Ninja (31 page)

That pretty much sums up today's popular image of the ninja—the man in black whose task in life is to break, enter, steal, and kill (luckily our young rioter did not come up against opposition). He felt like he was “on a mission,” but the only mission was self-serving theft. No sense of family or a cause. He was not part of a gang. He was not gathering information that would help others. In brief, other than being a loner, his use of the word
ninja
bears no relationship to the historical ninja. Where did it all go wrong?

As for the international appeal of the ninjas, it's largely the fault of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Bond is, in any case, a Western ninja—dependent on and utterly loyal to his boss, M, a master of unarmed combat and of fighting with a variety of exotic weaponry, an infiltrator, gatherer of information, assassin, and above all a survivor. Fleming does not make the comparison himself, until the last Bond book before his death, when Bond actually becomes a ninja.

The idea seems to have come to Fleming as the result of a trip to Japan in 1959, when he went for three days to research an article for a
Sunday Times
series entitled “Thrilling Cities” (subsequently republished in a book of the same name). That was enough to introduce him to martial arts, then reemerging from the shadows at the hands of enthusiasts. His guide was “Tiger” Saito, editor of an annual magazine on Japan produced by the Japanese Embassy in London. “Tiger” was “chunky, reserved, tense . . . he looked like a fighter—one of those war-lords from Japanese films.” Together, they shared a “cheerful and excellent luncheon” with the writer Somerset Maugham, who had by chance just arrived on a visit. Fleming claimed they were friends, their friendship being based on the fact that eighty-four-year-old Maugham “wishes to be married to my wife, and he is always pleased to see me if only to get news of her.” The real link was that Maugham had been a spy in Russia, an experience reflected in the fictional adventures of Ashenden, the archetype of the secret agent and much admired by Fleming. Maugham referred to Ashenden's boss by his initial (C.), a device copied by Fleming, who named Bond's boss M. Anyway, the three went off to watch a display of jujitsu. No mention of ninjas.

But five years later Fleming set his twelfth Bond novel,
You Only Live Twice
, in Japan, and built on the subject of martial arts. The novel has some rather dark themes. Bond's wife has been murdered by the master criminal Ernst Stavro Blofeld, founder of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Bond is depressed, drinks too much, gambles too much. Later, his girlfriend, Kissy, gets pregnant. There are subtexts about the decline of empire, Britain's lack of moral fiber, and the rise of America to world domination. He is given one last chance. The real-life Tiger Saito becomes Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service. Bond's job is to get from him vital information about Soviet plans to destabilize the world by testing nuclear weapons and then using them as a threat. In exchange, Tanaka sets a challenge for “Bondo-san” (as Fleming points out, Japanese prefer to end words with a vowel).

A certain Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, a Swiss multimillionaire and amateur botanist with impeccable credentials, has created a castle estate, which includes a pool of piranhas and several death-dealing volcanic fumaroles, and in which he grows numerous fatally poisonous plants. It's a wild premise, but made credible because Fleming lists the plants, all twenty-two of them, with their effects, and classes them in six categories of poisons. This “Castle of Death” attracts would-be suicides, for as is well known, Japanese seeking to restore honor do so by committing suicide. Hundreds have entered Shatterhand's estate and chosen to die horrible deaths. This is an embarrassment to the government. Shatterhand, who protects himself from poison by wearing armor, has committed no crime and is immune to prosecution. Bond's task is to take on the role of Saint George, to redeem Britain's tarnished image, to enter this “Castle of Death and slay the Dragon within.” Success will qualify him to receive the information he seeks.

As part of his training, Tanaka plans to take Bond to his Central Mountaineering School near Kyoto.

It is here that my agents are trained in one of the arts most dreaded in Japan—
ninjutsu
, which is, literally, the art of stealth or invisibility. All the men you will see have already graduated in at least ten of the eighteen martial arts of
bushido
, or “the ways of the warrior,” and they are now learning to be
ninja
, or “stealers-in,” which has for centuries been part of the basic training of spies and assassins and saboteurs. You will see men walk across the surface of water, walk up walls and across ceilings, and you will be shown equipment which makes it possible for them to remain submerged under water for a full day. And many other tricks besides. For of course, apart from physical dexterity, the
ninja
were never the super-humans they were built up to be in the popular imagination.

