Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick. Today we are bringing you an
Speaker 1: episode from the Vault, an older episode of the show.
Speaker 1: This is part one of the series that Rob and
Speaker 1: I did on The Ninja. We started this in July
Speaker 1: of last year, so this episode originally published July twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 3: is Robert.
Speaker 1: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And it seems this week, Rob,
Speaker 1: you've got ninjas on the brain. You have ninjas on
Speaker 1: the brain, in the brain, coming out of the brain,
Speaker 1: going in and out in secret. What brought you to
Speaker 1: the topic of the Ninja for today's episode.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, on one level, obviously, I've always been
Speaker 3: a ninja fan, a big, big fan of the pop
Speaker 3: cultural ninja as we'll get into, you know, just because
Speaker 3: by virtue of growing up, when I grew up in
Speaker 3: the various interests that I have. But then of course,
Speaker 3: also as I've mentioned the show before, my family and
Speaker 3: I recently went on a trip to Japan. We got
Speaker 3: to visit I believe, a couple of historic sites that
Speaker 3: have ties to the historic ninja, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 3: now's the time. Let's this is the ideal time to
Speaker 3: jump into the subject of the ninja, with the acknowledgment
Speaker 3: that it gets a little complicated in places. It's not
Speaker 3: as cut and dry as some people might expect it
Speaker 3: to be. But there's a fascinating weave of fiction and
Speaker 3: hidden history and also legends and myth totally.
Speaker 1: But I also hear what you're saying about coming of
Speaker 1: age in an era where there was just ninja f
Speaker 1: in like US pop culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think this would be a great
Speaker 3: place to start and maybe compare notes on sort of
Speaker 3: our our generational influences regarding the ninja. I'm a little
Speaker 3: older than you, so I might be exposed to some
Speaker 3: things earlier that you were not, like the Big Divider,
Speaker 3: being like teenage mutant ninja turtles. By the time they
Speaker 3: came around, I was very into them, but I at
Speaker 3: the time thought that I was too old to be
Speaker 3: into them. So I had this kind of like should
Speaker 3: I shouldn't I relationship with the teenage mutant ninja turtles
Speaker 3: and of course I should have, and I'm glad that
Speaker 3: I did to the extent I did. But for me,
Speaker 3: looking back, I would say, like the earliest exposures I
Speaker 3: had to ninja media in the US, I would say, certainly,
Speaker 3: you have the G I Joe ninja characters storm Shadow
Speaker 3: and Snake Eyes. One wore black and was you know, goodness,
Speaker 3: I can't remember which one was the good cart back.
Speaker 3: I think maybe the good guy war black and the
Speaker 3: bad guy wore white, which even at the time was
Speaker 3: like stuck stuck out as stuck out, as being a
Speaker 3: little unbelievable because even as a kid, you know that
Speaker 3: a ninja is supposed to move through the shadows. Why
Speaker 3: is this ninja wearing all white? It seems like he's
Speaker 3: made some style choices that may backfire on him later on.
Speaker 1: I was just looking up to see if Snake Eyes
Speaker 1: was one of the G I. Joe action figures I had,
Speaker 1: and I think it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I definitely had one or both of these guys,
Speaker 3: and they would go on all sorts of you know,
Speaker 3: ninja related adventures with the other action figures. Inevitably, a
Speaker 3: small screwdriver would become involved, and GIA Joe Man would be.
Speaker 1: Dismembered, swapping heads and stuff. Yeah, yeah, well I think
Speaker 1: I had some of the same main obviously teenage mean
Speaker 1: ninja turtles. I fortunately, I think when I first came
Speaker 1: to them, did not have to deal with the internal
Speaker 1: term oil of thinking I was too old for them.
Speaker 1: That does that sounds rough.
Speaker 3: But I don't know rough is the right way to
Speaker 3: describe it. But you know, there is it is that
Speaker 3: that conundrum if the peer pressure is there to make
Speaker 3: you feel like you need to get in a hurry
Speaker 3: to grow up, but you really are not ready to
Speaker 3: put aside things like ninja turtles. You know, at the
Speaker 3: time it may feel like a conundrum, but you know,
Speaker 3: ninja turtles are awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, But there was also I know what you're saying,
Speaker 1: in that it was not just a craze in say,
Speaker 1: adult focused media in the US in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: though there was that, and we can talk about some examples,
Speaker 1: but there was a very kid friendly version of the
Speaker 1: ninja archetype that showed up in a lot of kid
Speaker 1: focused movies, like, for example, the Three Ninjas series.
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever saw any of these, but
Speaker 3: these were like kid ninjas. This was maybe this was
Speaker 3: Power Ranger inspired to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Possibly, I think I only ever saw the first of
Speaker 1: these movies, never made it to Three Ninjas High Noon
Speaker 1: at Mega Mountain, but I don't remember that much about it.
Speaker 1: I think there are three brothers and there kids who
Speaker 1: are learning the ways of the ninja, and some like
Speaker 1: robbers come into their house like Home Alone style or something,
Speaker 1: and they use ninja ninja techniques on them.
Speaker 3: What could be all bad if Victor Wong, isn't it right? Yeah,
Speaker 3: looking back on ninja movies that I watched, I also
Speaker 3: think a major early influence was that I must have
Speaker 3: seen this in my uncle's house. There were sometimes movies
Speaker 3: playing like RoboCop that I ended up watching way too early,
Speaker 3: and I do specifically remember watching at least a big
Speaker 3: chunk of the nineteen eighty one Manaham Golan directed ninja
Speaker 3: movie that starred Franco Niro, I believe as a ninja
Speaker 3: titled Enter the Ninja, and I remember it like horrifying
Speaker 3: and enthralling me to varying degrees because you had some,
Speaker 3: you know, a fair amount of like Ninja mayhem going on,
Speaker 3: and then also some rather grotesque moments that I probably
Speaker 3: shouldn't have seen it at early age.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a hyper violent movie, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I remember it being hyper violent, But I
Speaker 3: also have not rewatched it since I was a kid,
Speaker 3: so I don't know what was actually violent and what
Speaker 3: was maybe just ridiculous and a little like unbelievably gory,
Speaker 3: or if it like holds up as an actual gore fest. Oh.
