Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we're back with part four of our series
Speaker 3: on the Ninja. Now, if you haven't heard the previous
Speaker 3: three episodes, you should probably go back and check those
Speaker 3: out first, but for a brief refresher. In the previous parts,
Speaker 3: we talked about the origins of the term ninja and
Speaker 3: its functional equivalent shinobi nomono, meaning a person who practices sneaking, secrecy,
Speaker 3: invisibility or in an alternate reading patience, or endurance. We
Speaker 3: talked about the alleged historical origins of the shinobi nomono
Speaker 3: as practitioners of espionage and undercover warfare in Singoku era Japan,
Speaker 3: which covered parts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
Speaker 3: was characterized by frequent up risings in civil wars. But
Speaker 3: we also discussed the complicated historical question of to what
Speaker 3: extent the people who practiced spying, sabotage, and sneak attacks
Speaker 3: during this period can actually be said to connect to
Speaker 3: the modern literary archetype of the ninja. Which has evolved
Speaker 3: over several centuries and is almost certainly composed in large
Speaker 3: part of legendary development and invented tradition. We talked, especially
Speaker 3: in the first part of this series, about how the
Speaker 3: ninja entered international pop culture in the twentieth century and
Speaker 3: the characteristics of the pop culture ninja and how those
Speaker 3: don't really match up with much of even the historical,
Speaker 3: legendary version of the ninja. We talked about some individual
Speaker 3: shinobi warriors from legend and history, including stories of ninja
Speaker 3: esque sorcerers who could ride on spectral toads, and in
Speaker 3: the last episode, we talked about some of the fantastic
Speaker 3: tools and techniques described in popular ninjitsu annuals that were
Speaker 3: compiled and published beginning in the seventeenth century, including everything
Speaker 3: from the use of gunpowder and pharmacology to the so
Speaker 3: called water spider device that would I don't allow you
Speaker 3: to do something in water questions remain that's right.
Speaker 2: And so this is we're back here for the final installment,
Speaker 2: Part four, and as is often the case with our series,
Speaker 2: part four is kind of and the rest. So we're
Speaker 2: gonna have examples of content that match up with everything
Speaker 2: we just highlighted from the previous episodes, So like a
Speaker 2: little bit more of everything we've been talking about, I
Speaker 2: think getting into some I know some things that were
Speaker 2: probably you know, pinging in your mind as you listen
Speaker 2: to the first three, like when are they going to
Speaker 2: talk about throwing stars?
Speaker 3: That's right. One of the inanimate objects most closely associated
Speaker 3: with the ninja in modern movies and storytelling is the
Speaker 3: shuriken at the throwing star aka the ninja star.
Speaker 2: This is, of course one of the big ninja weapons
Speaker 2: of pop culture, and one of the things is just
Speaker 2: instantly attractive about the ninja that you can't help but
Speaker 2: want to throw a shuri can at somebody or at
Speaker 2: the wall. Even when when my family when we were
Speaker 2: in Japan, one of the hotels that we stayed at
Speaker 2: in Tokyo had a ninja theme and when your families
Speaker 2: were checking in, they would give the kids like pretend
Speaker 2: suri can to throw at a target on the wall.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was reading about how shurican ranges are like
Speaker 3: a common stop on sort of like ninja tourist offerings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so literally it basically means a blade in
Speaker 2: the hand, and yeah, these are typically depicted in Japanese
Speaker 2: ninja media as something you sling out rapid fire, like
Speaker 2: kind of like you're dealing cards, throwing cards or something,
Speaker 2: while a lot of Western ninja tails tend to present
Speaker 2: them as these kind of deadly one shots. I think
Speaker 2: we've all seen movie in which a ninja throws a
Speaker 2: shuri can and it gets somebody right in the forehead
Speaker 2: and somehow kills them dead.
Speaker 3: Rob correct me if you have a different impression. But
Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of ninja movies emphasize a
Speaker 3: theme with the shura can that's almost like in fact,
Speaker 3: you mention another Western movie that that borrows from a
Speaker 3: Japanese origin, in The Magnificent Seven, there's that scene where
Speaker 3: there's you know, James Coburn brings a knife to a
Speaker 3: gunfight and he beats the gunfighter by throwing the knife
Speaker 3: faster than the gunfighter can draw his gun. Of course
Speaker 3: that movie is based on seven Samurai originally, but but
Speaker 3: there is I think a similar thing going on with
Speaker 3: the shura can in a lot of these movies. It's
Speaker 3: like the Blade the bladed Star beats technology every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it helps to have those rapid fire cuts too,
Speaker 2: because of course the way you typically do a knife
Speaker 2: throw or a sura can throw in cinema, is you
Speaker 2: just like cut two or pan over to where the
Speaker 2: fake sure kin, the fake blade is already stuck in
Speaker 2: the person, so you know it's lightning fast. It's like bam,
Speaker 2: there it is. It's like magically appeared in their forehead.
Speaker 3: Now, I think we mentioned in a previous episode. If not,
Speaker 3: I'll go ahead and mention now that one thing that
Speaker 3: is quite surprising is that shuriken actually do not feature
Speaker 3: in any of the classic ninjusu manuals that we were
Speaker 3: talking about from beginning in the seventeenth century in the
Speaker 3: last episode. Though that doesn't mean they did not exist
Speaker 3: at all. There are some historical artifacts that can sort
Speaker 3: of fit in this box. It's just that historically, until
Speaker 3: I'll get to this in a minute, until basically the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, they were not particularly associated with ninja or shinobi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting to sort of tease to the
Speaker 2: history of like just the weapon itself. I was reading
Speaker 2: about this in Heroko Yoda and matt Alt's Ninja Attack,
Speaker 2: which again is an excellent little illustrated book that covers
Speaker 2: all these highlights. But they point out that not all
Speaker 2: of these various designs of the shurican that we do
Speaker 2: have would have been thrown. Some of them were simply
Speaker 2: small handheld blades. And that's interesting too, because in ninja media,
Speaker 2: I can't think of an example of anyone doing anything
Speaker 2: with a shurcan other than throw it. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't think I've ever seen anybody like whittle with one,
Speaker 2: or open a soda pop with one, or anything. You know.
