4.1 Ninjutsu as a martial art and Ninja we imagine


Questionnaire 4.1: Before you start reading 4.1, please answer the questionnaire from the link in
bellow. The questionnaire is equivalent to one attendance.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffb9DkalPJqR8huaoeGuWFUv_X_F8lUpufHhq14KWBYl-0qQ/viewform
?usp=sf_link


So far, we have seen how the Japanese martial arts itself and its disciplines such as Judō and
Karate had changed under the influence of historical events, social situations, and some reformers.

The topic of this week, Ninjutsu/Ninja, had greatly changed in time but in a quite unique way than
the other disciplines.

Probably, the most popular Ninja character would be Naruto who knows how to use his chakra to make
his doppelgangers and control a fire, water, and a soil, etc.


Figure 1 The cover of Naruto, vol.I (by Kishimoto Tadashi, (2000), Shueisha Publishing : Tokyo) Do
 you recognise the similarity between Figure 1 and some of the illustrations in Questionnaire 4.1?


But it was not that Ninjutsu really enabled one to do something like Naruto. Such imagination was
developed apart from the actual history, in the representations of popular culture in Edo period.

First, let’s take a look at the modern history of Ninjutsu/Ninja and feel their discrepancy.


It sounds very rational and understandable for us that Jujutsu and Kenjutsu was taught in the
Imperial Military Schools of Japan. (Jujutsu/Kenjutsu was written as “-jutsu” and not as “-dō” in
the curriculum which I’m mentioning (Figure 2). It’s already suggestive, isn’t it?)

But doesn’t it surprise you to know Ninjutsu was also seriously taught in Imperial Japanese
Military School in Nakano (Tokyo) (hereby, the Nakano School) which was specialised in training for
military intelligence before WWII?


 Figure 2 Photograph of the Nakano School from Rikugun Nakano Gakko (ed. Alumni Association of the
                           Nakano School, 1978, Hara Publishing: Tokyo)


The Nakano School which was one of the two secret organization of Imperial Japanese army (another
one was 731 troop which dealt with bioweapons) had produced a number of secret agents and agents
specialized in guerrilla tactics from 1938 to 1945, and Ninjutsu was taught for the first three
years of the school.

According to the curriculum of the Nakano School, Ninjutsu course was categorised differently from
other martial arts. The course was taught in classroom as a lecture and not in a dōjō, and the main
topic was about the mindset of Ninja (in the same category, legal medicine can be found in the next
to Ninjutsu).


   Figure 3 A curriculum of the Nakano School in 1940. The lecture was planned for one day (120
  minutes), but it turned out for three days (800 minutes)(the whole book is available from here
          (written in Japanese): https://www.jacar.archives.go.jp/aj/meta/MetSearch.cgi )


The lecturer Fujita Seiko (1898-1966) was the 14^th successor of Kōga-ryu Ninjutsu along with other
combative skills (of course, shuriken skill is found among them!) as a descendant of Oniwaban-shu
which was a Ninja troop served for the shogunate.

He had published two books on medicine and a book on spiritualism before the opening of the Nakano
School, and the books on Ninjutsu was published after the opening of the school.

Just like Kanō Jigorō modernized Jujutsu to Judō by making it suitable for education use, Fujita
also wished to make Ninjutsu a working knowledge by sharing some secret lessons of Ninja as a
necessary education for military intelligence.

  Figure 4 Photograph of Fujita Seiko from his autograph Saigo no Ninja Doronron (The Last Ninja
                                    Doronron) published in 1958


In Fujita’s early works on Ninjutsu, Ninjutsu toha (What is Ninjutsu) published in 1938 and
Ninjutsu kara Supai-jutsu he (From Ninjtsu to Spy-jutsu) published in 1942, he repeatedly denied
that Ninjutsu is not about transforming into a rat, a dragon, or a toad, or making the hand signs
to brow a fire or do something supernatural, and it had never been such kinds.

He explained the techniques of Ninjutsu should be used to explore a target location and grasp
essential information like geography, economic system and nationality, and in wartime, to agitate
the targeted people’s mind.

Because Fujita wished to exhibit Ninjutsu as something scientific and logical like the spy
techniques of the West, to deny the supernatural fantasies over Ninjutsu as “grotesque” was
necessary.

And instead, he defined Ninjutsu as a Japanese spy technique which resembled to the one in the
West, however with a spirit of Bushidō which, in Fujita’s definition, doesn’t allow one to
surrender even when he/she knows their defeats.


The fact that Fujita had to mention such fantasies over Ninjutsu/Ninja each time shows how such
super natural image of it were wide spread and had a power over the people’s image in the 1930s.


In the next section, we’ll look over the trajectory of Ninjustu/Ninja from the medieval Japan.