Speaker 1: Actually, as far as cartoonified movie Ninjas go, I recently
Speaker 1: before I knew you were gonna want to talk about
Speaker 1: this on the show, just like last week with my
Speaker 1: friend Ben, I watched a movie called Ninja three The Domination,
Speaker 1: which is a sequel to Enter the Ninja's.
Speaker 3: Right, this is like the third one in that the
Speaker 3: Cannon Films Ninja series.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right. So this entry is about an La
Speaker 1: aerobics instructor who gets possessed by the ghost of a
Speaker 1: Ninja hit man who wants revenge against the police who
Speaker 1: put a stop to his Ninja rampage on a golf course,
Speaker 1: which took place on a golf course in which he
Speaker 1: like single handedly destroys a helicopter and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff. And then the aerobics instructor is possessed by
Speaker 1: the ghost of the evil Ninja and then falls in
Speaker 1: love with one of the cops on the Ninja Spirits
Speaker 1: Naughty List, so uh oh, and then she has to
Speaker 1: get the ghost purged out of her body by a
Speaker 1: mystical priest or actually I think maybe that the attempt
Speaker 1: to do that fails. But it's sort of a cross between.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a sequel to Enter the Ninja, so
Speaker 1: it's got that kind of sleazy nineteen eighties La van
Speaker 1: Halen guitar lick ninja movie feeling, but then it's also
Speaker 1: got elements of The Exorcist, and then it's also a
Speaker 1: cop movie and also just aerobics, you know, dance aerobics
Speaker 1: all over the place.
Speaker 3: I am on board for all of that. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3: We might have to consider that for Weird House, in
Speaker 3: part because on Weird House Cinema we have talked about
Speaker 3: the movie blood Beat in the past, which has a
Speaker 3: ghost samurai. So it seems fitting we should have a
Speaker 3: film at some point that has a ghost ninja.
Speaker 1: OF's ghost ninja possession.
Speaker 3: Now, obviously there are tons of additional Western ninja properties
Speaker 3: we could side here. There's so much kid stuff. Certainly
Speaker 3: video games are big, some being imports, like I do
Speaker 3: remember the Shanobi Arcade game, though I don't know how much.
Speaker 3: I don't know how how strong the ninja vibes are
Speaker 3: in that one. But then eventually you get things like
Speaker 3: Mortal Kombat, which has you know, some version of Ninja's
Speaker 3: in them, often of course with all sorts of crazy
Speaker 3: colors that again don't make sense if you're if you're
Speaker 3: engaging with the idea of ninja as a stealth operative.
Speaker 3: But if you're engaging within the idea of a ninja
Speaker 3: as a user of magic, then as we'll get into,
Speaker 3: then I guess Mortal Kombat isn't too unbelievable. And then
Speaker 3: during junior high, probably like early junior high, I ended
Speaker 3: up picking up Showgun and reading it, and there was
Speaker 3: a lot I didn't understand at the time. But then
Speaker 3: there's like a lot of just you know, ideas about
Speaker 3: Japanese history in Japanese culture that are loaded in that volume.
Speaker 3: And it does contain a very memorable section that involves
Speaker 3: the Shinobi, the ninja. So we'll come back to that,
Speaker 3: because as it turns out, the novel Showgun has a
Speaker 3: very important influence on the idea and the popularity of
Speaker 3: the ninja outside Japan.
Speaker 1: Well, regarding the idea of the ninja outside of Japan
Speaker 1: and the word ninja as it enters sort of the
Speaker 1: English lexicon, I came across a really interesting fact in
Speaker 1: a book that I'm going to reference a bunch of
Speaker 1: times in this series. It's been one of my main
Speaker 1: sources here by a British historian named Stephen Turnbull, called
Speaker 1: Ninja Unmasking the Myth. This is one of the best
Speaker 1: looking historical books and investigating the history of the concept
Speaker 1: of the ninja in the English language. And what Turnbull
Speaker 1: says that really shocked me is that the word ninja
Speaker 1: with its current romanized spelling did not appear in any
Speaker 1: Japanese English dictionary until the year nineteen seventy four, and
Speaker 1: there were plenty of Japanese English dictionaries before this, going
Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century. Before the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the favored Japanese pronunciation for the same concept the same
Speaker 1: kanji idiographs was shinobi mono or shinobi no mono. But
Speaker 1: there's an alternate pronunciation of the same idiographs nin ninsha
Speaker 1: or ninja, which became the dominant way of expressing the
Speaker 1: idea out loud in English in English contexts, at least,
Speaker 1: I guess beginning in the somewhere in the mid twentieth
Speaker 1: century or the nineteen seventies or so, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just surprisingly late to me. I've read in a
Speaker 1: few sources that consciousness of the idea of the shinobi
Speaker 1: or ninja in English speaking cultures traces in large part
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixty seven James Bond movie You Only
Speaker 1: Live Twice, which is pretty fun, does have great ninja action,
Speaker 1: and it is also wildly racially and culturally problematic, but
Speaker 1: apparently was a big sort of funnel of the idea
Speaker 1: of the ninja or shanobi into the international market.
Speaker 3: Yeah, You Only Live Twice definitely a Bond film I
Speaker 3: saw as a kid, and I was surprised to learn
Speaker 3: of its historical importance to this topic. It's not a
Speaker 3: film that has ever stuck in my mind as being like, oh,
Speaker 3: this this is important, this is bringing cultures together, anything
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: Oh, but in some ways it kind of is. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can there's a lot to criticize there
Speaker 1: but also there are some great scenes of like the
Speaker 1: ninja training scene where they're like out there practicing all
Speaker 1: their skills and techniques on the target dummies. It's great.
Speaker 3: So one of my main sources for this is an
Speaker 3: excellent and well sided book titled Ninja Attack True Tales
Speaker 3: of Assassin, Samurai and Outlaws Outlaws by Heroko Yoda and
Speaker 3: Matt Alt. Matt altype referenced on the show before for
Speaker 3: some of his other writings about Japanese culture in Japanese
Speaker 3: Popular Culture, and in this book they point out as
Speaker 3: well that You Only Live Twice was the first ninja
Speaker 3: screen appearance in international cinema. They write that while You
Speaker 3: Only Live Twice is the first international film concerning ninja,
Speaker 3: it was directly influenced by the nineteen sixty five film Shinobio,
Speaker 3: which was in turn inspired by the success of the
Speaker 3: various ninja short stories of Futaro Yamada, who lived nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty two through two thousand and one. This is a
Speaker 3: writer who is discovered by Atogawa Rampo, who we've talked
Speaker 3: about in Weird House Cinema because his writings have been
Speaker 3: adapted to the screen numerous times.