Speaker 2: They're just for throwing. And apparently, of the ones that
Speaker 2: were thrown, the more likely scenario here is that they
Speaker 2: would have been a close range nuisance or distraction weapon
Speaker 2: as opposed to that stealthy one shot kill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that very much squares with my understanding. So I
Speaker 3: was reading about the origins of the association between shurikean
Speaker 3: and ninja in a book that I've been referencing throughout
Speaker 3: this series. It's a book called Ninja Unmasking the Myth
Speaker 3: by a historian named Stephen Turnbull, which goes a lot
Speaker 3: into the complicated questions the historicity of the ninja tropes
Speaker 3: that exist today, and so in order to understand the
Speaker 3: association that emerged between shurrikan and ninja. It's apparently important
Speaker 3: to understand a particular Japanese martial artist and author who
Speaker 3: lived in the twentieth century named Fuji Ta Seiko, who
Speaker 3: was a practitioner and claimed to be a preserver of
Speaker 3: the ninjitsu tradition of the Coca region of Japan. Fuji
Speaker 3: To Seiko lived from eighteen ninety eight to nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: and Fujiita's writings were influential in creating the image of
Speaker 3: the ninja that emerged in the mid twentieth century after
Speaker 3: the conclusion of World War Two. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: completely cover his biography, but i will say that he
Speaker 3: is a fascinating and somewhat controversial figure worth reading more about,
Speaker 3: just to hit some of the top lines. In nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty six, he published a book called Ninjutsu Hiroku, which
Speaker 3: means something like secret Notes on Ninjutsu, which is allegedly
Speaker 3: based on the secret Koca traditions that have been passed
Speaker 3: down to his family through direct instruction without being published
Speaker 3: for a general audience, and he claimed that he was
Speaker 3: publishing this information about ninjutsu to help Japan win its
Speaker 3: war against China. However, actually a lot of the information
Speaker 3: that he includes in this book does come from other
Speaker 3: pre existing ninjitsu manuals like the ones we talked about
Speaker 3: in the last part of this series, like the Manson
Speaker 3: Chukai or the bens In Chukai. So the Ninjitsu Hiroku
Speaker 3: reframes a lot of information from these previous ninjasu manuals
Speaker 3: of the Tokugawa period. But apparently it does things like
Speaker 3: rationalize a lot of magical sounding claims. For example, techniques
Speaker 3: that originally were presented as ways of transforming magically into
Speaker 3: a rat are instead presented as making a noise like
Speaker 3: a rat to confuse and distract guards, Or like the
Speaker 3: idea that one could potentially turn invisible is rationalized as well.
Speaker 3: You can walk in a certain way so that you
Speaker 3: cannot be seen, thus causing the impression that you've become invisible.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: A lot of this book also concerns self glorifying claims
Speaker 3: of practices of physical endurance and austerity. For example, he
Speaker 3: claimed that, you know, as part of his practice, he
Speaker 3: could like break glass bottles over his own head to
Speaker 3: prove his toughness. He says he can do forty glass
Speaker 3: bottles in a row.
Speaker 2: Do not attempt that no idea.
Speaker 3: I'm going to mention a few other things. Don't do
Speaker 3: any of this, please, This is not a good training regime,
Speaker 3: even if you want to be a ninja. He says,
Speaker 3: the shanobi must be able to withstand torture without giving
Speaker 3: up information. So he says, I have stabbed myself with
Speaker 3: hundreds of needles. Here's a picture of me with all
Speaker 3: the needles in me, And I have eaten roof tiles,
Speaker 3: glass bricks, and rat poison. Again, questionable whether he actually
Speaker 3: did some of that. I think people did claim that
Speaker 3: they saw him eating glass. I don't know about the poison,
Speaker 3: but don't do any of this. He also apparently claimed
Speaker 3: that he knew dog language and thus could like communicate
Speaker 3: with dogs to like call them for help if needed,
Speaker 3: or make maybe make them fight each other.
Speaker 2: Well aside from them making them fight each other. Please
Speaker 2: feel free to experiment with this one.
Speaker 3: You can talk to dogs, yes, better than eating poison
Speaker 3: and glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But one of Fujiita Seiko's most enduring contributions to the
Speaker 3: ninja mythology of today is his attachment of the shuriken
Speaker 3: in its current form to the ninja legend. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to try to get into that. Stephen Turnbull in
Speaker 3: his book actually as a whole chapter just on where
Speaker 3: the shurican comes from and how it can next to ninjitsu.
Speaker 3: So there are references to the word shuriken in seventeenth
Speaker 3: century ninjitsu manuals, but they are apparently referring to completely
Speaker 3: different objects than we have in mind. We picture the
Speaker 3: ninja star that's got you know, it's a star shaped,
Speaker 3: vaguely circular object made of metal that has points all
Speaker 3: around so you can throw it in the spinning fashion
Speaker 3: and wherever it hits somebody, it's going to stab into them.
Speaker 2: That's right, And again we've seen this in movies time
Speaker 2: and time again. I actually looked back at the James
Speaker 2: Bond film that we talked about being pivotal in the
Speaker 2: history of introducing the idea of the ninja to international audience.
Speaker 2: You only live twice, and look, I didn't watch the
Speaker 2: film in full, but I did find some YouTube clips
Speaker 2: of it official on the James Bond YouTube page. Okay,
Speaker 2: and there is a scene laid in the film where
Speaker 2: someone I think it's Bond himself, throws a shuriken at
Speaker 2: Blofeld and Blowfelt has a pistol, hits it in the hand,
Speaker 2: knocks a pistol out of his hand.
Speaker 3: This is actually a common thing in the movies where
Speaker 3: the ninja will use it to disarm an opponent who
Speaker 3: like has them at a loss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess again, issues of accuracy and power aside.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess that's more realistic than the instant kill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to get to the likely use of
Speaker 3: it in a second, to the extent it's even being
Speaker 3: recommended to a ninja. But so, okay, what is this
Speaker 3: If the shuracan referenced in the seventeenth century in ninjutsu
Speaker 3: manuals is not what we have in mind, what is it? Well,
Speaker 3: one of the earliest references, according to Turnbull, is in
Speaker 3: a is in a text called the Gunpo Goshu of
Speaker 3: sixteen fifty three, and in this case, the shuriken is
Speaker 3: said to be quote a torch made from split wood
Speaker 3: and fitted into a metal base with a spike. So
Speaker 3: that's interesting a torch. But the idea here is you're
Speaker 3: century up on a castle wall and you know it's nighttime,
Speaker 3: You're sure surrounded by darkness, and you need to see
Speaker 3: what's happening down on the ground below at the base
Speaker 3: of the castle wall. So you throw down this shuriken.
Speaker 3: This object is a sort of combination torch lawn dart,
Speaker 3: and the metal spike sticks into the soil and the
Speaker 3: torch illuminates the ground around the base of the wall.
Speaker 2: All right, seems reasonable, seems practical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a totally logical sounding tool. And it's interesting
Speaker 3: because again this sort of crosses that boundary that keeps
Speaker 3: getting blurred in the history of ninja lore between weapons
Speaker 3: intended for direct violence and things that are just tools
Speaker 3: used to gather information. However, when it comes to direct references,
Speaker 3: there is another early reference to shurikean that is also dissimilar,
Speaker 3: dissimilar to what's the word there, dissimilar to or dissimilar from.
