A Note on Where I Got My Information

Don't be fooled - the ninja you meet in "Memoirs of a Ninja" are NOTHING like the real thing! Ed the Ninja is a mere product of a hyperactive imagination; Brucie the Ninja would not have survived one full hour in real life; and Xix'ian Ju ... well, maybe that psycho really did exist, somewhere in the 2500 years of ninja history.

I don't claim to know the exact truth about the Japanese Ninja phenomenon, but I got a bunch of fascinating information from my dad back when I was in high school.

Years ago, my father, Jitsuo Hoashi, was working for Shogakukan Publishing in Tokyo. His main schtick was a manga artist, writing and drawing original stories every day. However, he told me that he had lots of other duties, and those occassionally included plain old newspaper reporting.

My dad was assigned to interview a fellow named Toko Fujita. Fujita was, apparantly, one of the last genuine ninja, and wrote several books detailing exactly how these black-pajama-ed archetypes lived.

The following comes mostly from a paper I wrote in college. Hope it enlightens you!

-Keisuke Hoashi

If all you knew about Ninja came from Eastman and Laird's now-passe "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," you'd think Ninja were wisecracking good guys, vigilantes dedicated to fighting evil and eating weird pizzas that would make even Wolfgang Puck puke.

The real ninja would have been shocked at this perversion of their true identity.

Ninja have been known as supernatural assassins for millennia. Tales called them masters of a black magic, able to vanish into empty air or kill a person with a single punch. People swore that they had actually seen ninja running across water, walking on ceilings, or even passing through walls like shadows.

Among the many who have tried to reveal the truth behind the myths is Japanese author Toko Fujita. His books portrayed ninja not as evil, magical beings, but people with incredible physical abilities, trained by what we Americans would call insane fanatics.

Ninja Training: the God's Honest Truth

Only two ninja groups existed (wrote Fujita), the Iga and the Koga groups. No official school for ninja training ever existed, primarily because:

1) Nobody ever volunteered to become a ninja. Every recruit was either born into the life, or was kidnapped into it as an infant boy. 2) The training that Fujita described is so horrifying that even the most rabid martial arts fan would scream like a girl.

For example: every bone in a ninja's body was, ideally, double-jointed. This would allow a ninja to squeeze through impossibly small openings, disengage unexpectedly from any martial arts hold or attack, etc.

But to achieve this ideal fully double-jointed state, the ninja "trainers" would repeatedly yank and crack every bone in a new recruit's body in and out of joint, painfully stretching each ligament past its limit.

Another example: to increase lung capacity, trainers plunged the children into deep pools and held them beneath the surface. Immersions quickly increased to two, four, five minutes.

Clearly, ninja training methods are nothing you'd ever want to pay for! Unless, of course, you enjoy giving your money to people who make Inquisition Priests look like kindergarden teachers.

Ninja Abilities Revealed!

Fujita's also described the means and methods that ninja used to achieve their goals.

To climb a sheer wall: 1) Dampen your ninja socks and a small towel. 2) Tautly stretch the moistened towel between your hands, which you should hold approximately shoulder-width apart. 3) Take a running start towards the wall - spring onto the wall like a spider - immediately stamp the balls of your feet up the facade while seesawing your towel against the wall. 4) Lather, rinse, repeat. (Author's note: I have tried this. I don't recommend that you do, though. Ouch.)

To move unnoticed through an area with no cover:

Know all about a person's natural "blind spots." Know when to move; when to stand still; when to breathe; when you can fool someone into thinking they're not looking right at you; etc. Don't forget your Psych 101! You can make people believe that they're seeing what they EXPECT to see, NOT what is actually there!

To walk on the ceiling:

Houses in feudal Japan consisted mostly of light wooden frameworks on the walls and ceilings. A ninja could grip these between their incredibly strong fingers and toes and actually "walk". (NOTE: this will not work in rooms with plaster, stucco, or acoustic ceilings.)

Ninja Weaponry

A ninja avoided open battle whenever possible. The ninja did not waste time defending himself: he either killed his opponent or, if injured or trapped, instantly killed himself by shoving a dagger up through his jaw, slicing past his tongue and into the base of his brain.

Generally, large weapons like swords were not particularly useful to a ninja. They tended to make too much noise and limited flexibility.

Instead, a ninja armed himself with small, poison-tipped items easily hidden in pockets and sleeves. Common ninja weaponry included shuriken/throwing stars (palm-sized, star-shaped discs of black metal), sewing-needle sized needles, and nagebishi (very much like a child's jacks, but with razor-sharp points). Most of these were tipped with poison to increase their effectiveness. Small daggers and strangling cords completed a ninja's arsenal.

Puny weapons carried devastating advantages. Plunging a tiny,poisoned needle into the back of an unwary samurai's neck caused instant, untraceable death. Whipping a cord around a throat and stabbing from behind killed quietly.

In Conclusion

Ninja were extremely skilled, unimaginably dangerous people to hang out with.

They were unburdened by any codes of honor, making them perfect for various dirty jobs like arson, execution, espionage, terrorism, and most notably, assassination.

They were masters of martial arts that specialized in things like breaking bones (koppo) and in deadly use of their thumbs (yubijutsu). So yeah, they're unbelievably cool - but they were masters of what we Americans consider a dirty, dirty business, with never an eye towards the simple pleasures of sewing Quilts or of singing on Broadway.

Sooooooooooooo ... and now they're the main attraction in the World's First Martial Arts Musical Comedy!

Hope this pages helps you to understand why Ed, Brucie, and Megumi are such incredible heros to emulate!

- Keisuke Hoashi