Speaker 1: So how did ninjas end up in James Bond.
Speaker 3: Well, it involves the screenwriter, who was, of course Roald Dahl,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety. You know, we
Speaker 3: often associate with Willie Wonk in The Chocolate Factory and
Speaker 3: various other works, but he was a screenwriter on You
Speaker 3: Only Live Twice and apparently went on a research trip
Speaker 3: to Japan to prepare for this. And while in Japan
Speaker 3: he watched the movie in question, that nineteen sixty five
Speaker 3: ninja film, and realized, well, this is what the screenplay needs,
Speaker 3: we need ninja and ninja were added. Good choice, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and again you know, popular, big budget film that is
Speaker 3: exactly the kind of thing that will propel a new
Speaker 3: concept into the public mindset. Now, this book gets into
Speaker 3: the overall sort of tangled web of pop culture ninjas
Speaker 3: and in and out of Japan, going, you know, all
Speaker 3: the way back to things like a seventeen seventy eight
Speaker 3: kabuki play that involves ninja. And they actually have a
Speaker 3: lovely flow chart that includes everything from Ninja scroll to
Speaker 3: kill Bill. I'll come back to or of what they
Speaker 3: have to say about ninja, popular culture and ninja fiction
Speaker 3: here in a.
Speaker 1: Bit now, I think maybe we should do a rundown
Speaker 1: of some of the common characteristics of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: movie Ninja, the international market movie Ninja. So usually this
Speaker 1: ninja is a stealthy assassin, dressed head to toe in
Speaker 1: cloth coverings, usually black cloths or a black costume, with
Speaker 1: a mask that covers most of the face except maybe
Speaker 1: like an opening for the eyes or some other kind
Speaker 1: of gap in the face covering, but otherwise head to
Speaker 1: toe black cloth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just the iconic idea of a ninja. You
Speaker 3: can't say the word ninja without picturing that on some level.
Speaker 1: What does the ninja do?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: The ninja is a master of martial arts combat with
Speaker 1: a batman style belt of special tools and weapons, often
Speaker 1: including a grappling hook for climbing, smoke bombs to hide
Speaker 1: an escape, and pointed metal throwing stars that can be
Speaker 1: thrown with deadly accuracy.
Speaker 3: Right along with of course the katana for some sword play,
Speaker 3: maybe various other little shorter sword, yeah, shorter swords and
Speaker 3: various you know, various gadgets has required, generally all related
Speaker 3: to stell the assassination.
Speaker 1: They are often depicted as capable of almost superhuman acrobatics
Speaker 1: bordering on the ability to fly. And I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting Turnbull actually points this out in his book that
Speaker 1: it is often within settings that are taken as otherwise realistic,
Speaker 1: or within fictional settings where magic is not otherwise assumed
Speaker 1: to exist, that ninja have these apparently supernatural abilities. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a full fantasy world, it's like realistic setting,
Speaker 1: but the ninjas can basically fly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into more on that in a bit.
Speaker 3: I'd say other aspects of the pop culture ninja is
Speaker 3: that the ninja there's no like Ninja by night, blank
Speaker 3: by day. Ninja are generally depicted as being like fanatics,
Speaker 3: as being completely devoted to their art of stealth and assassination,
Speaker 3: and in generally and oftentimes they're you know, villains and
Speaker 3: sometimes secondary villains and a lot of properties, So there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of effort given to develop their characters
Speaker 3: outside of the adversary that they're presented as.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes they're presented as members of a sort of
Speaker 1: secret international brotherhood of some kind that they belong to
Speaker 1: some corpus or body of similarly trained people. In some cases,
Speaker 1: I do think there are sort of alter ego, you know,
Speaker 1: Clark Kent Superman ninja's. In fact, I think there is
Speaker 1: one in Ninja three, the Domination. Oh okay, so I
Speaker 1: think it pops up from time to time, but I
Speaker 1: agree that most of the time, in like American movies,
Speaker 1: it's as if all they ever do is like sneak
Speaker 1: around and do stealth missions.
Speaker 3: Right, and have great, great eyes. We really want to
Speaker 3: have really expressive eyes in your cinematic ninja's, you know,
Speaker 3: because that's all you're going to see of the actor
Speaker 3: at least, and when they're in Ninja.
Speaker 1: Mold brows that narrow dramatically. Yeah. There's one more thing
Speaker 1: I came across in Turnbull that I really liked regarding
Speaker 1: like the ninja's obscure tools and techniques. There's one that
Speaker 1: is from a novel by Yamata Futaro, who you mentioned
Speaker 1: a minute ago is writing these influential ninja stories and
Speaker 1: novels in the nineteen fifties. This is from a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight novel called Coca Ninpocho, which Turnbull says is
Speaker 1: basically a mostly accurate historical setting, but the ninjas within
Speaker 1: the story can turn their hair into porcupine quills which
Speaker 1: they like shoot off and launch as weapons, so like
Speaker 1: weaponized hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the dark magic of the ninja. Now, I
Speaker 3: want to come back to Showgun for a second here. Showgun,
Speaker 3: of course, it was a nineteen seventy five novel. There
Speaker 3: is a subsequent TV minis series about it based on it,
Speaker 3: and then there's been a more recent twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: adaptation of Showgun that is quite excellent. I loved it.
Speaker 3: My wife and I loved it. Everyone I've talked to
Speaker 3: has really enjoyed it, and they went to great pains
Speaker 3: with this adaptation to sort of make sure that it
Speaker 3: was grounded as properly as they could in history and
Speaker 3: in Japanese culture. Though James Colovell's Showgun is like an
Speaker 3: adaptation of history, I guess you would say it is
Speaker 3: a work of fiction based on history, written by an
Speaker 3: outsider who was interested in these things. But there is,
Speaker 3: of course this pivotal sequence in the novel and in
Speaker 3: adaptations that involved the ninja, and it has been argued
Speaker 3: that Clavel introduce the concept of ninja into the West.