Speaker 3: It's not the same as a ninja star. This is
Speaker 3: the bow shurickan mentioned in some seventeenth century texts, which
Speaker 3: is a bar or rod shaped object that could be
Speaker 3: thrown by hand. So essentially this is just a large
Speaker 3: steel dart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these these are really neat and of course when
Speaker 2: you start looking up weapons of the sort ninja weapons
Speaker 2: seeing you find there's a lot of drift, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of like modernization and whether the weapon actually existed
Speaker 2: historically or not, somebody has made it now and you can,
Speaker 2: you know, again, buy it at the mall or something.
Speaker 2: But these are pretty cool, and these are one of
Speaker 2: the I feel like just to dip back into Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons for a second. Anytime darts are are are
Speaker 2: mentioned or darts come up as a possible weapon in
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons, I feel like most people's mind, you know,
Speaker 2: given the often sort of like westernized fantasy setting of
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons, you often think of like a dart
Speaker 2: from a pool hall, right, yeah, dart board, just small,
Speaker 2: you know, basically harmless weapon. And I would always want
Speaker 2: to advise me, no, no, look up some some bow shuriken
Speaker 2: and imagine that for your character. Instead it's I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do a lot of damage in the game,
Speaker 2: but it looks cooler.
Speaker 3: Yes, But coming back to the idea of not necessarily
Speaker 3: needing to do a lot of damage, that actually connects
Speaker 3: to where we get the first references too, star shaped
Speaker 3: shurickan in an actual ninjutsu text, and that's in the
Speaker 3: twentieth century. So here we're coming back to Fujita Seiko
Speaker 3: in Ninjitsuhiroku. Again this is from the year nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 3: He has a passage about shurikean in his text, and
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna hear read from Turnbull's featured translation. So
Speaker 3: the author here writes, if you have to defend yourself
Speaker 3: against a sudden attack by an enemy, put some distance
Speaker 3: between you to ensure your safety. In this case, use
Speaker 3: the small weapon called a tobi dogu, which means throwing weapon,
Speaker 3: known to the author as shurikean. Samurai normally despised these
Speaker 3: and other throwing weapons, but they are most effective if
Speaker 3: used skillfully. The shuri caan can do great damage if
Speaker 3: it hits someone's eye. So even in this take from
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties, the shur can is not a primary weapon,
Speaker 3: but the idea seems to me to be more like
Speaker 3: throwing sand in somebody's eyes. It's like a trick you
Speaker 3: can use to buy time or advantage if you're caught
Speaker 3: off guard or being chased.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in this scenario, especially keeping the samurai from
Speaker 2: closing the distance between themselves and you, because that's life
Speaker 2: and death at that point. If you can, if you
Speaker 2: can just keep the distance between yourself and the samurai,
Speaker 2: then maybe you've got a chance to get away.
Speaker 3: Right, It's the idea is throwing something to keep the
Speaker 3: samurai out of sword range.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this reminds me a little bit. We did, you know,
Speaker 2: a past episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. We
Speaker 2: did a series talking about like throwing animals, throwing things,
Speaker 2: and then we got for one episode into an overview
Speaker 2: of like human history with thrown weapon objects. And you know,
Speaker 2: they range from from well I would say they range
Speaker 2: from rock to more complex weapons. But I remember even
Speaker 2: in talking about throwing rocks and stones as weapons, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot more to it. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of selection involved in picking up the exact correct object.
Speaker 2: And this is a case where we get to that
Speaker 2: next level of Okay, what have we crafted the items
Speaker 2: that we wish to throw so that they could be
Speaker 2: used more optimally?
Speaker 3: Describing what devices to throw for this purpose, Fujiita advises,
Speaker 3: for one thing, improvised hand thrown weapons such as knives
Speaker 3: or hairpins. So it's like, if you know, throw whatever
Speaker 3: you can get your hands on, but if you're going
Speaker 3: to have a dedicated weapon to throw. He also illustrates
Speaker 3: dedicated shurrican designs, and one of the illustrations is a
Speaker 3: classic bow shuriken, a large steel dart. But he also
Speaker 3: includes pointed metal stars, and so here we get our
Speaker 3: first illustration of throwing stars in a ninjutsu text. So
Speaker 3: one of the things he illustrates is cross shaped it
Speaker 3: has four points, and another one is shown with eight points.
Speaker 3: This is in nineteen thirty six, the first ninja text
Speaker 3: showing the star shaped shuriken. However, it's clear that Fujita
Speaker 3: Seko did not invent this device from his imagination, because
Speaker 3: even though earlier ninjitsu texts don't include them, we do
Speaker 3: have evidence from earlier periods of vaguely star shaped blades
Speaker 3: or cross shaped blades that did exist and could possibly
Speaker 3: be thrown. So instead of looking for them in the
Speaker 3: nunjitsu manuals, you can find them in the jiu jitsu
Speaker 3: arsenals of the Tokugawa period, particularly associated with a martial
Speaker 3: arts tradition called the Sego Reu. One of the documents
Speaker 3: allegedly associated with this school of martial arts includes an
Speaker 3: illustration of a weapon that is quite similar that is
Speaker 3: described like two knife blades fastened in the middle with
Speaker 3: a hinge. So the way I'm picturing this finder stand
Speaker 3: it right, is it's like a pair of scissors, but
Speaker 3: instead of you know, one side of each blade being handles,
Speaker 3: it's just blades on every point. Now, for several reasons,
Speaker 3: Turnbull thinks that Fuji ta Seko was probably not familiar
Speaker 3: with this exact document that I just mentioned, and probably
Speaker 3: was getting his knowledge of the star shaped throwing weapon
Speaker 3: just from seeing these artifacts around. And there is other
Speaker 3: evidence from history of people like having versions of these artifacts,
Speaker 3: even going back to the Tokugawa period, but they just
Speaker 3: traditionally it doesn't seem like they were super common, and
Speaker 3: they weren't particularly they weren't associated as far as anybody knows,
Speaker 3: with nunjitsu until the twentieth century, and now that's all
Speaker 3: they're associated with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we probably have to sort of try
Speaker 2: and imagine that most likely more historically accurate vision of
Speaker 2: shnobi operatives as being plaine clothes SBNA operatives, who, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to carry items on you, like, are
Speaker 2: you going to really commit to having these some sort
Speaker 2: of a throwing star, sure, a can on your person?
Speaker 2: Something that again is I think going to be at
Speaker 2: least in the modern understanding of it is going to
Speaker 2: be more obviously a weapon and therefore subject to you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, being judged in your illegal weapon or also
Speaker 2: just being suspect in nature that you have it as
Speaker 2: a And again, think about when you would supposedly use it,
Speaker 2: like when the samurai are coming after you, or when
Speaker 2: guards are coming after you, like really in the worst
Speaker 2: case scenarios, and that might be a better place to
Speaker 2: maybe depend on just throwing say, you know, found objects
Speaker 2: like a bottle or some other item in your immediate vicinity,
Speaker 2: as opposed to having some special specialty device on your
Speaker 2: person instead.