So it is. The school is a castle where ninjas—dressed in black, of course, with their heads hooded—stage a mock invasion of the Castle of Death. They skim across the moat on wooden floats and scale the immense wall. One weakling falls to his death. Inside, attackers and defenders whack one another with staves, leaving many unconscious or groaning in pain, but none the worse, apparently, for blows to the groin. Bond sees ninja armament: throwing stars, caltrops, hollowed bamboo for breathing underwater—all the paraphernalia of ninja tourist museums.

Later, relaxing on a pleasure steamer, Tanaka tries to interest Bond in haikus, quoting some of Bash
o
's. “Do me a favour, Bondo-san. Write a haiku for me yourself. I'm sure you could get the hang of it. After all, you have had some education.” Bond admits to some rusty Latin and Greek, and tries his hand at one.

You only live twice:

Once when you are born

And once when you look death in the face.

Tanaka applauds the sincerity, but really it's a disaster—too many syllables, and an odd first line implying many lives. But it provides the novel with its title.

Bond asks how the ninjas can take stave blows to the groin. “That might be of some practical value to me instead of all this waffle about poetry.” Tanaka explains:

You know that, in men, the testicles, which until puberty have been held inside the body, are released by a particular muscle and descend between the legs? . . . Well, by assiduously massaging those parts, [the warrior or sumo wrestler] is able, after much practice, to cause the testicles to re-enter the body. . . . Then before a fight, he will bind up that part of the body most thoroughly to contain these vulnerable organs in their hiding-place. Afterwards in the bath, he will release them to hang normally. It is a great pity it is now too late for you to practise this art. It might have given you more confidence on your mission. It is my experience that agents fear most for that part of the body when there is fighting to be done or when they risk capture. These organs, as you know, are most susceptible to torture for the extraction of information.

Only now does Tanaka brief Bond about his target. Wonder of wonders, Shatterhand is none other than his wife's murderer, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Suddenly, this is no longer an official assignment. It's personal. Bond wants revenge. “And with what weapons? Nothing but his bare hands, a two-inch pocket knife and a thin chain of steel.”

First, though, Bond has to get to the base of the castle wall. He will do this from an island that is home to the Ama people, who make their living diving for
awabi
(abalone) shells. For this he becomes a ninja, adopting the persona of an anthropologist coming to live with the Ama. He goes out to sea with the daughter of his hosts, accompanied by her pet cormorant, which is trained to catch fish. The girl is, of course, his next love, Kissy Suzuki, who was briefly in Hollywood, and therefore English-speaking, before returning to her island life. After a few idyllic days, she insists on swimming with him across the half mile of ocean to the castle. It's night. He climbs in, dressed in his ninja gear, which is “as full of concealed pockets as a conjurer's tail-coat,” with numerous useful bits of equipment. He finds a base in a garden shed, makes a stealthy survey, identifies sulfurous fumaroles and the piranha pool, witnesses two suicides, hides, and sleeps through the day.

That night he breaks into the castle, is captured and placed above a geyser that erupts under tight control at regular intervals. Interrogated by Blofeld, Bond manages to strangle him, upset the timing mechanism of the geyser, and escape, using, of all things, a balloon (over the top, even for Fleming). The castle is blasted to bits by volcanic action. But, while escaping, Bond is wounded in the head and loses his memory. Kissy rescues him, nurses him for weeks, reignites his dormant sexuality, and is soon pregnant.

Meanwhile, back home, it's assumed he has died. M writes his obituary in
The Times
, with a witty reference to “a series of popular books written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.” The book ends with Bond, unaware of Kissy's pregnancy, wondering about his past, intrigued by the word
Vladivostok
, which he sees in a scrap of newspaper. It suggests another name: Russia. “I have a feeling that I have had much to do with this Russia,” he says, and determines—with Kissy's brokenhearted consent—to go there in pursuit of his memories and his past life.