Speaker 3: I've also read it argue that, like for a while,
Speaker 3: this was a very successful novel, A lot of people
Speaker 3: read it like a lot of what many Westerners knew
Speaker 3: about about Japanese history and Japanese culture was based on
Speaker 3: this book. You know, It's like it was. It kind
Speaker 3: of had the same role as You Only Live Twice
Speaker 3: in this regard, a very popular work of media that
Speaker 3: was for many people their their first or primary exposure
Speaker 3: to this different culture and different time period. But again,
Speaker 3: the novels based on history, it's not one hundred percent accurate.
Speaker 3: I think the recent TV series does a pretty good
Speaker 3: job of updating everything as far as I understand it,
Speaker 3: And so the ninja or shinobi that we see in
Speaker 3: it that they seem like they seem to have done
Speaker 3: what they could to sort of ground it more properly.
Speaker 3: Though I think they're still sort of reflecting the trappings
Speaker 3: of the ninja's pop culture glow. So they're not all
Speaker 3: dressed in black, and they're certainly not wearing white or
Speaker 3: you know, bright moral on back colors, but they are
Speaker 3: more recognizable as pop culture ninjas. Quick note on the
Speaker 3: word ninja plural and singular is ninja, But I am
Speaker 3: inevitably going to keep saying ninja's from time to time.
Speaker 3: So my apologies.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that exact thing. I realized, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ninja is plural, But I bet I've already said
Speaker 1: ninja's I can't stop myself. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But on the Showgun issue, I turned to editor Henry
Speaker 3: Smith's book Learning from Showgun, Japanese History in Western Fantasy.
Speaker 3: This is put out as part of the program in
Speaker 3: Asian Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In
Speaker 3: this the editor and the authors here point out that
Speaker 3: ninjas in the novel Showgun Quote reflect the romanticization of
Speaker 3: the ninja in modern Japanese popular entertainment. So the idea
Speaker 3: here that what we see in the novel, and inevitably
Speaker 3: in any adaptation, we see the ninja as this violent
Speaker 3: death cult of fanatical assassins. And as we'll be discussing,
Speaker 3: there's some truth to that, to their role in assassination
Speaker 3: and stealth and even military endeavors. But there's a lot
Speaker 3: more of the myth in the legend here in this
Speaker 3: usage of the ninja than anything.
Speaker 1: Else, and the overtaking of historical fact by sort of
Speaker 1: myth and storytelling and romanticization of the ninja, that that
Speaker 1: tradition that goes way back. Actually, it's not just a
Speaker 1: twentieth century thing.
Speaker 3: And it's not just a Western appropriation of it or
Speaker 3: anything like that. Like it would be easier to sort
Speaker 3: of sum it all up if it were like, well,
Speaker 3: there's the Japanese reality of what ninjas were, and then
Speaker 3: westerner's got a hold of it, and of course they
Speaker 3: transformed it. There is some Western transformation of it involved,
Speaker 3: but for the most part, this transformation of the historic
Speaker 3: ninja into the pop cultural trope of the ninja, this
Speaker 3: all occurred Withinese popular culture, well in advance of anything
Speaker 3: James Bond got up to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing I think we should establish early and
Speaker 1: this is this is something that is a major theme
Speaker 1: of this book by Turnbull that I've been referencing, is
Speaker 1: that apparently a huge amount of what is commonly said
Speaker 1: about the ninja, even in apparently authoritative books and museums
Speaker 1: and other historical sources, is based on text traditions that
Speaker 1: do not necessarily reflect what really happened in history. So
Speaker 1: there is sort of a ninja tradition, or maybe to
Speaker 1: be more phonetically accurate, a shanobi tradition that is Japanese
Speaker 1: in origin and does in many ways go back hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, but still may not be based on real
Speaker 1: figures and practices in history that the term shinobi originally
Speaker 1: referred to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Like in the past, I've heard people be
Speaker 3: as firm as to say the ninja didn't really exist.
Speaker 3: The ninja are men, And I think you could basically
Speaker 3: say that that's a true statement to some degree, Like
Speaker 3: the ninja as we see them in popular culture didn't
Speaker 3: really exist, but they are based on a thing that did.
Speaker 3: And it's fun to get into that and try and
Speaker 3: peace apart like what was real, what was probably real?
Speaker 3: What isn't an embellishment and what does that embellishment mean?
Speaker 3: In the book by Yoda and All, they point out that,
Speaker 3: like basically the term ninja or even shnobi, we're dealing
Speaker 3: with a colloquial term that can be translated to things like,
Speaker 3: you know, a clandestine person or one who is invisible.
Speaker 3: But historically they would have been known by a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of different colloquial terms, including, but not limited to
Speaker 3: a few of these examples. So there's ninjutsu suska, which
Speaker 3: means like a practitioner of ninjutsu, the art of stealth.
Speaker 3: There's one called on Mitsu, which would have meant like
Speaker 3: the secret service. And then there are a couple here
Speaker 3: I want to include that I think are neat because
Speaker 3: they kind of hint at some of the other like
Speaker 3: non stereotypical modern ninja things they would have been up to.
Speaker 3: There's one that they would have translated to the shortcutters,
Speaker 3: which I rather like. You know, it's like, you have
Speaker 3: some sort of a political, military, or social problem and
Speaker 3: traditional honorable means of dealing with those problems are not achievable,
Speaker 3: So what do you need. You need a shortcut, and
Speaker 3: that's why you seek out the shortcutters.
Speaker 1: That's very cool.
Speaker 3: There's another one that I believe is Okami, that I've
Speaker 3: seen translated as the silent watchers, And I think that's
Speaker 3: also important here because while, yeah, while the while while
Speaker 3: the historic ninjas would have involved themselves or been hired
Speaker 3: to deal in military and assassination type scenarios, they also
Speaker 3: might have been involved in entirely non violent affairs as well,
Speaker 3: things that we might typically describe more as like straight
Speaker 3: up spy and espionage business.