Speaker 3: There's one detail from Turnbull's chapter that is so interesting
Speaker 3: I had to bring it up. It's about the design
Speaker 3: that many people have probably seen of these basically swastika
Speaker 3: shaped a throwing star that occurs in a lot of media.
Speaker 3: This is a very familiar design for movies and stuff,
Speaker 3: and apparently a lot of modern ninja books have featured
Speaker 3: this design as if it were a traditional Shurican design,
Speaker 3: but it is not, and in fact, there is an
Speaker 3: anecdote from this chapter about how an actor who worked
Speaker 3: on a nineteen sixties TV series in Japan called on Mitsukinschi,
Speaker 3: which had a throwing star of this design, described that
Speaker 3: really this design was created for the show because the
Speaker 3: straight pointed throwing stars were deemed too dangerous on set,
Speaker 3: so this was essentially a safety innovation that was later
Speaker 3: misinterpreted as a real design of throwing stars as weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy, like basically a safety shit shur can.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, I have another example of hurrocun inspired
Speaker 2: fictional weaponry, and this one I thought was interesting because
Speaker 2: it kind of stands, at least to my eyes, as
Speaker 2: kind of like the ultimate in sci fi and fantasy
Speaker 2: transformation of the ninja myth. So in the Warhammer forty
Speaker 2: thousand universe, like a far future, you know, grim Dark scenario,
Speaker 2: you have these. They have this species known as the
Speaker 2: l Dar, and they're kind of like a sci fi
Speaker 2: take on the Elves. I mean, that's exactly what they are.
Speaker 2: And they use pistols and rifles that use shurrocans as ammunition.
Speaker 2: So these are said to be monomolecular cutting edge weapons
Speaker 2: fired in bursts from these guns, and like they're so
Speaker 2: sharp and they hit so with such velocity that they
Speaker 2: just shred whatever they hit be it a mechanical foe
Speaker 2: or an organic foe, and again pretty far removed from
Speaker 2: anything even remotely realistic we're talking about here, But again
Speaker 2: I thought it was interesting. It's kind of like the
Speaker 2: extreme transformation of the shuriken in sci fi and fantasy.
Speaker 2: I also, I didn't remember this at all, because I
Speaker 2: don't have a lot of memories regarding two thousand and
Speaker 2: four as Alien versus Predator, but you might remember that
Speaker 2: in other Predator movies he has this disc that he
Speaker 2: throws that cuts people in half. And in this film
Speaker 2: they decided they were like, that looks too much like
Speaker 2: a frisbee. Let's give the Predator a shur aken, And
Speaker 2: so he has this thing that it was least at
Speaker 2: least described as a shura can. I included an image
Speaker 2: here for you, Joe. It's it's really way too large.
Speaker 2: It reminds me more of the weaponing krall the.
Speaker 3: The glave, yeah, which also is a word that means
Speaker 3: something else elsewhere. But yeah, that's very confusing. It looks
Speaker 3: almost exactly like the krawl thing. It's like kind of
Speaker 3: almost like starfish shaped in a way, with these wispy
Speaker 3: curving blades coming out. It looks too delicate, you know,
Speaker 3: it looks like they would break off.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I don't know. I don't remember what
Speaker 2: this thing did in action. I guess it just cut
Speaker 2: through stuff. But anyway, I wanted to to mention.
Speaker 3: That, based on my memory, probably doesn't do much because
Speaker 3: I remember the Predator is just getting like beat up
Speaker 3: in that movie. The movie is very like oh yeah, singles,
Speaker 3: you know, more full takedown and Predator. It's kind of surprising.
Speaker 2: H Well, I think it should. I think it should.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, it's a fair hunt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I like to say I don't
Speaker 2: remember that film all that well, but I did see it.
Speaker 2: I might have seen in the theater, all right. Well, anyway,
Speaker 2: coming back to the Shanobi, the pop culture Ninja and
Speaker 2: the shur Can again, it's like you gotta if you
Speaker 2: try and think, you know, realistically about any scenario in
Speaker 2: which you have to bring a certain amount of tools.
Speaker 2: You have your sort of desert island list of tools
Speaker 2: to bring. Would throwing stars make the list? Again? Items
Speaker 2: that might only be used when you were about to
Speaker 2: kill a samurai, And your main defense is like, what
Speaker 2: have I made them angry? So I think there's reason
Speaker 2: to doubt that. And it's interesting too when you look
Speaker 2: at some of these ninjitsu manuals, again with proper caveats
Speaker 2: about where they factor into the transformation from historical accuracy
Speaker 2: into myth and fiction. There are sometimes lists of tools,
Speaker 2: and in fact, there's a sixteen eighty one text, the Shoninki,
Speaker 2: a Record of Proper Ninjutsu, that includes six tools that
Speaker 2: apparently every ninja had to have, and throwing stars did
Speaker 2: not make the list. Instead, you have and I think
Speaker 2: this is actually kind of a telling list, like this
Speaker 2: is a list that I mean, it certainly can apply
Speaker 2: to any pop cultural view vision of the ninja that
Speaker 2: you have, but it also makes a lot of sense
Speaker 2: if you're just imagining some sort of espionage operative that's
Speaker 2: maybe doing like some extra sneaky stuff, because the list includes,
Speaker 2: first of all, kagi nawa, a grappling hook, and rope.
Speaker 2: All right, makes sense. You need to get over a wall,
Speaker 2: grappling hook and some rope is a way to do it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Then you've got this one, this one. I was surprised
Speaker 2: by kasa a conical straw hat, like a wide brim
Speaker 2: straw hat. This would have been widely used by plenty
Speaker 2: of people who are not involved in shanoby operations. But
Speaker 2: that's part of a part of it, right. It's like
Speaker 2: not conspicuous, and you could apparently hide tools inside it.
Speaker 2: Like it's large enough you could, you know, maybe secret
Speaker 2: some items up there under the brim.
Speaker 3: That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: And then here's a good one, chalk in order to
Speaker 2: leave erasable secret messages for other operatives.
Speaker 3: Ah yeah, that's interesting because when you think about some
Speaker 3: of these other Ninjasu manuals we were talking about, like
Speaker 3: the mens in Chukai places a big emphasis on the
Speaker 3: the operative must survive in order to deliver information. So
Speaker 3: it's like propagandizing the reader against the idea of you know,
Speaker 3: going out to die in honorable death while doing the mission.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, you must live in order to deliver
Speaker 3: the information. But if you can deliver information in some
Speaker 3: other way, like by writing a message somewhere, you know,
Speaker 3: down somewhere for someone else to read, then I guess
Speaker 3: that takes some of the pressure off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it makes sense. And also, like chalk
Speaker 2: generally not considered sus if you're caught with chalk, it's
Speaker 2: not you're not going to be instantly sent to your execution.
