Notes
1 The Japanese character for the number 2 (A) can be read nin, and is thus homonymous with the nin (S) in “ninja,” making 22 February the ideal day to commemorate these spies and saboteurs.
How Japanese kanji characters (literally meaning “Chinese letters,” as they were borrowed from Chinese script) can have different pronunciations and alternating meanings will play a role in relating the military spies of Japan’s past to their popular fictional image, locally and globally.2 Similar to the hosts, however, such NPCs can become the target of in-game abuse, which has been problematized in recent years: “Having groups of beings represented as adversaries, servants, obstacles, or symbols with a set function and a fixed narrative without proper agency is dehumanizing. Non-player characters, even when inhabited by players, are less than human. They are props and toys for the player characters to do as they please” (Stenros, 2017).
3 An activity is paratelic if it is done for its own sake, telic if there is a purpose outside the activity (Apter, 1991). No activity is per se paratelic or telic: I can play sports telicly (if I want to earn money with it) and enjoy research in a paratelic frame of mind.
4 Coming from a transcultural perspective, calling Nara Japan’s first capital does not resonate well. The nation-state of Japan was established in the late 19th century, many parts of it fighting violently against an inclusion (cf. Boshin War). When Nara was Heijδ-kyδ, culturally speaking, there was no “Japan.”
5 See https://ninja-mai.com/ (Accessed 17 August 2020).
6 Phonetic markers in historical documents again point to the reading shinobi no jutsu instead (Cummins and Minami, 2013).
7 See www.iga.ne.jp/~ninjafesta/ (Accessed 17 August 2022)). The festival in 2020 was postponed to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
8 See www.kurondo.sakura.ne.jp/custom7.html (Accessed 17 August 2022).
9 See, for example, youtu.be/9XgG1W1Or00 (Accessed 17 August 2022).
10 In November 2019, the Ninja Research Center, GroupSNE and CLOSS ran a version of the ninja larp targeting adults that included actual fighting with boffer weapons. The abstract means of conflict resolution detailed below were thus not necessary. I did not participate in this version and thus do not include this larp in the following considerations.
11 To protect the privacy of the dojo’s owner, I am not disclosing its name or location.
12 “Larper” here means they regularly participate in larp events.