Speaker 1: And often I think I've seen the word ukami translated
Speaker 1: as spy. Yeah, and that leads back to how I
Speaker 1: think many of the earliest understandings of the ninja or
Speaker 1: shanobi have to do with spying and infiltration in warfare,
Speaker 1: and so to situate the classical understanding of the ninja
Speaker 1: within a conceptual context, I wanted to talk briefly about
Speaker 1: the precedent of using spies and infiltrators in war. And
Speaker 1: Turnbull does this by making reference in his book to
Speaker 1: the classic Chinese text The Art of War by Sun Zoo,
Speaker 1: or Turnbull calls him sun z I guess they're different
Speaker 1: ways of pronouncing the name, but I think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say sun Zoo because that's more familiar to me. So
Speaker 1: this is a classic Chinese text, usually dated to the
Speaker 1: fifth century BCE. Apparently, any of the authors of the
Speaker 1: Tokugawa period who wrote the Tales of the Shinobi establishing
Speaker 1: a lot of this lore would have been very familiar
Speaker 1: with Sunzu in the Art of War and other sort
Speaker 1: of warfare manuals of this type. And apparently Sunzu talks
Speaker 1: about the concept of a secret agent, referring to it
Speaker 1: with the Chinese character khan, which means the space between
Speaker 1: two objects or discord. So This refers to the use
Speaker 1: of secret agents to undermine alliances and sow division within
Speaker 1: within societies or within within armies. And Sunsu actually sort
Speaker 1: of lays out a taxonomy of five different kinds of
Speaker 1: secret agents. I thought this was interesting. So first of all,
Speaker 1: you've got your incan or native agents. These are villagers
Speaker 1: of an enemy's province or country. He says, you can't
Speaker 1: really expect them to do like risky work or carry
Speaker 1: out difficult missions, so they are mainly useful for just
Speaker 1: gathering general information about the enemy's disposition, maybe like where
Speaker 1: the enemy is or the direction of travel and so forth.
Speaker 1: Then after that you've got nikon, which are inside agents.
Speaker 1: These are officials of the enemy government drafted to your
Speaker 1: side by bribes or pay. These agents can supply much
Speaker 1: better quality information, and they are especially useful for creating
Speaker 1: discord within enemy ranks. And if you want to identify
Speaker 1: these people, you can look for officials within the enemy
Speaker 1: government who have been slighted in some way, like maybe
Speaker 1: being insulted or passed over for promotion. Find someone who
Speaker 1: has power who thinks that your enemy has treated them unfairly.
Speaker 1: After that you've got yukon or friendly agents. This apparently
Speaker 1: refers to double agents. So the enemy has spies as well.
Speaker 1: You are if you want a double agent, you can
Speaker 1: recruit the enemy's spy to actually spy for you or
Speaker 1: to feed false information to their masters. Classic double agents
Speaker 1: set up. YEA. Then there's one called Chikhan, which means
Speaker 1: dead agents. This one is interesting and pretty cold. It's
Speaker 1: the idea of expendable allies who can unknowingly be given
Speaker 1: false information which they believe to be true, and then
Speaker 1: sent deliberately into enemy capture, so when information is extracted
Speaker 1: from them, it will mislead the enemy command. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is cold. But then finally you get to Chokan, the
Speaker 1: last of the five, who are called living agents, and
Speaker 1: what Turnbull says about them is the following quote. They
Speaker 1: go boldly into enemy territory and return with valuable information.
Speaker 1: For this purpose, men who are pre eminent in intelligence
Speaker 1: are selected. They have the ability to withstand great hardship
Speaker 1: and have the social skills to gain access to those
Speaker 1: of the enemy who are closest to the seat of power.
Speaker 1: These are the classic spies envisaged by the Ninja myth.
Speaker 1: So to be clear, these are not being called nin
Speaker 1: or anything in this context. This is a much earlier work,
Speaker 1: but it's establishing this sort of principle within warfare and
Speaker 1: within the taxonomy of spies and secret agents, that there's
Speaker 1: already this idea of this like James Bond spy kind
Speaker 1: of figure, or this ninja, this person who is a
Speaker 1: who is an agent, who can strike out on their own,
Speaker 1: who can act and has some kind of like has capability,
Speaker 1: has powers, and they can go into hostile territory and
Speaker 1: carry out a mission to gather information or sow discord
Speaker 1: or do whatever is needed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course, in all of this, sun Zoo
Speaker 3: is codifying realities that already existed in warfare. One thing
Speaker 3: that Yoda and all point out is you can look
Speaker 3: into various old texts and some ancient texts and you
Speaker 3: can see allusions to this kind of spycraft. They are
Speaker 3: apparently examples from the Old Testament that also involve, you know,
Speaker 3: something you could interpret us as spy work and espionage,
Speaker 3: like you go out on this mission, do this thing,
Speaker 3: you know, so, you know, again codifying realities that were
Speaker 3: already present, but meaningfully doing so meaningfully and in a
Speaker 3: very influential way. That with the ripples are going to spread,
Speaker 3: of course, out of China, through Japan and ultimately globally.
Speaker 1: I do think it's kind of interesting that if you
Speaker 1: think beyond the concept of just the ninja and to
Speaker 1: the broader idea of like any character in fiction who
Speaker 1: is depicted as having like peak abilities in almost every domain,
Speaker 1: like they know everything, they're the smartest, they speak all
Speaker 1: these languages, they're you know, unbeatable in hand to hand combat.
Speaker 1: I would say the most common profession this character has
Speaker 1: is spy. Isn't that kind of interesting?
Speaker 3: It is interesting? Yeah, I mean on one level, I
Speaker 3: think it's a realization of the intense level of danger
Speaker 3: that individuals like this would put themselves in. Like even
Speaker 3: if there you know, not involved in an actual like
Speaker 3: ninja movie fight and stealth sequence, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: the intense danger of engaging in that level of deception
Speaker 3: and betrayal, you know, like on just like a social
Speaker 3: level and a legal level, like you're in you're engaging
Speaker 3: in a high level of danger. Now, another interesting thing.
Speaker 3: We didn't mention this when we talked about the trope
Speaker 3: of the ninja in popular culture, but another thing you
Speaker 3: frequently see you will see examples of ninjas who you know,
Speaker 3: use modern gadgets and or are robots or cyborgs. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of fun to be had there. But a
Speaker 3: lot of times the ninja is depicted as an operative
Speaker 3: even in like a modern or nineteen eighties nineteen ninety setting,
Speaker 3: who depends in large part on traditional even archaic weapons
Speaker 3: used with great skill. But like if a ninja needs
Speaker 3: to you know, get past a you know, computer console
Speaker 3: on a security door, you're more likely to see that
Speaker 3: movie Ninja throw a throwing star through it, right, or
Speaker 3: shoot it with a bow and arrow, as opposed to
Speaker 3: get down there and stick in a USB stick or
Speaker 3: start you know, hacking the computer system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really have a picture in my mind of
Speaker 1: somebody like chucking a throwing star into a computer and
Speaker 1: like sparks shoot out of it. Yeah, that's that's how
Speaker 1: you get past security.