Speaker 2: I'm assumed, all right. Some of the others a tinder box,
Speaker 2: you know, just for a little fire, a towel, bring
Speaker 2: a towel with you. You know, it's there are a
Speaker 2: lot of uses for the towel is very versatile. And
Speaker 2: then there's also this category kusuri, and this would have
Speaker 2: been various chemical compounds for different purposes. And this would
Speaker 2: include things like poison, but also basically like first aid
Speaker 2: as well as bug repellent. So I feel like this
Speaker 2: is a pretty solid list because, if nothing else, it
Speaker 2: speaks to some of the practical aspects of imagine Shnobi activities.
Speaker 2: You might need some bugspray, you might need to bring
Speaker 2: a light, you might need to bring a towel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, towel's just always a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In the book Ninja Attack Yoda and All highlights
Speaker 2: some other alleged Ninja weapons, and they're kind of a
Speaker 2: mix of things that maybe feel a little more fantasy
Speaker 2: based and others that just sound very standard. Like one
Speaker 2: is a kunai, a standard field knife. I think we
Speaker 2: mentioned this in passing in the last one when we're
Speaker 2: talking about the the idea that ninja's had a specialized
Speaker 2: ninja would have a specialized sword, and we brought up that, well,
Speaker 2: why would you have this illegal weapon on you that
Speaker 2: takes up a fair amount of room that also might
Speaker 2: not serve your mission all that well, when you could
Speaker 2: just bring like a standard field knife, something that would
Speaker 2: not necessarily be considered a straight up weapon and would
Speaker 2: have various practical uses. There's another one, goshiki may, which
Speaker 2: would have been it's supposed to have been dyed rice
Speaker 2: grains that you could leave, you could leave behind you
Speaker 2: as a as a coated trail. Again, I'm not so
Speaker 2: sure about that when that one sounds a little more exciting,
Speaker 2: like maybe a little too exciting to be an actual,
Speaker 2: you know, artifact of spycraft. Now, gandhal a bucket based
Speaker 2: focused lantern that does sound useful for sneaking around, you know,
Speaker 2: basically like a you know something, so you're not lighting
Speaker 2: up in the whole room, you're not lighting yourself up,
Speaker 2: but you can have a very focused light for sneaking around,
Speaker 2: maybe looking at documents.
Speaker 3: Oh, I see, so it's sort of a beam light.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another one is a michi hakari. This would have
Speaker 2: been like a measuring stick. Again. You know, sometimes espionage
Speaker 2: is boring. It's just about how how big are things?
Speaker 2: So you might need to measure things when you're when
Speaker 2: you're when you're out and about Uh.
Speaker 3: This is not boring at all. This is a major
Speaker 3: part of sp iage activities. In these old warfare manuals.
Speaker 3: It's about like giving giving dimensions and topography. It's like,
Speaker 3: go somewhere and tell me what it's like. Make a map.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they mentioned shakkomi, and this would have been like
Speaker 2: various concealed weapons, including cane swords, blowguns, that sort of thing. Again,
Speaker 2: certainly this would make sense, especially if you're engaging in
Speaker 2: some sort of potential assassination scenario, but it also of
Speaker 2: course leans I think heavily into the myth of espionage.
Speaker 2: I mean, who doesn't love a good secret weapon, some
Speaker 2: sort of a James Bond device.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Then there's a shakoro. This would have been like a
Speaker 2: serrated hand tool for sawing, again, like a basic tool
Speaker 2: that might come in handy for certain practices. And then
Speaker 2: there's a casou gai. This would have been These would
Speaker 2: have been climbing aids, like specialized like iron climbing aids
Speaker 2: for foot and hand holds. It could be inserted into
Speaker 2: the cracks of a wall. The examples that are included
Speaker 2: in the book are pretty neat looking. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how historically accurate this would be, again, because we talked
Speaker 2: about the importance of a ladder, uh and certainly, you know,
Speaker 2: we talked about you know, grappling hooks. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this, uh, if this is something
Speaker 2: that would have been regularly done, because the ladder is
Speaker 2: also included in the in the book here, there's also
Speaker 2: uh subo kiri, like a handheld drilling tool from like
Speaker 2: making a like holes in a wall for like a
Speaker 2: peep pole. Yeah, peep pole, So that sounds reasonable. They
Speaker 2: mentioned they mentioned that the fabulous floating shoes that we
Speaker 2: talked about last time, but they also mentioned something called mizugaki,
Speaker 2: which would have been would have been apparently a type
Speaker 2: of footwear that was useful in muddy areas. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And and I guess this is reasonable, right, If you're
Speaker 2: like potentially sneaking out of of of of a building
Speaker 2: or an area, or dealing any any fashion with a moat,
Speaker 2: it might make sense to have specialized footwear.
Speaker 3: Well, right, as we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 3: the idea of the mizugumo, the water walking shoes, the
Speaker 3: water spider shoes almost certainly would not work as generally
Speaker 3: interpreted in twentieth century sources, where like they allow you
Speaker 3: to walk across the top of the water. So if
Speaker 3: such a device were actually used, it was probably more
Speaker 3: like an inner tube type thing that you would sit
Speaker 3: in and float across the water in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of like a makeshift raft, which was
Speaker 2: actually there's another item like this included in the book,
Speaker 2: the kami Gatta, which would apparently have been and I
Speaker 2: don't have a clear vision of what this would look like,
Speaker 2: but a makeshift raft using a bamboo frame in empty
Speaker 2: clay jars. So, you know, perhaps a scenario where it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: I got to build a boat tonight in order to
Speaker 2: make it across this river or this moat or what
Speaker 2: have you. What could you use to make it? How
Speaker 2: you could you mcguiver up a boat.
Speaker 3: That's good knowledge to have.
Speaker 2: Now, there are various other ninja weapons that we could
Speaker 2: potentially talk about. I think the common thread, though, is
Speaker 2: going to be how realistic is this how much historical
Speaker 2: evidence is there for this and how cool does it look?
Speaker 2: You know, like you see things like Techo Kagi and
Speaker 2: Nico Ta. These would have been two different versions of
Speaker 2: like giving your ninja's claws, so the former being like
Speaker 2: a wolverine claw that you wear as a gauntlet. I
Speaker 2: guess also you could this is like basically what Shreder
Speaker 2: has in teenage Man Ninja turtles. And then the necko
Speaker 2: t would would have been something that goes over your fingertips,
Speaker 2: and these would have been like poisoned or some sort
Speaker 2: of a nuisance weapon for like scratching somebody.
