There are reports today that the silent assassins we know as ninjas are dying out and soon they’ll be ‘extinct’. Better get those secret ‘hits’ in now…
So what’s all this about ninjas dying out?
It’s a bit of a weird one alright, but according to officials from the Iga-ryu ninja museum in Japan, only a handful of the silent assassins still exist and there’s only one ‘ninja master’ left alive.
Really? Who is he?
His name is Jinichi Kawakami and according to BBC News he is the 21st head of the Ban family, one of 53 that made up the Koka ninja clan. Apparently, Kawakami started learning the techniques back when he was six-years-old from his ninja master called Masazo Ishida. Apparently, Kawakami didn’t even know that he was being trained to become a ninja and he actually thought he was being trained to be a thief.
“I even wondered if he was training me to be a thief because he taught me how to walk quietly and how to break into a house.”
So what exactly do ninja’s do anyway? Are they like what we see in the movies?
Well, yes and no. Obviously, Hollywood glammed up the ninja appearance showing them to be silent assassins that are next to invincible and who can walk on water. In reality, they were basically just extremely well trained hitmen who would work under contract. They would be trained to move quietly and in the shadows and they were expert swordsmen.
Is that all they’d do? Kill people in the shadows?
No, they had other skills such as making explosives and mixing medicine. The whole being able to walk on water thing actually has some truth behind it. The most skilled ninjas were able to use floating devices that would attach to their feet and allow them to move across water upright and without getting wet.
Wow, I didn’t know that… So why are they dying off? Surely there’s an online ninja class I can take?
There probably is, but you wouldn’t be trained to be a ninja in the traditional sense. According to Kawakami there’s just no need for ninja’s in the modern digital age.
“In the age of civil wars or during the Edo period, ninjas’ abilities to spy and kill, or mix medicine may have been useful,” Kawakami says.
“But we now have guns, the internet and much better medicines, so the art of ninjutsu has no place in the modern age.”
So that’s why the traditional Japanese ninja is doomed to extinction…