Speaker 3: But an important point that Yoda and altamic about the
Speaker 3: myth of the ninja and the modern idea of the
Speaker 3: ninja versus the historic reality as we understand it is
Speaker 3: that these individuals would not have been picky about like
Speaker 3: what level of technology that they used. In fact, they
Speaker 3: would have used like the latest advancements available such as
Speaker 3: gunpowder for example. So it's it's kind of just a
Speaker 3: virtue of us spinning modern tails about an older pop
Speaker 3: cultural idea than anything like. So, yeah, if the Ninja
Speaker 3: had access to James Bond spy gadgets, they use those
Speaker 3: James Bond spy gadgets like they are like any espionage
Speaker 3: operative out there. They'll make use of the best tools
Speaker 3: available to pull off the deed.
Speaker 1: Now, another interesting way of understanding that the ninja character archetype,
Speaker 1: by contrast, is something that the Turnbull highlights in the book,
Speaker 1: which is the idea of the ninja as the quote
Speaker 1: dark antithesis of the samurai, another historical character. Now, again
Speaker 1: this is something that is not necessarily a historical reality.
Speaker 1: This is something that is how the ninja archetype is
Speaker 1: reflected within storytelling and tradition, not necessarily historically real, but
Speaker 1: within these traditions you can see that see the contrast here.
Speaker 1: The samurai are warriors who are nobles. The Ninja are
Speaker 1: often represented as commers. The samurai are depicted as loyal
Speaker 1: and honorable, the ninja as treacherous and mercenary. The samurai
Speaker 1: fight their enemy face to face, while the ninja sneak
Speaker 1: up on people, you know that, stab people in the back,
Speaker 1: and as a spy, the ninja must always survive the
Speaker 1: mission at all costs to deliver the gathered intelligence, whereas
Speaker 1: the samurai is very often depicted as dying selflessly in
Speaker 1: battle and maintaining having an honorable death. And so in
Speaker 1: all these ways, within the storytelling tradition, the ninja could
Speaker 1: often be seen as positioned as like the the the
Speaker 1: negative mirror image of the samurai warrior trope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that that is key, and it
Speaker 3: does seem to get into some historic realities like, for instance,
Speaker 3: the idea that that apparently ninja would have very often
Speaker 3: been lower born men and women as opposed to warrior
Speaker 3: class individuals. So there is this like the social distinction there.
Speaker 3: But and then also when it comes down to what
Speaker 3: stories are told and celebrated, the stories of the samurai
Speaker 3: were celebrated and told and retold, and legends were told
Speaker 3: about them far ahead of anything like this with the ninja.
Speaker 3: The ninja would would have been essentially been the dirty
Speaker 3: tricks department for any feudal lord looking to solve some
Speaker 3: sort of again political, military, or social problem that they
Speaker 3: couldn't otherwise approach, and it was not something that you
Speaker 3: would have talked about in polite society. Like the shanobi
Speaker 3: and the various colloquial terms would have been synonymous with trouble.
Speaker 3: They weren't to be celebrated, even if you prize their
Speaker 3: skills secretly, and in employing them you would have hoped
Speaker 3: to retain plausible deniability over whatever was about to happen.
Speaker 3: In general, we may get into some you know, some
Speaker 3: examples to the contrary, but in general, like this was
Speaker 3: this was the dirty tricks department.
Speaker 1: But yes, to come back to your point, despite the
Speaker 1: later profusion of valorizing tales, you know, often at the
Speaker 1: time people don't feel so excited or proud about I
Speaker 1: don't know, deception in warfare or secretive military activities, even
Speaker 1: if they are necessary to winning.
Speaker 3: Sometimes, yeah, better to celebrate the tale of the noble
Speaker 3: and victorious samurai than the the shnov that you pay
Speaker 3: to go in and stab somebody in the back. Now,
Speaker 3: I want to add a quick note. I mentioned men
Speaker 3: and women, and on the subject of a female ninja,
Speaker 3: they did apparently exist, though the reality was likely nowhere
Speaker 3: near what image may be summoned in your head here,
Speaker 3: you know, the various pop culture ideas of a female ninja.
Speaker 3: Yoda and all point out that there's no indication that
Speaker 3: any female ninja ever engaged in combat of any kind
Speaker 3: or again that we have no direct evidence or writings
Speaker 3: of that. But female spies at the very least would
Speaker 3: have been able to move through parts of society that
Speaker 3: would have been less accessible or inaccessible to men, or
Speaker 3: move in ways that men would easily overlook. They might
Speaker 3: disguise themselves as entertainers, as prostitutes, as household staff, and
Speaker 3: a particular note, as transient Mico holy women. So these
Speaker 3: would have been the modern version is they tend to
Speaker 3: shinto shrines and so forth. But this would have been
Speaker 3: like a loose knit order, so not a lot of
Speaker 3: like you know, you can't like check the papers as
Speaker 3: much of these individuals. And they would have traveled around.
Speaker 3: So it's a great cover story for any female ninjas,
Speaker 3: female spies that would have been utilized. It would have
Speaker 3: been an ideal cover. And these were sometimes referred to
Speaker 3: as the kno ichi, but very little is known about them.
Speaker 3: The use of female spies may have been considered even
Speaker 3: more taboo than just using spies or shnovi in general.
Speaker 3: And we really only have legends about a single named
Speaker 3: female ninja. This would have been the sixteenth century figure
Speaker 3: Mochizuki chi Yojo. It is thought that she was a
Speaker 3: real person, but we don't even know the like one
Speaker 3: correct pronunciation of her name. But but but still it
Speaker 3: was probably a real person based on what I've been reading.
Speaker 3: But anyway, all of this makes sense because again, this
Speaker 3: is about not playing by the rules. This is about
Speaker 3: breaking the rules, uh, doing the taboo thing in order
Speaker 3: to achieve your military political goals. And so in that case,
Speaker 3: you know, all cards are on the table there.