Speaker 3: Over the fingertips. Yikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so like you with the.
Speaker 3: Open hand swinging at the Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well you're not as big as Freddy Krueger or anything.
Speaker 2: I think I did an artifact episode a while back
Speaker 2: talking about like some of the physics of strapping blades
Speaker 2: to your fingers, Like that's a Freddy Krueger glove would
Speaker 2: be a great way to break all your fingers if
Speaker 2: you can actually use that as a weapon and you
Speaker 2: are not a supernatural entity of some sort, yes, but
Speaker 2: if it's wrist mounted, okay, you know potentially that could work.
Speaker 2: But then again you get into that question, why would
Speaker 2: it work more than a standard weapon, Why would it
Speaker 2: be a better choice compared to a knife or a
Speaker 2: sword or what have you.
Speaker 3: As with a lot of these things we're describing, you
Speaker 3: can see how they might have more appeal as a
Speaker 3: meme than actual functional utility, Like they could be successful
Speaker 3: in texts like these because they're interesting ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Another thing that comes up is like, is in
Speaker 2: which cases do we see some sort of an alleged
Speaker 2: ninja weapon that might have its roots in sort of
Speaker 2: a repurposing of other items, Like for instance, there are
Speaker 2: various forms of teko or techo and these would have
Speaker 2: been I've seen it written that these would have been
Speaker 2: like a basically a weaponized iron stirrup that is turned
Speaker 2: into something kind of like brass knuckles, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think like brass knuckles are a great example of
Speaker 2: something where you can see various knucks and other weapons
Speaker 2: that can be very specialized and ornate, but various other
Speaker 2: things could also work, you know, like a roll of
Speaker 2: quarters or you know, some other just like a simple
Speaker 2: band of iron that goes around your knuckles, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. And so there's a long list of alleged
Speaker 2: ninja weapons. They include miniaturized firearms, sharpened hair ornaments, and chopsticks,
Speaker 2: particularly for female shanobi. And you know, I think part
Speaker 2: of that is just like the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 2: these the hair ornaments look very sharp, they look like
Speaker 2: they could be a weapon. What if they were a weapon,
Speaker 2: And therefore the myth building takes place. There are at
Speaker 2: least a couple of chain based weapons, the manriki gusari.
Speaker 2: This is like a length of chain with a weight
Speaker 2: on either end, and I think the basic idea here
Speaker 2: is like, the samurai are coming to kill you, What again,
Speaker 2: what can you throw at them to potentially buy yourself
Speaker 2: a little time and or wrap around their weapons. There's
Speaker 2: also one the kusari gama, which would have been much
Speaker 2: the same idea, but with a blade or sickle on
Speaker 2: one end of the chain. This would ideal. It Yeah,
Speaker 2: be a situation where someone's coming at you with a weapon,
Speaker 2: maybe you could use the chain to like wrap up
Speaker 2: their weapon and so forth. So again, all the standard
Speaker 2: caveats apply to considering the historical accuracy of these weapon descriptions,
Speaker 2: but I think we if we scrape the ninja mystique
Speaker 2: off of each of them, while still acknowledging like the
Speaker 2: use of some form of martial art. We're dealing with
Speaker 2: sneaky weapons that have as much, if not more in
Speaker 2: common with typical criminal implements like small knives, small clubs,
Speaker 2: concealable firearms, maybe even concealed swords and cane swords and
Speaker 2: all you know, hidden blades, hidden flails and so forth.
Speaker 2: But again, I think you end up having pass that
Speaker 2: question like would this actually be practical? Can you see
Speaker 2: somebody using this in a very serious life and death,
Speaker 2: you know, very risky scenario where the goal might not
Speaker 2: be some sort of like crazy cinematic ninja scenario, but
Speaker 2: something more like getting the measurements of a guard house,
Speaker 2: or you know, looking at some documents, overhearing something that
Speaker 2: you're not supposed to hear, and so forth. Now, there
Speaker 2: are various techniques that ninja techniques that are brought up
Speaker 2: in the book by Yoda and Alt, and one that
Speaker 2: I was particularly amused by is the idea that you
Speaker 2: could as a ninja, as a shanobi operative out in
Speaker 2: the field, you need to tell what time it is
Speaker 2: without any other information to go on. You could look
Speaker 2: into a cat size and therefore tell what time it is?
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, now is this telling time in the nighttime
Speaker 3: or in the daytime.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of questions about how practical this
Speaker 2: would be. I think this is definitely one of those
Speaker 2: ideas that sounds more intriguing than it actually you know,
Speaker 2: and then then it is useful. I think maybe it
Speaker 2: has something to do with the idea quite understandably that
Speaker 2: we feel a kinship between the ninja and the cat.
Speaker 2: We like the idea too of a ninja stopping and maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, talking with the cat like you're the household
Speaker 2: cat doesn't care he or she is ready to sell
Speaker 2: you out to the shnobi at a moment's notice. They're
Speaker 2: they're happy to conspire.
Speaker 3: Cast speak with animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But the basic idea is that, okay, the
Speaker 2: shape of the pupil in the cat's eye is going
Speaker 2: to change throughout the day, and you could potentially match
Speaker 2: it up with specific times. The trick, the challenge that
Speaker 2: Yoda and All point out is that, of course you
Speaker 2: would have to get be able to get close enough
Speaker 2: to the cat to do this, presumably a stranger's cat
Speaker 2: to make this reading, which is betting a lot on
Speaker 2: random cat personalities. Because there are cats that I've seen
Speaker 2: plenty of times and I've never gotten close enough to
Speaker 2: at their pupils. But then you'll just encounter like a
Speaker 2: cat out on a walk, and the cat will come
Speaker 2: straight up and is like ready to share that information
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: This is why you rub your face with sardines, you
Speaker 3: get the cat in there.
Speaker 2: So I looked into this a little bit more. I
Speaker 2: couldn't find much concrete and about this, because, of course,
Speaker 2: the other question is like, what kind of specific scenario
Speaker 2: is this where there is no other information to go
Speaker 2: on other than a cat's eye. You know, I feel
Speaker 2: like you'd have a there would be better ways to
Speaker 2: reasonably estimate what time it is.
Speaker 3: And hey, you know, it's not impossible that someone could
Speaker 3: find clever ways of getting surprisingly accurate information from the
Speaker 3: natural world. I often think back to that series of
Speaker 3: episodes we did about Pacific islander navigation techniques that you know,
Speaker 3: without any kind of electronics or modern equipment, people were
Speaker 3: able to figure out incredibly accurate ways of navigat And
Speaker 3: so maybe there's stuff like this in the eyes of
Speaker 3: animals or in plants that can tell you exactly what
Speaker 3: time it is. Is it true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've looked up an article. I found this article
Speaker 2: on the website of the National Wildlife Federation by one
Speaker 2: Donna Johnson, who, by the way, alludes to this being
Speaker 2: a New England tradition. So I don't know where it originates.
