Ninja Experiences

Beginning with the ninja outfits for rent, the Iga-Ueno Tourist Association and the various locations throughout the city seek to engage visitors in experiencing the ninja arts, first and foremost their martial techniques and weaponry.

Strolling through Ueno Park surrounding the grounds of Ueno Castle and passing the Bashδ Memorial Museum, visitors reach the ticketing booth of the museum and the so-called ninja house. At the booth and throughout the premises, stand-up displays with a cute manga-style ninja girl greet visitors in English, German, French, Italian, and Japanese or provide information about the museum, the castle grounds, and the city (see Figure 8.3). This is Igarashi Mai,⁵ a representative of the many cute characters used as symbols for local heritage or culture in conjunction with Cool Japan. Commissioned by the Ninja Festa organizing committee from a local design studio in 2015, Igarashi Mai has her own profile website, listing her age as 17, her birth­day as 22 February (Ninja Day), and her favorite food as Iga beef and rice, and granting her the title of Japan’s best kunoichi, a female ninja. Unlike the sword- and shuriken-wielding Mai, historically documented kunoichi worked as spies placed in adversary households rather than as fighting sab­oteurs or infiltrators (Yoshimaru, 2017).

Following her guidance at the entrance or that of her human compatriots, tourists can join one of the hourly tours of the ninja yashiki, the ninja house, which is all about the real ninja Mai advertises.

Our guide embodies perfectly what you may expect from a ninja: com­pletely dressed in black from head to toe in the classic attire cover­ing everything but the face, accentuated by dark eyeliner very much following the kabuki style.

Figure 8.3 Ninja character Igarashi Mai.

Source: © MARIBON.

steadies it from the secret room behind. Visitors are invited to try themselves, but not one disappeared as trace-less as our guide. Always, the door kept swinging.

(Fieldnotes, 2018)

The Iga-ryu Ninja House is claimed to be an authentic one, used in the past by shinobi to train, hide, and bide their time between missions. The simple-looking farmhouse was dismantled and rebuilt near the museum. The house is equipped with all kinds of secret doors and hidden weapons installed in case the house is attacked and its occupants have to fend off intruders. The tour guides now disappear or jump out of these hidden doors and explain each contraption in Japanese, assisted with English displays. The guides execute every move with perfect precision, showcasing the train­ing they received in groups like Kurondo (see below). They also participate in the Ninja Show, which is held several times a day on a stage next door, between the house and the museum, or as the main attraction of Iga’s annual festivals. During the show, ninja demonstrate various types of weaponry associated with ninjutsu, their secret martial arts:⁶ They slice through straw bundles to illustrate the sharpness of their blades; show different attack and fighting styles, including the use of everyday items in combat; and, of course, throw shuriken. After the performance and for an extra fee, viewers may try themselves to toss shuriken or use a blowgun.

Following a flight of stairs down into the basement below the ninja house, visitors enter the Ninja Experience and Tradition Halls, which display items that had actually been in use, such as weapons or costumes.

Besides the museums in Iga, a number of locations invite tourists to learn about ninja practices and tools. The Tejikara shrine, for example, belong­ing to the Iga Fujibayashi clan—Fujibayashi Sabuji compiled the afore­mentioned Bansenshukai—still to some degree holds the shinobi tradition of gunpowder and explosives high. Fireworks are released each year in October during the shrine’s annual festival. A newer tradition since 1964 is the Iga-Ueno Ninja Festa in April or May,⁷ which offers direct experiences, such as shuriken tossing, to about 32,000 visitors, roughly 15 percent of the tourists coming to Iga throughout the year (Iga YOU, 2018). In November, the kurondo matsuri combines traditional festivities with a ninja show. The festival is believed to have its roots in private ceremonies of the Hattori clan, and it lends its name to Kurondo, which calls itself a traditional ninja group. Founded in 1984 to cater to ninja fans and keep ninjutsu alive, the group participates in the shrine ceremony each year, followed by various displays of ninja martial arts. Kurondo has also produced a number of videos where its members showcase fighting styles and stealth techniques—which can be watched in the museum exhibition or bought at the gift shop—and pub­lished guidebooks and manga that seek to teach these practices to fans. On their website, the group claims that many have a false image of ninja and ninjutsu, which they seek to amend through research, preserving tech­niques through direct teaching, and spreading correct information throughReenacting Japan’s Past That Never Was 157 their publications, which includes a bulletin now 222 issues strong.⁸ In their videos, the group explains that their preservation focuses on the correct execution of techniques, which are often demonstrated by female ninja in pink outfits.⁹ Judging from my observations in Iga, for example, during the Ninja Festa in 2019, audiences accepted the focus on martial arts and the subsequent “breach” of historical accuracy in favor of gender inclusivity (cf.

Despite the presence of ninja in all kinds of media and the increased atten­tion since 2015, the phenomenon may be short-lived; visitor numbers to the Ninja Festa, for example, had already begun to drop by 2018. Researchers from Mie University revealed in a conversation that this corresponds to a larger trend concerning jidaigeki (era dramas) and historical reenactment. Since 2012, the most-popular jidaigeki TV shows, collectively called the Hissatsu Series (“Knockout Series,” 1972-2012, TV Asahi), have been reduced to annual specials. Actors, directors, and also viewers are literally dying out (Kazuka, 2014). Aggregator websites about battle reenactments, such as sam- urai-fes.com, have been shut down (as of 2020). Large theme parks like the Edo Wonderland Nikko Edomura in Tochigi—which offers a variety of shows and experiences, including ninja appearances and shuriken tossing—register an ever-decreasing number of visitors despite efforts to make them accessible to those who are younger (via Facebook and Instagram) or non-Japanese (with translations throughout the park). Countering this trend, starting in 2019, Iga’s tourism association has sought to attract more people to their festival with a new offering. Through a series of chance meetings between a jidaigeki novelist and game designer and an Edo period literature specialist from Mie University, Iga’s newest ninja experience turned out to be a larp.