Speaker 1: Rob So you found something about like the earliest references
Speaker 1: to ninjas in their all black costume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this was really interesting because you know,
Speaker 3: the iconic vision of the of the ninja, as we've
Speaker 3: been discussing, is that of the ninja and all black,
Speaker 3: you know, blending into the shadows, creeping along the rooftops
Speaker 3: and so so forth. Like you just you can't separate
Speaker 3: that from the pop culture idea of the ninja. But
Speaker 3: this seemed this idea that they wore all black and
Speaker 3: trooped around like this apparently did not emerge in Japan
Speaker 3: until around eighteen seventeen, or at least that's when we
Speaker 3: see the first known print, the first known image of
Speaker 3: a ninja wearing this sort of garb. And it actually
Speaker 3: ties into a very important figure in Japanese art history,
Speaker 3: Katsushi Kuhokusai, who if you're not familiar with his name,
Speaker 3: you're very familiar with at least his most famous piece,
Speaker 3: and that is the Great Wave of Kandagatwa. This artist
Speaker 3: lives seventeen sixty through eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: And so what do we see in his woodblock featuring
Speaker 1: a ninja.
Speaker 3: Well, we see something that is just instantly recognizable as
Speaker 3: a modern ninja. Like you could not mistake this for
Speaker 3: anything else, right, because it is a man all in black,
Speaker 3: everything covered except his eyes, and he's climbing a rope.
Speaker 3: You just know he's climbing. You know, he's climbing somewhere
Speaker 3: he's not supposed to be, or he's returning from that
Speaker 3: place having assassinated somebody or having stolen some important scrolls
Speaker 3: or something to that. To that effect, Now, where does
Speaker 3: this come from? I mean, I'm you would be tempted,
Speaker 3: and I think would be very understandable to guess, well,
Speaker 3: you're just you're making an assumption that if you're up
Speaker 3: to secretive things, you might wear all black to blend in, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it makes sense, and it has been pointed
Speaker 3: out that, you know, it would be ridiculous to say,
Speaker 3: no historic Ninja's ever dressed like this, because in the
Speaker 3: art of espionage it you know, it might make sense
Speaker 3: to do so at some point. But it's been interpreted
Speaker 3: that what we see here is essentially like a use
Speaker 3: or a repurpose of what in Japanese theater is known
Speaker 3: as akuroko, which is someone that is dressed all in black,
Speaker 3: essentially a stage hand that is to aid in the
Speaker 3: production in ways that you know that don't distract from
Speaker 3: the key performance. And this is something we see in
Speaker 3: theater arts around the world as well. You see it
Speaker 3: in puppetry, for example, you want an invisible puppeteer, then
Speaker 3: you have them just wear all black and black over
Speaker 3: their faces as well, so they blend into the background
Speaker 3: and don't distract from the central performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I've done theater, you know people working backstage
Speaker 1: were dressed in all black, and I guess the idea
Speaker 1: is you're just less likely to be seen that way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Turnbull talks about this that in traditional kabuki theater,
Speaker 1: there were these figures, the corogo or the coroko, who
Speaker 1: would wear all black to like move scenery around or
Speaker 1: maybe like help the actors change costume within view of
Speaker 1: the audience or something. But they would be dressed in
Speaker 1: black and they would have a mask over their face,
Speaker 1: and this would symbolize it would not only make them
Speaker 1: stand out less visually, but also apparently would like symbolize invisibility.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what we're looking here, it's interesting. It's kind
Speaker 3: of a mash up, a visual mashup of the idea
Speaker 3: of the invisible ninja and the mostly invisible presence of
Speaker 3: the stage hand. And of course the stage hand is
Speaker 3: literally manipulating reality, but in a way that is supposed
Speaker 3: to be secondary to the performers. Also interesting to think
Speaker 3: about that a lot of these productions are going to
Speaker 3: involve samurai, you know, so you're going to have like
Speaker 3: the samurai in the forefront doing all the really important
Speaker 3: dramatic stuff, but in the background, there are these almost
Speaker 3: invisible characters who are doing something else, something that that
Speaker 3: we're we're not meant to know about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But of course, the ironic thing about like dressing
Speaker 1: in a full black costume head to toe is that
Speaker 1: if somebody saw you and you were wearing this costume,
Speaker 1: you would you would instantly stand out in reality, like
Speaker 1: with not in the context of a stage play or something,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it's it's a contradiction to what would
Speaker 1: actually be said. In most of the texts that talk
Speaker 1: about ninja or Shanobi going way back, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what these people would do is wear a disguise,
Speaker 1: so you blend in with the people that you're trying
Speaker 1: to infiltrate. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, in general, when we think about what would
Speaker 3: a ninja look like, what would a Shanoby look like,
Speaker 3: they would just look like anybody else. The best way
Speaker 3: to move from point A to point B through the
Speaker 3: people is to look like the people, and so that's
Speaker 3: what they would have done. I guess James Bond does this.
Speaker 3: I can't remember. James Bond's always wearing it. He's always
Speaker 3: going places where you wear a tuxedo anyway, so I
Speaker 3: guess it's like he's doing that. But you know, in general,
Speaker 3: like a spy is going to want to blend into
Speaker 3: the crowd. They don't want to stand out, you know.
Speaker 3: It's that you want to be the least interesting looking
Speaker 3: person in the room because nobody is supposed to know
Speaker 3: you're there.
Speaker 1: I guess it actually highlights a tension between the reality
Speaker 1: of intelligence gathering and spy work and the sort of
Speaker 1: the media demands, which is like, when you want to
Speaker 1: read a spy story, you want it to be the
Speaker 1: most thrilling an exciting thing possible. So you want the
Speaker 1: spy hero to be like to stand out, to be
Speaker 1: notable and exciting in every way. And then reality, if
Speaker 1: you were doing spy work, you would want to be
Speaker 1: the least exciting, least notable looking person on earth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so. I guess at this point we might summarize,
Speaker 3: as we kind of reached towards the end of this episode,
Speaker 3: that the ninja is there's a historical like bedrock, and
Speaker 3: then there is all of this fiction and legend making
Speaker 3: and mythology on top of that. And one of the
Speaker 3: additional challenges here is that there's there's less historical record
Speaker 3: down there on the bedrock than one would like. There's
Speaker 3: a lot more fiction and legend making, and it can
Speaker 3: make things things difficult. It can make it difficult to
Speaker 3: sort of try to weed out what exactly is the
Speaker 3: historic reality of the Shanobi. And then these various groups
Speaker 3: that are described as Shanobi and there apparently are according
Speaker 3: to Yoda and A, there are like three different ways
Speaker 3: of sort of looking at why this is the case.
