Setting the Stage
The first test run of the ninja larp, as well as the subsequent inclusion of larp during the 2019 Ninja Festa, was designed for a target audience with particular traits: people who had no prior larp experience but great enthusiasm for ninja.
This means from the organizers’ point of view, the larp needed to have a low entry threshold and a large overlap with popular ninja images. Still, during various conversations before and after the test run, the researchers from Mie University emphasized their hope that a larp may offer access to knowledge and experiences that help people better understand what roles and tasks ninja/shinobi fulfilled during the Sengoku and Edo periods.Elaborate and complicated rules work against accessibility, so Tomono and CLOSS tried to make the game rules as easy as possible. Furthermore, with children potentially participating, actual fighting was out of the question for the tourism association. Thus, they developed an abstract system that was still recognizable for ninja fans.10 Drawing on input from the Mie University ninja historians, their translation of ninja martial arts into game mechanics incorporates the five classic elemental arts (gotonjutsu) described in the Bansenshukai. In this collection, these arts are described as employing various techniques to elude an adversary. Since manga and other forms of fiction have adopted the ninja, the gotonjutsu names are also used for forms of attack. Similarly, in the ninja larp, katon (the fire tonjutsu, originally referring to gunpowder and explosives) may be employed for delivering aReenacting Japan’s Past That Never Was 159 strike as well as evading an attack. The other four powers are metal (kinton, for such actions as lock picking), wood (mokuton, dealing with medicine and drugs), earth (doton, concealing oneself), and water (suiton, swimming).
To add more skills to the repertoire of characters and increase randomization during confrontations (see below), Tomono created five further powers, the gosojutsu, borrowing from various ninja techniques: rope arts (nawa- jutsu), beast arts (chojujutsu), metamorphosis or disguise arts (henkajutsu), brawling arts (kumiuchijutsu), and weapons arts (bukijutsu). Before the larp begins, each player chooses a combination—for example, katonjutsu and bukijutsu, classifying their character as being trained in explosives and the use of bladed weapons. Another character would be able to use ropes and cords to restrain opponents and also be a sophisticated user of drugs (wood). Each power is associated with a hand gesture inspired by kuji kiri, an esoteric Buddhist meditation technique practiced by shinobi and familiar to most ninja fans. For example, for the katonjutsu, a player would form a triangle with thumbs and index fingers and push this in an outward motion from their chest toward the target. The rules behind the powers appear rather simple and work in principle like rock-paper-scissors: combatants secretly select one of their powers and simultaneously produce the respective hand sign while speaking a quick phrase (e.g., the power’s name, “katon!”). If the selected powers stand in no direct relation to each other, for example, fire and animals, both parties suffer damage. Calculated in points, a character can take a maximum of four such hits before they would fall unconscious. However, if powers are related, such as metal cutting wood or animals sniffing out a disguise, then only the beaten party receives damage. The order of powers designates their relationship (see Figure 8.4): weapons always
Figure 8.4 The ninjutsu powers from which players can choose and their relationship to each other.
Source: Illustration by author, © Tomono.beat ropes, water always extinguishes fire, and so on.
Later runs of the larp during the Ninja Festa may include boffer weapon combat (which was demonstrated after each larp debriefing in 2018 and 2019); the beginner and child-friendly variant during the 2019 festival continued to use this abstract system for safety reasons but limited powers to the classic five elements. With younger children already familiar with the five powers and gestures from manga, the threshold to participate remained low.The 2018 introductory larp’s main location was a martial arts dojo (training hall) and its surroundings.11 CLOSS larps are usually designed for indoor play (Kamm, 2019), and thus player movement often follows prescripted scenes. Scene order still follows player agency, however: they may learn something about a temple and see an NPC sneaking into the woods, and it is their decision which lead to follow. CLOSS works with many small theme-appropriate props, tapestries, camouflage nets (“the woods”), and so on, which they rearrange during scene changes. With the dojo’s surroundings also available for play, however, the players followed traces outside to act out the transition from one scene location to another. The 2019 Ninja Festa sessions took place in an accessible downtown location, where folding screens were employed to create a maze for the players to navigate through. For the larp, visitors were asked to take on appropriate ninja disguises, either borrowed or of their own possession.
Like the Kurondo activities, the larp focuses less on depicting a correct representation of ninja looks—advertisements featured the popular blackclad ninja (see Figure 8.5), and most participants wore outfits borrowed from the tourism association. Similarly, neither gender nor other attributes barred someone from play, except Japanese language proficiency in 2018 (simultaneous interpretation in English was offered during the Ninja Festa). But where Kurondo seeks to preserve martial art techniques, the ninja larps aim at recreating situations in which the shinobi of the past would have found themselves and making those situations experienceable to the participants.