I think this (in the interview) is really interesting: そもそも忍術が、映像化するには無理のあるものばかりなのです。 [Afterall, ‘ninjutsu’ is mostly about things you just can’t make to get on screen.] (my poor alternative translation) This shows, what Nakajima considered - and still does - to be ‘ninjutsu’. If it was ‘just a martial art’ he wouldn’t think so, I guess. Perhaps, Hokusai felt something similar when drawing ‘ninjutsu’ as one of the Bugei 18pan…
Yeah, precisely. The fact that Nakajima talks about ninjutsu in the context of the film special effects available is very revealing of what he thought ninjutsu was. Contrast that with Shinobi no mono two years earlier, which *does* envision ninjutsu as a physical martial art but which, judging by its critical reception, was seen as unusual.
I think this (in the interview) is really interesting: そもそも忍術が、映像化するには無理のあるものばかりなのです。 [Afterall, ‘ninjutsu’ is mostly about things you just can’t make to get on screen.] (my poor alternative translation) This shows, what Nakajima considered - and still does - to be ‘ninjutsu’. If it was ‘just a martial art’ he wouldn’t think so, I guess. Perhaps, Hokusai felt something similar when drawing ‘ninjutsu’ as one of the Bugei 18pan…
Yeah, precisely. The fact that Nakajima talks about ninjutsu in the context of the film special effects available is very revealing of what he thought ninjutsu was. Contrast that with Shinobi no mono two years earlier, which *does* envision ninjutsu as a physical martial art but which, judging by its critical reception, was seen as unusual.