Speaker 2: Maybe it originates in multiple cultures anytime you're close enough
Speaker 2: to a cat to look at their eyes. But she
Speaker 2: does do a breakdown of the idea, like, basically, cats
Speaker 2: have elliptically shaped pupils to compensate for their light sensitivity,
Speaker 2: which otherwise aids them in low light hunts. But the
Speaker 2: greater the amount of light, the more slit like the pupil.
Speaker 2: So it technically works, But it also seems again like
Speaker 2: maybe not the most reliable time telling technique. And I
Speaker 2: can't imagine a situation where the cat's eyes would be
Speaker 2: the only thing to go off of many questions would
Speaker 2: emerge here, But it's a neat idea, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, well, I mean, if the cats eyes are responding
Speaker 3: to the level of light, would the ninja not also
Speaker 3: be able to see the level of light?
Speaker 2: Exactly? All right? The final thing I want to hit
Speaker 2: on here in this series is the idea of the
Speaker 2: ninja as hero because when it comes to pop cultural transformations,
Speaker 2: I think it's always interesting to look at the point
Speaker 2: where something completely flips from what it originally was. For instance,
Speaker 2: in past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we
Speaker 2: discussed how various fearsome monsters, especially in Japanese culture, but
Speaker 2: we also looked at some examples from Western horror movies,
Speaker 2: eventually make the transformation from like a symbol symbolized aspect
Speaker 2: of reality, you know, some sort of dark aspect of
Speaker 2: reality that is embodied in some sort of a being
Speaker 2: and imagine being, you know, fearsome entity. The point at
Speaker 2: which we take that and flip it into something cute,
Speaker 2: something that would you know, make for a nice mascot,
Speaker 2: look at it on a bumper sticker, or even be
Speaker 2: a stuffed animal. I think there's something telling about reaching
Speaker 2: that point when the monster becomes cute, or in this case,
Speaker 2: when the ninja becomes a hero.
Speaker 3: When we've talked about this with regard to monsters, I
Speaker 3: remember one of my thoughts about it was that this
Speaker 3: impulse is driven by franchising concerns, Like the further you
Speaker 3: get into sequels and the more like movies or stories
Speaker 3: you've had exposing you to this monster over and over,
Speaker 3: the less comfortable it is for the monster to continue
Speaker 3: to be purely fearsome or evil, and there's an impulse
Speaker 3: to make it more friendly or at least maybe funnier
Speaker 3: or something. So you can see this in you know,
Speaker 3: like Godzilla originally is not nice and is not fun,
Speaker 3: but eventually it becomes Godzilla becomes the defender essentially against
Speaker 3: these worst monsters. You know, the new monster is the
Speaker 3: worst one and Godzilla is the one we're familiar with
Speaker 3: fighting it off. And you can see over time that
Speaker 3: Freddy Krueger goes from being just like a gross, disgusting
Speaker 3: murderer into becoming like a jokester who's more just kind
Speaker 3: of like mugging for the camera and yuck, yucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he becomes a violent clown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so forth. I think it's a really common pattern.
Speaker 3: It's something about like familiarity takes the edge off of
Speaker 3: something and makes you want to recast it as a
Speaker 3: friend rather than a foe.
Speaker 2: And so with the Ninja, you know, we've discussed at
Speaker 2: length the nebulous reality and origins of the Shnobi and
Speaker 2: how we're mostly talking about shadowy ESPA espionage operatives made
Speaker 2: up of commoners and even criminals that engage in dirty,
Speaker 2: if not you know, outright shameful acts that are necessary,
Speaker 2: a necessary part of warfare, alongside the more celebrated noble
Speaker 2: and aristocratic exploits rulers in the Samurai. But then coming
Speaker 2: out of the Warring States period and into the Edo
Speaker 2: period and beyond, we see the myth making. We see
Speaker 2: the fiction transforming the myth of the Ninja in numerous ways,
Speaker 2: giving it the form everyone instantly recognizes today. And so
Speaker 2: many Ninja remain villains in these later treatments, but they
Speaker 2: inevitably cross over into anti hero and even hero territory.
Speaker 2: And this kind of takes me back to our initial
Speaker 2: discussion talking about our initial introductions to ninja growing up,
Speaker 2: And I look back and I think some of my
Speaker 2: initial introductions to ninja actually cast them as heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like that nineteen eighty one Cannon film Injured the Ninja
Speaker 2: is built around Franco Niro, an Italian actor, as at
Speaker 2: least an anti hero. I don't think he's maybe quite
Speaker 2: a hero in that, but he's at least an anti hero.
Speaker 3: I feel like the majority of the Ninja media I
Speaker 3: consumed when I was a kid, had ninjas as heroes
Speaker 3: rather than villains, or had them as bo Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's very common as well, going back to
Speaker 2: like G I Joe, like Snake Eyes is a black
Speaker 2: clad ninja and is very much on the certified good
Speaker 2: guy team. There's no there's it's black and white literally
Speaker 2: though it's flipped because our black clad ninja is good
Speaker 2: and our white clad ninja is bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah or yeah, so often they were both. But I
Speaker 3: think there's an impulse there that it's just like, well,
Speaker 3: especially in kid focus to media, ninjas are cool, and
Speaker 3: kids want to root for the good guys, and they
Speaker 3: want they want the good guys to be cool. So
Speaker 3: you got to make the ninja a good guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean the teenage meeting Ninja turtles. Obviously
Speaker 2: they're turtles, they're teenagers, but they are ninjas and they're
Speaker 2: very much the good guys. But then, going back to
Speaker 2: the Bond film, You Only Live Twice again vitally important
Speaker 2: in bringing the Ninja into the international market and into
Speaker 2: Western cinema. All the Ninja in that all the Shnobi
Speaker 2: operatives were working on James Bod's Bond's team. They were
Speaker 2: all good guys essentially.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, I think so there might be some
Speaker 3: working for the bad guys, but I don't recall specifically.
Speaker 3: The ones I remember are good guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like the big scene at the end where
Speaker 2: they storm the Specter compound and bond lets the ninjas in.
