****I’m reading Clavell’s Shogun, which was published in 1975. I notice with some surprise that the author finds it necessary to explain ninjas in detail to his reader - their code, stealth tactics, weapons, uniform, the fact that they are ronin and so on.
My question is, does this indicate that ninjas were unfamiliar to Western audiences as recently as 1975? And if that’s so, when did ninjas become well-known? And how?
(Mods, since this asks for opinions I put it here but move if you see fit.)
Certainly the depiction of ninjas as black pajama wearing guys jumping up walls and using ninja-to and throwing ninja stars, etc is etched into pop-culture, but these are caricatures, they aren’t really representative of actual history.
I knew about ninjas prior to 1975 from comic books. I can’t recall seeing ninjas on television or in a mainstream movie prior to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles making them popular. Of course, I lived way out in the sticks, the nearest movie theater was a single screen house 20 miles away, and no cable, so not a lot of variety.
I don’t recall a lot of exposition in TMNT (at least, the 1980’s cartoons and movies) on the exact nature of ninjas - there was some background on the history of the civil war within the Foot Clan school/lineage of ninjas that led to several members emigrating to the US and triggering much of the plot, but beyond that, not much. So that sort of implies that people already knew about them, or else TMNT would have had to painstakingly explain to us what they are, where they come from, etc.
Though, remember that TMNT is SF (the comic books and movies were pretty light where the mutagen was really the center of the sci fi aspect, but the 1980’s cartoon was full-on SF epic with blasters, starcruisers, and several extraterrestrial civilizations). and not really much of a scholarly source on ninjas. Clavell isn’t really one either, but at least he kept pretty close to reality.
Having read Shogun, I’m pretty sure Clavell would have stopped to define water, going back to the Big Bang if necessary, if his editor hadn’t stepped in occasionally.
Anyway, I think ninjas became a part of mainstream culture right about the 70’s. You certainly see all those Ninja-themed movies all over the place by the early 80’s, so the concept was firmly entrenched by then.
As another poster mentioned, what most people “know” about ninjas is wrong anyway. Even if the term was well-recognized when Shogun was published, a proper definition would be warranted.
The 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice featured ninjas very prominently, which I don’t think were in the 1964 novel (but wildly different plot). As far as I can recall, it’s the first time that ninjas were portrayed and named in a western film. They even wore the kind of stealth outfits we have come to associate with ninjas, although in gray, not black, and they used all sorts of modern devices.
Certainly when Clavell’s novel came out I was familiar with both the name and concept. But Clavell can be excused for his explanations – YOLT gave us admittedly “modern Ninjas” that fought fairly openly in packs, while the traditional ninja was supposed to be a very quiet and undercover assassin.
Also in the late 1960s, there was an episode of Speed Racer called (in the U.S.) “Gang of Assassins.” The plot involves the titular gang attempting to break up a peace conference.
Although the word “ninja” wasn’t used in the English translation of the episode, I’ve always suspected that’s what they were supposed to be. They dressed in black jumpsuits that left only their eyes visible, they moved so fast as to seemingly disappear, they did all sorts of impossible acrobatics, and they used little hand-thrown explosive thingies.
If wikipedia is correct, the Japanese title of that episode was “Hayate! Ninja Ka” (with a macron over the a in “Ka”). So apparently they were meant to be ninjas. That the Americanized version didn’t use the word suggests that it wasn’t well-known in the U.S. at that time, or else they surely would have included it. I mean, what could be cooler than Speed Racer fighting ninjas?
Not that I can recall, and I think I’ve seen all his “samurai” films (and quite a few others besides).
In The Seven Samurai, by the way, the titular samurai don’t wear the characteristic armor (except for a brief scene with Toshiro Mifune), while the leaders of the bandits they’re fighting do. It’s an interesting reversal that occurs throughout the film – the first glimpse you have of the lead samurai has him getting his characteristic topknot being cut off and his head shaved ( as it remains throughout the film), so even “out of uniform” he doesn’t look like a samurai. It might be because Kurasawa wants to show that being a samurai is something that comes from within, and not the surface trappings. (Even the scene with Mifune in armor is ironic in a way).
As a result, his samurai are often dressed in “street clothes”, and this resemble “real ninjas” – as has been pointed out by others, the essence of ninjitsu is Blending In. You want to hide among the general populace, not stand out from them. Ninjas no more wore those black “ninja suits” than secret agents go around proclaiming their secret agent status – it defeats the very idea.
James Bond as a “famous secret agent” fighting with ninjas wearing identifying uniforms is wrong on so many levels that the brain freezes.
As early as 1967, James Bond was fighting Ninjas (or is the plural of Ninja “Ninja”?) in ‘You Only Live Twice’. So clearly the British were aware of them.
The book You Only Live Twice was published in 1964. It presented ninja as the super-elite, mysterious warrior, when Bond goes to a ninja school to be equipped as a ninja so he can infiltrate Blofeld’s castle.
The idea of ninja as super-warrior is about as accurate as the Wild West idea of gunfighters - it happened, but not as a romantic secret society of invisible assassins. Ninja were recruited from the lower classes, unlike the samurai, and the ninja tactics of guerrilla and unconventional war was considered somewhat dishonorable compared to the noble combat of the samurai. There were even female ninja, considered on a par with, and often expected to serve as, prostitutes.
I couldn’t recall if Bond got ninja schooled in the novel, as well. It’s been too long since I read it. Neither the Wikipedia page nor the Bond Wiki say anything about ninjas in Fleming’s novel. (And my copy of the book’s at home)
Not exactly ninja-schooled. Bond and Tiger go to a school run by the Japanese Secret Service but Bond only observes a training exercise (in which someone falls off a wall and is killed). Then later Bond gets a ninja suit to wear/use in breaking into Blofeld’s castle.
Bond learns enough about bojutsu from watching fights at the ninja school to fight Blofeld off when Blofeld has a katana.
After Bond is captured, the “appallingly incriminating” contents of his ninja suit are shown to Blofeld, but it is not clear what those contents are. The only things Bond is described as carrying is a file that he uses to break into the “Garden of Death” and a chain he is going use to to strangle Blofed and Irma Bundt.
It’s pretty cartoon-y - Bond can’t carry a gun with a silencer to shoot Blofeld, because it is too heavy to swim with and might not penetrate the samurai armor Blofeld wears to protect himself from the poisonous Garden, but a ninja suit and a chain and a file and heaven knows what else are A-OK for Bond’s cover story of being a deaf mute Japanese. :rolleyes:
In the movie, there is a more explicit sequence where Bond is actually trained to be a ninja, but doesn’t use the training at all. Other Japanese agents do, when they rappell down into the secret crater hideout of Blofeld.
Probably in the 72-75 period. That was when there was an unreal proliferation of Karate/KungFu/Whoknows martial arts movies. Bruce Lee had just died, and his "Enter the Dragon’ was the first, IIRC, martial arts movie that went big time. There were also a lot of “Asian Import” shops, whatever, and they had books, etc…
The James Bond stuff probably wasn’t any good at making the West very knowledgable, because it all focused on Bond, and his chippies.
