Ninja Larp
Tomono Shou works as a game designer at GroupSNE in Kobe, where he created the jidaigeki tabletop role-playing game Daikatsugeki (Big Swashbuckling, 1992), which mirrors the setting of the once-popular Hissatsu Series.
Players take on the roles of scoundrels and assassins for hire in early modern Edo (Tokyo), solve injustices and larger crimes, and kill their adversaries in dramatic climax scenes at the end of a play session. Tomono has designed many such games but also writes novels, including stories set in the world of GroupSNE’s fantasy setting Runal Saga and, more recently, jidaigeki ninja novels centering on an Iga retainer in the service of the shogun (Tomono, 2014). Shogun is the title of the samurai generalissimo who ruled in the emperor’s stead, including the aforementioned Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose family ruled for the duration of theEdo period. Knowing these writings, Yoshimaru Katsuya, professor of Edo period literature and ninja specialist at Mie University, established contact with Tomono. With interest in analog gaming and participating in the living history elements of the Iga museums, Yoshimaru discussed the idea of creating a ninja role-playing experience with the game designer in 2018 as part of a regional social contribution project. Tomono brought Japan’s larp association, CLOSS, on board, which led to an introductory larp run in December of the same year, involving other researchers and the Iga-Ueno Tourist Association, as well as public sessions during the 2019 Ninja Festa.CLOSS, the association for promoting larp experiences, was founded in 2016 by members of the larp group Laymun, based in Iruma City in Saitama prefecture just north of Tokyo. Laymun itself is only three years older and began to offer monthly fantasy larp events when the medieval fighting school Tintagel in Tokyo stopped doing so after roughly one year of activities (Kamm, 2019). In the following years, larp in Japan developed rapidly from a few dozen players to several hundred as of this writing, organized in ten groups all over the country, while gaming publishers have been rushing into the market. GroupSNE and Bouken, the two game studios responsible for spreading tabletop role-playing throughout Japan in the 1980s, also entered into the larp business in 2018. CLOSS seeks to spread larp as a hobby but also to create links between larping and education.