Disposable Lit Reviews

D.H. Publishing, 2003
95 pp.
ISBN 0-9723124-1-2

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There’s always a letdown when the magicians’ tricks are explained and exposed; more than just answering a question, it deflates the mystique which is so strongly cultivated. On the other hand, if done right, the revelation can be intriguing enough in its appreciation for cleverness that it almost compensates for the loss of wonder.

The ninja mystique is analogous. Those of us weaned on the ninja craze of the ’80’s got essentially the same hyperbolic portrait of the ninja as Japanese peasants fed the folktale lore centuries ago: Mysterious, silent assassins, who could survive almost any attack with either catlike quickness or bullish stamina, who used smokescreens and hypnotic powers to maintain near invisibility, etc. (Granted, the Japanese peasants probably didn’t hear a lot about purple-and-gold-lamé ninja suits or headbands with “NINJA” boldly printed across them.)

The truth behind the ninjas isn’t nearly as grandiose, but it can be fascinating in its own right. Unfortunately, most books and magazines that purport to give us the “truth” behind the ninja either fall back on vague mystical claptrap to try to maintain some of that larger-than-life allure, or give such a scaled-down overview that even the captivating true-life details fall by the wayside. Secrets of the Ninja is one of the latter.

Part of the problem is that 95 pages is far too short to give anything close to an accurate portrait of the ninja. And whne you consider that D.H. Publishing’s previous publication was Japanese Movie Posters, it’s not surprising that most of those pages are taken up with full-color photographs. Obviously, the visual signature of the ninja is part of the appeal, but I don’t know that that justifies a full nineteen pages of artfully-posed pictures of people in ninja garb, brandishing a variety of blunted weapons at one another against a backdrop of Japanese historical sites, before we even get to the first section (”The Basics”). This is supposed to be Secrets of the Ninja, after all, not Portfolio of the Ninja.

The book proper does touch on all of the things one would expect in a book of its title — an introduction which sketches in the historical context, a ninja workout, the use of various weapons and unarmed combat techniques, the arsenal of unique weapons and tools, meditation and philosophy — but the treatment seems to have been guided more by what resources were easily at hand, rather than what would really best deserve the title. There are a scant two pages (photo-filled, naturally) on the ninja’s training regimen; by contrast, there’s a full page within the section on the ninja diet on making your own tofu. Is home-made bean curd really worth fully half as many pages as the specialized training which gave the ninjas their stamina and resilience?

Even the section for which they had more than adequate resources — those detailing combat techniques aided by photgraphs of posed models — seem perfunctory. When five-step rope combat technique begins with “1) Begin by rendering your assailant sword-less with a smash of your knee to the back of his hand,” you begin to sense the great divide between the instructions given and the actual technique of doing it. (”After you’ve found the mastermind’s hidden lair and dispatched his quirky-but-deadly henchman, 007, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble learning his computer’s proprietary operating system in order to disarm the orbital lasers.”)

The translation’s a bit starchy, as most translations of nonfiction from Japanese tend to be, with some odd pop-cultural phrases standing out. From a female combat technique for the kusari-gama (ball and chain): “4)Step behind him to avoid his flailing sword and finish him off with the sickle. You go, girl.”

If this were in hardcover, it could at least be a pretty coffeetable book which could lie open on its own. As it stands, though, it’s a prettified compendium of the same kind of information that half-reformed ninja geeks have in the half-dozen back issues of Ninja Magazine they’ve got mouldering in a cardboard box in the closet.

(Please tell me I’m not the only one who still has some Ninja back issues.)

Nathan Shumate