Speaker 3: And the first is something that we've touched on already,
Speaker 3: and that is that, Okay, if if Shnobi operatives were
Speaker 3: generally common born dirty tricks specialists who were you know,
Speaker 3: taboo to use and not something you'd brag about, they're
Speaker 3: totally not on the same level of cultural esteem and
Speaker 3: power as the samurai warrior class. So the samurai are
Speaker 3: going to get all the stories and the legends and
Speaker 3: the tales at least during their initial that the key
Speaker 3: period of operations here and and the ninja are going
Speaker 3: to be ignored for the most part. Now, another important
Speaker 3: thing to keep in mind is that the ninja would
Speaker 3: have inevitably been a secretive bunch. They were working in
Speaker 3: the shadow. They died under the radar, and Yoda and
Speaker 3: Auld actually signed an individual by the name of Musque Hatsumi,
Speaker 3: the last living descendant of the Tokokushi School of Ninja,
Speaker 3: who stated that quote, if one can know the truth
Speaker 3: about ninjutsu, it isn't really ninjutsu. So this reminds me
Speaker 3: a bit of the nineteen sixty seven Japanese crime thriller
Speaker 3: Branded to Kill, which is a very stylish noir action
Speaker 3: picture about assassins. But in that movie, which again is
Speaker 3: very much work of fiction that's not to be taken
Speaker 3: a reality, it's in a very surreal in some ways.
Speaker 3: But in that fiction, there's like this ranking of assassins,
Speaker 3: and there's supposedly a number one assassin, like the best
Speaker 3: assassin in the world of Japanese crime, but they are
Speaker 3: almost like a ghost there. They might not even exist,
Speaker 3: or perhaps they've kind of transcended traditional existence by being
Speaker 3: the best at what they do. So yeah, I do
Speaker 3: like this idea, and I think there maybe is something
Speaker 3: to acknowledge there that you're dealing with the secret of
Speaker 3: organization that wouldn't want there to be a bunch of
Speaker 3: records about what they did and what they're doing. They
Speaker 3: would have wanted to remain in the shadow. And then
Speaker 3: the third point they make is that during the heyday
Speaker 3: of the Sengoku era, the Warring States of fourteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven through fifteen seventy three. Roughly, the ninja were not fun.
Speaker 3: They were synonymous with trouble and unrest again, you know,
Speaker 3: coming back to the idea of shanobi as an adjective
Speaker 3: as well. And it was only later, during the comparable
Speaker 3: peace and stability of say the Edo period sixteen oh
Speaker 3: three through eighteen sixty eight, that new generations had the
Speaker 3: luxury of turning and looking back to the horrors of
Speaker 3: the past to spin out new tales of their stealthy
Speaker 3: exploits for entertainment purposes.
Speaker 1: Well, I think maybe we are out of time for
Speaker 1: part one, but there's a lot more to say about
Speaker 1: the ninja, trying to unravel the historical complexities, the differences
Speaker 1: between what we know and what is more likely some
Speaker 1: kind of historical fiction or invented tradition untangling those differences,
Speaker 1: as well as getting into some of the great anecdotes
Speaker 1: and stories about historical alleged historical Ninja, as well as
Speaker 1: maybe some of the science of their tools and tricks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we can definitely spin off some ninja
Speaker 3: science in a subsequent episode, So excited to get into
Speaker 3: that later on. But we have a lot more to
Speaker 3: cover various named ninjas of history and legend worth talking
Speaker 3: about some more about just how you know this interwoven
Speaker 3: idea of the ninja comes to fruition and so forth.
Speaker 3: So keep on the lookout for that. By the way,
Speaker 3: that book that I mentioned by Yoda and Alt Ninja Attack,
Speaker 3: this is one of three books that they put out.
Speaker 3: The other two are on Yo Kai and ury. If
Speaker 3: you look these up, you're going to notice that it
Speaker 3: has some very flashy, fun illustrations on the cover. I
Speaker 3: believe that the illustrator is Utaka Kondo, and it has
Speaker 3: like a very fun manga look to everything. Uh. But
Speaker 3: but these are very informative, very well cited texts.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I highly recommend them. They're a lot of fun. That
Speaker 3: the Yokai book I read with my son, We really
Speaker 3: got into that one. H And yeah, you'll learn a
Speaker 3: lot about Japanese culture and history. So anyway, we're going
Speaker 3: to go and close out here, but write in. We'd
Speaker 3: love to hear from you if you have any thoughts
Speaker 3: on anything we discussed here, including your first exposures to
Speaker 3: the wonderful world of the of the pop culture ninja.
Speaker 3: Where did what what? Where was it? What did you see?
Speaker 3: Was it a video game? Was it a TV show?
Speaker 3: Was it a Japanese film?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: We we we want to know. We're very interested in this.
Speaker 3: In the global legend of the Ninja.
Speaker 1: Did anybody out there ever beat Ninja Gaiden? Oh?
Speaker 3: Man, I don't think. I don't think I played that one.
Speaker 3: But that is another huge Ninja video game franchise.
Speaker 1: Of note. We accept your tall tales about how you
Speaker 1: were almost to the last stage but then kept getting
Speaker 1: knocked off the ledge by that thing that spawns over
Speaker 1: and over.
Speaker 3: Now, this is this one that you could actually beat,
Speaker 3: because I know there have been some of the In fact,
Speaker 3: I think there's a teenage mean and Ninja Turtle game
Speaker 3: for like Anys that it was only later that people realize, oh,
Speaker 3: you couldn't actually make some pivotal jump that always nobody
Speaker 3: could actually beat it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We've talked about this before. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember that, but I don't know about Ninja Guide, and
Speaker 1: I just remember it being hard.
Speaker 3: They used to make the game, those games so hard.
Speaker 3: I did not miss it. Some people were nostalgic for
Speaker 3: impossible games. I occasionally play one of these and I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: I want to be able to beat this and move
Speaker 3: on from it. This is not a lifelong struggle I'm
Speaker 3: signing up for.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm with you there. I don't know. People
Speaker 1: play video games for different reasons, I guess, but if
Speaker 1: I play video game, I'm not looking to test my metal.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I'm trying to relax.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I want to feel like a competent ninja
Speaker 3: in this video game, not an incompetent I didn't sign
Speaker 3: up for a bunch of ninja fails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there were a lot of those in that anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I guess we're wrapping up for today, but we'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. A huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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