Ninja in Theater and Popular Fiction
Paradoxically, at roughly the same time the actual shinobi disappeared or were replaced by other forms of spies and agents in the late Edo period, the ninja figure as we know it today came to the fore (Yamada, 2016, Kindle Loc 2757).
Ninja appeared as dishonorable and often sorcerous counterparts to honorable samurai in kabuki theater stage plays (Kawakami, 2016, Kindle Loc 1996). Kabuki is one of Japan’s classic forms of theater, known for its stylized drama, expressive costumes, and the onnagata, male actors who play female roles. Kabuki stagehands are known as kuroko, “black clad,” which led to the common understanding that people dressed in black on stage are considered invisible. The ninja characters on stage employed almost, if not outright, magical means of camouflage, which was realized by wearing black to surprise audiences. Associating ninja with hurling throwing stars, shuriken, also derives from the theater, where the noble samurai only fought in honorable sword combat but did not use projectile weapons—even though they used all kinds of weapons, including shuriken, in actual combat before they too found themselves without battles in the late Edo period (Yamada, 2016).In the early 20th century, Tachikawa Publishing created the first ninja boom with a series of children’s books, starting with Sarutobi Sasuke by Yamada Otetsu in 1911. The title character’s family name means “monkey jump,” alluding to his agility and uncanny leaping ability. Today, Japanese popular media are dominated by manga, anime, and video games, and here too, we find the (now heroic) ninja, best embodied by Kishimoto Masashi’s NARUTO, which was published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1999 to 2014. Including television and feature film anime as well as video games, NARUTO is a best-selling series in Japan and, with availability in over 40 countries, has spawned ninja fandom worldwide (Omote, 2013; Satδ, 2017; Tang, 2017). NARUTO centers on the adolescent Naruto Uzumaki and his companions from a fictional ninja village who display all the magical powers of camouflage and martial arts people have come to expect. When cities like Iga seek to attract domestic and foreign tourists, it is this fictional image they appeal to.