The Children's Book That Shaped Ninja History

Hatsumi Masaaki's 1964 "Ninja Skills Illustrated"

Cover of Hatsumi Masaaki et al, “Ninja Skills Illustrated: For Kids” (Shōnen no tame no ninja, ninpō gahō) Akiyama Shoten, 1964; this edition, 1977)

I’ve noted previously that ‘ninja’ historians often refuse to follow standard historical practice in citing sources for their claims. Though sometimes hand-waved by saying that the books are for popular readers who don’t care about such things, in practice the refusal to cite proves to be a brilliant way to cover up fabrication, laziness, and use of inappropriate or unreliable sources. After all, if nobody can tell what your source is, it’s that much harder to challenge your claims.

Sometimes, though, it is possible to identify the source for a claim despite the attempts at obfuscation, and the results of that identification often turn out to be pretty embarrassing for the ‘ninja’ writers in question. The above book, Ninja Skills Illustrated: For Kids, is a case in point. It was first published in 1964 by a team of writers mostly supervised by the Japanese ninjutsu instructor Hatsumi Masaaki, who rose to prominence in the early 1960s, riding the wave of emerging interest in the allegedly historical ‘ninja.’

Here You Go, Grasshopper. Read This.

Hatsumi’s vision of the history of ninjutsu would end up becoming extremely influential in the English-speaking world, mostly because he interacted with almost all of the first two generations of ‘ninja’ writers. Donn Draeger and Andrew Adams both worked with him, while Stephen K. Hayes studied ninjutsu directly under Hatsumi, and went on to make a career out of that fact. Kacem Zoughari trained under Hatsumi, and Stephen Turnbull, too, made extensive use of Hatsumi as a source for his allegedly historical accounts of the ‘ninja’ in the 90s and early 2000s. In fact, the foreword to Turnbull’s 1991 Ninja: The True Story of Japan’s Secret Warrior Cult is by Hatsumi, and one of Turnbull’s citations in the book is simply “Personal communication from Hatsumi,” indicating that Turnbull was willing to accept historical claims purely on Hatsumi’s say-so.¹

Where Ninja Skills Illustrated specifically comes in is that when working with a Western writer, Hatsumi seemingly liked to give them a copy of the book to read. Stephen K. Hayes recalls coming across it, for instance:

Tanemura-san spoke. “Hatsumi-sensei has written several books in Japanese. Some deal with philosophy, and others are for children.”

“Do they explain any of the techniques, or the higher powers of the ninja? [LOL - RT] Or how to develop these abilities?”

Hatsumi-sensei looked at me curiously. “No, of course not. This knowledge is not for the public” […]

He handed me a copy of one of his children’s books. It was illustrated with pictures of skulking figures in black outfits that resembled jumpsuits. They were engaged in various types of combat with an incredible assortment of weapons. “This is what the public thinks ninjutsu is, so we humor it […]”²

It seems virtually certain that the “children’s book” Hayes refers to is Ninja Skills Illustrated. Draeger and Turnbull got their own copies, too, and both writers seem to have used it as a primary source, though Hayes seems to have been smart enough not to. The point is easy to prove, as several of the illustrations in Draeger’s best-selling 1971 Ninjutsu are taken from Hatsumi’s 1964 book, as I pointed out several months ago:

Left: Draeger, Ninjutsu, p. 99; right, Hatsumi et al., Ninja Skills Illustrated, p. 111.

Turnbull’s 1991 Secret Warrior Cult used Ninja Skills Illustrated as a source, as can be seen from its end-notes and bibliography:

Turnbull, Secret Warrior Cult (1991), p. 154.

Secret Warrior Cult, p. 153.

Turnbull was still using it twelve years later in his 2003 Ninja: AD 1460-1650, as is obvious from the similarities in the illustrations:

Left: Turnbull, Ninja: AD 1460-1650, p. 33/‘A’; right, Hatsumi, p. 31.

So, look - no serious historian should be using a children’s book as his sole primary source for historical information. That goes without saying. There’s nothing wrong with using a children’s book to guide your research, say if you first come across a story in one, and you then do the work to track down the original source - that’s all above board. Neither Turnbull nor Draeger did that, though; instead, both of them took stories and information from Hatsumi’s book and presented that to their readers with little or no attempt to verify it themselves.