Fast-forward three years to the film version. The dark themes are ditched in favor of action, gimmicks, and a few “sex” scenes so unbelievably coy it hardly counts as sex these days. The plotline is irredeemably ludicrous, even more so than Fleming's. So is the script, as the writer, Fleming's friend and children's book author Roald Dahl, well knew. Blofeld is set on igniting a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. This he does by launching a spacecraft that gobbles up the satellites of both powers and miraculously vanishes with them, turning both sides toward war. Blofeld's castle is replaced by a volcano, inside which is a space center, source of the cannibalistic spacecraft. The crater floor slides back when the rockets take off and return. Today, it is about as convincing as the original
King Kong.
But it made its budget back four times over. One thing the film kept was the idea that Bond should work with ninjas, who overwhelm Blofeld and his evil empire in the climax.

The film needed a consultant. In the West, there were none. The most obvious choice was Donn Draeger, ex–U.S. marine, veteran of the Pacific and Korean wars, founder of the U.S. Judo Federation, expert in many martial arts, and prolific author, but as yet no expert on ninjas.

There were, however, ninja experts in Japan—not many, because all martial arts had been banned in 1945 by the Supreme Command Allied Powers (SCAP) as symbolic of Japanese militarism. Besides, many—perhaps most—Japanese themselves looked upon all martial traditions as part of the folly that had led them into war in the first place. The ban was repealed in 1948, with martial arts undergoing a steady renaissance in the following years and increasing popularity in books. A favorite theme was suggested by the Nakano Spy School. Japan found its equivalent of James Bond in Ichikawa Raizo, who appeared in six spy films, waging desperate battles against both foreign spies and regular officers of the Japanese army. In the martial arts, the revival was led by the few who had kept the old traditions intact through the war years. The most famous of these was Fujita Seika, the self-proclaimed “last of the ninjas”—but he died in 1966, as filming of
You Only Live Twice
got under way.

So while in Japan coaching Sean Connery in martial arts techniques, Draeger recruited Masaaki Hatsumi, who was seeking to establish himself as a
ninjutsu
master with his teacher, Toshitsugu Takamatsu,
¹
who had his own claims to fame. He lived in Kashihara, near the Forty-Eight Waterfalls, the heartland of the Iga ninjas. As a young man in the early twentieth century, he traveled through Mongolia, taught martial arts in China, and was bodyguard to the last Chinese emperor, Puyi. One of several “last of the ninjas,” he is said to have won twelve fights to the death and gouged out the eyes of one of his attackers, while somehow avoiding the attention of the police. Both were great self-publicists, and both involved in the Japanese film
Ninja Band of Assassins
and its many sequels. Soon Hatsumi was on set, waiting to offer advice. Apparently, he was not called upon much, though he did get a walk-on part as the photographic assistant to Tiger Tanaka.

Perhaps he expressed surprise when he saw the so-called ninjas in action. Bond arrives alongside a castle by helicopter. It is in fact Himeji Castle in Hy
o
go, a fine example of a restored seventeenth-century keep, all gray-tiled roofs and upturned eaves, with a maze of interlocking walls and gates. Blofeld's rocket has just consumed a Russian satellite. Tiger Tanaka and Bond greet each other with information known to the other, which is normally banned in Hollywood scripts. But Dahl was not going to throw away the chance of a good line:

TANAKA

Bad news from outer space.

BOND

Yes, I heard. This time the Russians are accusing the Americans.

TANAKA

Next time it will be war.

BOND

We'll have to get down into that volcano.

TANAKA

I agree.

BOND

We'll also need a company of first-rate men. Do you have any commandos here?

TANAKA

I have much, much better. [A beat]
Ninjas!
Top secret, Bond-san.
²
This is my ninja training school.