Hello, in this post you refer to Ninjutsu to yōjutsu (1909) as the first book to propose that ninja had real magic powers. In fact the first book to do this was Senjutsu to ninjutsu (1901), which Ninjutsu to yōjutsu was probably imitating. Senjutsu to ninjutsu has helpfully been translated for us by Eric Shahan and is available on Kindle -- the translation is good enough for most purposes, seeing as the book is mostly nonsense. Shahan tries to identify its author, but gets it wrong. The real author had concealed motives which he did not discuss in the text of Senjutsu to ninjutsu and are instead found in his other publications. I will be discussing this in a forthcoming volume under contract for Palgrave.
This is completely my personal impression, but I have the sense that Japanese audiences see the ninja more as kind of folkloric and magic heroes, not necessarily as the real-world ruthless killers they appeared as to Western audiences from the 80s onward. My guess is there're two reasons for that; one is anti-Japan sentiment in the US during the 80s (ninja were a useful boogeyman), and the other is that Bujinkan or its affiliates were involved in the dissemination of most of what Western audiences read about ninja between about 1960 and 2010, and they stressed the assassin/trained warrior thing a lot. By contrast I don't think Bujinkan's influence is anything like as strong within Japan itself.
Hello, in this post you refer to Ninjutsu to yōjutsu (1909) as the first book to propose that ninja had real magic powers. In fact the first book to do this was Senjutsu to ninjutsu (1901), which Ninjutsu to yōjutsu was probably imitating. Senjutsu to ninjutsu has helpfully been translated for us by Eric Shahan and is available on Kindle -- the translation is good enough for most purposes, seeing as the book is mostly nonsense. Shahan tries to identify its author, but gets it wrong. The real author had concealed motives which he did not discuss in the text of Senjutsu to ninjutsu and are instead found in his other publications. I will be discussing this in a forthcoming volume under contract for Palgrave.
Fascinating. I stand corrected. I’ll look forward to reading the book when it comes out - can you share any more information?
Kishimoto : make ninjutsu magic again
This is completely my personal impression, but I have the sense that Japanese audiences see the ninja more as kind of folkloric and magic heroes, not necessarily as the real-world ruthless killers they appeared as to Western audiences from the 80s onward. My guess is there're two reasons for that; one is anti-Japan sentiment in the US during the 80s (ninja were a useful boogeyman), and the other is that Bujinkan or its affiliates were involved in the dissemination of most of what Western audiences read about ninja between about 1960 and 2010, and they stressed the assassin/trained warrior thing a lot. By contrast I don't think Bujinkan's influence is anything like as strong within Japan itself.
First you ruin ninjas, now you spoil wizards too? 😩 Next you’ll tell us time travel isn’t real either (or maybe you already have).
I'm pretty sure time travel is real. At least, I feel like I'm living through the 1890s a lot of the time lately.