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’re probably beyond the point of being shocked by this sort of thing. Instead of laboring the point, I think it’s more interesting to take a closer look at the content of Ninja Skills Illustrated, since it is basically the unacknowledged source for, like, a quarter of all claims about the ‘ninja’ between 1971 and 2003 or so.

Big Wheel Keep on Turnin’

One notable section of Ninja Skills Illustrated is “The Ninja’s New Weapons,” supposedly a collection of siege devices created and deployed during the Warring States period.³ Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the “Big Wheel” (daisharin):

Hatsumi et al, Ninja Skills Illustrated, pp. 108-109. Illustration credited to Itō Kikuzō 伊藤幾久造 (1901-1985).

This, apparently, would be used on sloping ground to roll down the hill and ambush the enemy from above. The tricky bit, I assume, is getting them up the hill in the first place.

There’s also the “Stone-Thrower Wagon” (tōtekisha), a bloody great wrecking ball for smashing in the gate of a castle. I had been under the impression that ‘ninja’ were specialists in stealth, but perhaps I misunderstood:

Hatsumi et al, pp. 114-15. Illustration by Itō Kikuzō.

And we also have the “Water-Wheel Volley Gun” (renpatsu suisha hō):

Hatsumi et al, Ninja Skills Illustrated, pp. 102-103. Illustration credited to Itō Kikuzō.

The idea is that the wheel rotates, allowing each successive gunner to fire in turn from the top of the arc. I’m not entirely sure what the advantage of doing that is over just firing normally, to be honest, but then I’m not a ‘ninja’ master.

So. I’m going to go out on a limb here.

I think some of these might be made-up.

I’m not alone, because this section was too much for even Turnbull to swallow:

[I]t would be incorrect to conclude this chapter without mentioning certain of the so-called ninja inventions which Hatsumi includes in his book for children. I am convinced that Hatsumi had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he dreamed up these crazy machines, and I am sure he is as amused as I am to see more recent books on ninjutsu mention these as gospel truth without any question as to their authenticity. […] [emphasis mine - RT]

There is…a rather good variation on the battering-ram which is almost identical to a modern wrecking-ball. The nice thing about this one is that it would of course work, though stability would have been a problem…⁴

A few points stand out here. One is that Turnbull was clearly aware that Ninja Skills Illustrated was a book for children when he chose to make use of it. Another point is that Turnbull’s attempted explanation for the presence of these ‘war machines’ in Hatsumi’s book is quite revealing of the mess that Turnbull got himself into by relying on Hatsumi as a source. Being a reasonably intelligent adult, Turnbull can see that, at least as far as the ‘ninja war machines’ go, Hatsumi has a penchant for simply making shit up. But Turnbull also seems reluctant to follow that thought to its logical conclusion, that Hatsumi cannot be trusted as a source for historical information about the ‘ninja,’ because if he does conclude that then a good part of the book he’s writing is going to go up in smoke.

The ‘out’ is to assume that Hatsumi must have been joking around when he put this stuff in his book. But Turnbull isn’t entirely certain of his conclusion; the phrasing “I am convinced” and “I am sure” suggests that he hadn’t asked Hatsumi directly. For what it’s worth, there’s no clear indication in Ninja Skills Illustrated itself that Hatsumi is playing around; the war machines are presented in exactly the same way as all of the other supposed ‘facts’ about the historical ‘ninja.’

I also want to note the passage ending “More recent books on ninjutsu mention these as gospel truth”?

So, class, who do we think Turnbull might have been sub-tweeting here?

Give you three guesses:

Ninja ingenuity was responsible for the renpatsu suisha ho (repeating watermill gun), a device used to ascend to advantageous heights above a besieged castle’s walls and deliver a volley of deadly gunfire or bombs. […]

Ninja operated the toteki sha (throw wheel) against besieged positions. It was a battering ram designed to flatten walls, gates, and other structures of the enemy. A huge and heavy rock slung on a cable from a projecting arm on a moveable base was hauled back with a rope, then released to swing with great force against the chosen target. […]

An enemy position located in a deep and large valley could be invaded with terrifying speed and effect by means of the daisharin (big wheel). The daisharin was a cart that rolled on huge wooden wheels. Between the wheels rested a small cupola fitted with portholes through which the ninja could fire cannons and small arms, or toss bombs…even if the warriors avoided the fusillade of fire, the heavy masses of the carts themselves were sure to crush substantial numbers of men, horses, and equipment.⁵

Oh, Donn.

Was Hatsumi Simply Trolling?