Speaker 2: He's like, he opens the door and here come the
Speaker 2: ninjas down on like wires and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, anyway, like getting down to discussion like when when
Speaker 2: are ninjas allowed to become not just anti heroes but
Speaker 2: outright good guys. Well, according to Yoda and all discussion
Speaker 2: in Ninja Ninja Attack, there's a definite place to single
Speaker 2: out perhaps is the first true ninja heroes in popular culture,
Speaker 2: and it's the Tachikawa pocket Books. This would have been
Speaker 2: the period around nineteen twelve through nineteen twenty six series
Speaker 2: of books written by a group of writers that were
Speaker 2: credited as Seka Sanjan, a series of novels for juvenile
Speaker 2: so like essentially like young reader or children's books that
Speaker 2: detailed the adventures of the pair of rival ninja that
Speaker 2: they were on the same team. To be clear, they're
Speaker 2: not like rival teams or rival clans, but they have
Speaker 2: differing personalities. They're kind of an odd couple, and that's
Speaker 2: Saratobi Saske and Kira Gakura Saizo. And this was these
Speaker 2: books established these two as quote poster boys for the
Speaker 2: ego koga rivalry and ninja as a potential force for good,
Speaker 2: and it was inspired by these tales were inspired by
Speaker 2: both real life at least attributed ninja exploits as well
Speaker 2: as the Chinese literary classic Journey into the West. How
Speaker 2: is it related to the Journey into the West. Well,
Speaker 2: a lot of it comes down to the character of
Speaker 2: Saratobi Saske, a young boy raised by monkeys and then
Speaker 2: taken in by a ninja master and then recruited by
Speaker 2: the warlords Sonata due to his mischievous nature and his
Speaker 2: great skill and of course the ninja arts, so he
Speaker 2: ends up going on missions for his master. But he's
Speaker 2: also you know, a good bit the trickster, a bit
Speaker 2: happy go lucky, and he does a lot of side
Speaker 2: quests to help the less fortunate. But the name here
Speaker 2: Saratobi means leaping monkey, and he is in some ways
Speaker 2: a Japanese ninja version of the Monkey King.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that you mentioned him doing sort of side
Speaker 3: quests to help the less fortunate, because I have seen
Speaker 3: that it is I have read at least that it
Speaker 3: is common in literature that portrays the ninja as heroes
Speaker 3: or good guys to include some kind of class element
Speaker 3: where they are sort of they act on behalf of
Speaker 3: the economic underclass of like the of the poor and
Speaker 3: the less fortunate, and help them in the face of say,
Speaker 3: like rich oppressors, like an evil samurai.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and a lot of the I think we
Speaker 2: touched on some of these older tales that are either
Speaker 2: ninja or ninja adjacent that are essentially robinhood stories, like
Speaker 2: some sort of person from the criminal element, you know,
Speaker 2: and from the lower classes that is sticking up for
Speaker 2: the little guy. Now, the other of these two the rival.
Speaker 2: So we have the happy, go lucky guy, the more
Speaker 2: like the sort of the more pure hero here. But
Speaker 2: then we have Kiragakua Saizo, who is born into the
Speaker 2: ninja life. It has said he's trained with the best
Speaker 2: and he's become a master of clouds and lightning, of
Speaker 2: mists and thunder, so you know, he can summon various
Speaker 2: weather effects to mask his ninja movements. And the name
Speaker 2: here means cloaked and missed. So while Saske is lighthearted,
Speaker 2: Sizo is brooding, Like this is more of your your
Speaker 2: kind of like goth superstar character here. Nice they wind
Speaker 2: up on the same Ninja team, this would be Sonata's
Speaker 2: Ten Heroes or the Ten Braves, but their rivals. They're
Speaker 2: an odd couple to say the least. And Yoda and
Speaker 2: all point out that, Yeah, the nature of these two
Speaker 2: characters kind of flows perfectly into modern times. So Saske
Speaker 2: was always a hit with the kids, but then Siso
Speaker 2: was irresistible to you know, many in the post war period,
Speaker 2: especially as like you know, older Ninja fans and adults
Speaker 2: told and retold stories. He's like a natural character to
Speaker 2: latch onto. He's got this kind of angst sort of
Speaker 2: in bridging the gap between anti hero and hero, you know,
Speaker 2: so it fits that mold of the brooding sort of
Speaker 2: Batman esque hero. I guess I included an image here, Joe.
Speaker 2: This is from one of the many more modern treatments
Speaker 2: from anime and manga. And you can guess which one
Speaker 2: is which you know, which one is is your brooding
Speaker 2: character and which one is your more happy, go lucky character.
Speaker 3: Oh, Sizo even has like emo hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yes, like again just a natural fit you know,
Speaker 2: for for like kind of an angsty emo character. And
Speaker 2: then we have the Trickster, the essentially the monkey King
Speaker 2: in Ninja form. Of course they're not going to completely
Speaker 2: get along, but they are going to ultimately work, you know,
Speaker 2: for the same cause that's sweet. Yeah. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: thought that was an interesting this idea of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: these might be the patient zeros for good guy ninjas
Speaker 2: in popular culture, and these are characters that get used
Speaker 2: again and again. Now I think Sizo has also been
Speaker 2: used as an antagonist in some modern treatment. So it
Speaker 2: kind of comes back to what we were saying about monsters.
Speaker 2: Just because a monster goes cute, it doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: can't go back and make them fearsome. Again, this kind
Speaker 2: of thing happens all the time, and so there's always
Speaker 2: going to be continued exploration and re exploration. Just because
Speaker 2: ninjas become heroes or anti heroes and one property doesn't
Speaker 2: mean they can't be just absolute villains in another. You know,
Speaker 2: we can continue to have fun in that regard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a sawtooth effect. I mean, you know, by
Speaker 3: the seventies you've already got all monsters attack and the
Speaker 3: ones where Godzilla is like, oh, he's a good dad.
Speaker 3: But then you come back decades later and you can
Speaker 3: get Hinn Godzillo. Yeah, where the monster is a problem
Speaker 3: yet again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well there you have it, Part four
Speaker 2: of the Ninja. You know, I don't know that we
Speaker 2: covered everything, but we covered a lot of things related
Speaker 2: to the Ninja. If we missed anything, or if there's
Speaker 2: some detail you would like to bring up, write in.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: We do a short form episode on Wednesdays. Fridays we
Speaker 2: do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about what a weird film.
Speaker 2: And currently we run rerun or volve episodes on Saturdays
Speaker 2: and on Mondays, where we've been experimenting with different format.
Speaker 2: But we are going to have more listener mail episodes
Speaker 2: pop up. In fact, there should be one popping up
Speaker 2: this Thursday. If everything goes according to plan and let's
Speaker 2: see finally, oh yeah, if you're on social media, look
Speaker 2: us up. We're probably on there. Follow us. If you're
Speaker 2: on Instagram, we are stb ym podcast. Just help me,
Speaker 2: help us get our our subscriber or follower base up
Speaker 2: there a bit. It's a it's a newer account. The
Speaker 2: old one went away and ninjas took it down, So
Speaker 2: help us get some numbers on that new one. If
Speaker 2: you use the format, but don't sign up for it.
Speaker 2: If you're not using it already, I mean, really all
Speaker 2: the social media stuff, don't put a lot of work
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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