grad student?
Modern Japanese literary studies certainly deserve for him to be included. I had a student write a bachelor's thesis on Kōga Ninpōchō (sorry for the typo in the previous comment), as it was one of the first literary works on ninja to be widely read after the Tatsukawa Bunko era (before the 1960s), when the "men in black" lore hadn't yet solidified. However, there aren't many actual descriptions in it. I suppose that's because it predates the "scientific" approach to ninja (around 1962?).
Basilisk, I’d say, is already influenced by the post-1960s ninja canon, but there's still enough magic left—like the kunoichi who sucks blood or bodily fluids through her victims' skin :-)
Yamada is certainly worth looking into.