So yeah. If you’ve ever wondered how and why ‘ninja’ history ended up being such an unholy mess, Ninja Skills Illustrated is a big part of the answer: Three of the four best-selling ‘ninja’ books published in English between 1971 and 2003 were using a children’s book as a major source of historical information.⁶ A children’s book, too, where entire sections were discernible as fantasy to any moderately critical reader.

Obviously, as I’ve noted previously, the use of a children’s book as a major source reveals some very unflattering things about Turnbull and Draeger’s approach to writing history. But I’m moved to say that Hatsumi himself doesn’t come off that well either. It’s one thing to write a children’s book for entertainment purposes - you do you, bro. But the fact is that Draeger and Turnbull both came to Hatsumi with an apparent good-faith interest in the ‘ninja,’ and he gave them a children’s book filled with fanciful bullshit. That suggests a certain fundamental lack of seriousness on Hatsumi’s part, and I’m also not sure what it says about how seriously he took the two authors as researchers.

As we now know, Draeger swallowed the book’s contents hook, line, and sinker, and the result was to the lasting detriment of English-language ‘ninja’ studies. Turnbull, for his part, seems to have been uncertain what to make of Hatsumi’s book. He obviously realized that some of it was fantasy, but also that he couldn’t afford to ditch the book’s contents entirely, so he seems to have rationalized the whole thing by concluding that surely Master Hatsumi was just joking. Perhaps Turnbull believed himself to be sufficiently savvy to pick out which bits in Ninja Skills Illustrated were history and which were fiction. If he thought that, though, he was dead wrong, because the finished product of his 1991 book proves very clearly that he couldn’t. Turnbull would in the event end up presenting several of Ninja Skills Illustrated’s fictional stories to his readers as historical fact. This includes one which the book itself says is fiction and another where he seems to have edited the story slightly to remove its obviously fantastical elements. So like Draeger, Turnbull made the mistake of taking Hatsumi seriously and embarrassed himself as a result.

Neither Draeger nor Turnbull were well served here, but the account that really rubs me the wrong way is Hayes’. The conversation Hayes recounts has some really manipulative vibes to it, like the ninjutsu instructors are trying to flatter Hayes by telling him that of course all that stuff in the children’s books isn’t the true ninjutsu, that’s just what we tell the proles. We saved the true power for you, because you’re special. The whole dynamic also reminds me of a certain form of trolling, like where someone posts a whole bunch of ludicrous claims and then when challenged is like, “Oh, you didn’t think I was serious, did you? Chill, bro, don’t be so uptight.” To say nothing of the vibes of Hatsumi giving a bunch of grown men, all of whom could read Japanese, a children’s book to play with.

So Draeger doesn’t seem to have recognized Hatsumi’s fabulist tendencies at all, while Turnbull and Hayes did on some level. With the latter two, a remarkable level of effort then seems to have gone into explaining away a relatively simple fact, that Hatsumi had a habit of making claims about the historical ‘ninja’ that were not just unsupported but implausible on their face. The more obvious and straightforward conclusion, and the one both men seem to have tried to avoid, was that Hatsumi was utterly unreliable as a source of historical information about basically anything.

When it comes to ‘ninja’ history, it’s not just that it’s awful history; in many cases the sociology of why it’s so bad proves to be just as interesting, if not more so.

Anyway, for the next post let’s stay with Ninja Skills Illustrated and consider another fascinating aspect of the book, which is how heavily it’s leaning on 20th century works of fiction to make its case for the historical ‘ninja.’

Oh, also:

1. This is regarding the claim that the classic ‘ninja’ hood was actually deep red so that bleeding wounds would not be obvious and the ‘ninja’ would appear to be invulnerable. The sole cited source for this claim is “Personal communication from Hatsumi.” Turnbull, Secret Warrior Cult, p. 153.

2. Stephen K. Hayes, Ninja and Their Secret Fighting Art (Tuttle, 1981), p. 46.

3. Ninja shinheiki 忍者新兵器.

4. Turnbull, Secret Warrior Cult, p. 106.

5. Donn Draeger, Ninjutsu: The Art of Invisibility (1971; my copy, 1989), pp. 100-101.

6. The three would be Turnbull 1991 and 2003, and Draeger’s 1971 Ninjutsu. The fourth best-seller is Andrew Adams’ Ninja: The Invisible Assassins (1970), which as far as I can tell doesn’t use Ninja Skills Illustrated.