THE SURVIVALISTS OF THE MARTIAL ARTS WORLD

BY JIM COBB

The steely gaze of the ninja speaks to their focus and concentration.

Grandmaster Hatsumi (in the yellow shirt) demonstrates a technique.

A real ninja class is a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun too.

Obstacle courses such as this one aren’t part of a typical ninja class, but they build critical skills and stamina needed by ninjutsu students.

As a child of the 1980s, I grew up during the heyday of the ninja craze. Blackclad assassins, adept at everything from swordplay to invisibility, were suddenly everywhere. Hollywood came out with dozens of films featuring them in some capacity, although admittedly, many of them were barely good enough to qualify for B-movie status.

On television, we had The Master. This 13-episode show debuted in 1984 and featured “spaghetti Western” star Lee Van Cleef as an aging ninja master who trains a new pupil while they traverse the country in a customized van. They would use their ninja skills to save random people from all sorts of trouble; sort of like a two-person The A-Team.

Of course, the comic book world also made extensive use of the ninja, mostly depicting them as faceless villains but also incorporating some of their aspects into the lore for headline heroes such as Batman, Wolverine and Daredevil. (And who could forget the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?)

But, that’s all fluff and fantasy. Surely there’s no such thing as ninja in the modern world-right?

Well, yes, Virginia, students of ninjutsu do exist today. And, they might very well be the survivalists of the martial arts world.

THE HISTORICAL NINJA

Ninjutsu really took root in the 15th century, although it had existed in different forms for a while prior. In those days, ninja were often born to the trade, much like the samurai. Because the latter stressed honor and integrity, doing battle in the open was the way things were supposed to be done.

But, as a need developed for what we’d today call intelligence operatives, that’s where the ninja came in. They served as spies and assassins, doing jobs that might have been seen as beneath the samurai code of honor. They were skilled at infiltration and working behind the enemy’s lines.